Discuss: Sketching: the Visual Thinking Power Tool

1 Enjoyed this very much

Just wanted to say thank you Mike for a great article. I’ve always found sketching in the early stages of a project works best for me — and it’s also a lot of fun. And like most things, the more you do it, the better you get at it, as you pick up little tricks along the way. Thanks for sharing your sketches — they look great!

posted at 09:32 am on January 25, 2011 by dpenny

3 This really struck a chord with me

Much like yourself, I’ve loved sketching since I was a kid and I’ve found it an incredibly useful approach when starting a logo design or site layout. In fact my standard workflow begins on paper, long before I fire up photoshop / illustrator / whatever. Some of these sketches here are great!

I totally agree that artistic ability isn’t a prerequisite to sketching out ideas. It’s great fun to knock out some ‘thumbnail’ ideas and then flesh out the good ones. I often come up with layouts that I perhaps wouldn’t have though of if I’d have gone straight to photoshop.

On the flipside though, I’ve personally found that taking a little extra time out to learn some basic technical drawing methods (things like 3-point perspective) has really improved the quality of my work. I don’t mean to sound like I’m trying to scare anyone off, rather I find that if you try a sketching approach and it works out, it’s almost like a natural progression to take it further – Because it’s fun!

posted at 10:13 am on January 25, 2011 by Kumori Media

4 Relly helpful

What a lovely article! This was passed onto me by a design colleague. I am designer of learning experiences and there is no reason why sketching can’t help with this. I also think of myself as a visual thinker and visual sense maker: having created tools that are visually based and as a major fan of mindmpaping. I journal and doodle some but not enough. Mike presents and gently persuades us about the value of sketching as a design and problem solving tool. The links he provides and advice on what materials and tools is helpful. I have an iPad and am encouraged to try out the apps he suggests taking a look at. Thanks Mike

posted at 12:26 pm on January 25, 2011 by Magellan

5 I really enjoyed this article!

I use the combination of Moleskine + Pilot G-1 0.7 pen or classical pencil. I also build one tool to make browser frame simulation on paper Sketchbook for web designers

posted at 01:19 pm on January 25, 2011 by Vladimir Carrer

7

I’m a project manager, with barely any drawing ability at all. But I’ve spend the couple years with a moleskine cahier extra large square ruled journal as my daily carry for meetings.

The grid allow me to easily make not only occasional UI or information design sketches, but also works great for meeting notes and easily doing multiple levels of indentation for structured items – todo lists, navigational hierarchy, tasks and subtasks, etc. About $6 each

I’m a big fan of the feel of pencils also, and have a handful of pentel graphgear 500 .9mm pencils with the softest lead I can find. Also about $6 each

posted at 02:12 pm on January 25, 2011 by jonathanpeterson

8 Bob Dylan

I’ll have you know that Bob Dylan is a great singer. Even better than Caruso.

:-)

posted at 03:37 pm on January 25, 2011 by asjoegren

10 Resources for improving your sketching?

I completely resonate with the use of sketching as an imaginative tool. Even though my drawing ability is pretty poor, I still derive great value from trying my best to lay things out.

That said, I noticed that while you had a set of great resources on ways to use sketching as an imaginative tool, there weren’t any on improving your sketching itself. Do you have any recommendations there? Thanks,

posted at 06:22 pm on January 25, 2011 by kball