Drawing with a Purpose

Sketching can be for fun or to just pass the time during a boring lecture, but sketching can also be purposeful. Regardless of its trivial nature and perceived monotony a proper doodle or sketch can be a powerful foundation for any design.

Why should we sketch when beginning a project?

A friend once told me that to build a house a strong foundation is needed followed by a frame, or scaffolding, so that the structure does not come crashing down. Artist and designers are not much different when it comes to creativity. The majority of artist, illustrators and designers I know always begin with many different thumbnails to flesh out their ideas on paper whenever they start a project. Creating dozens of small quick drawings can help ideas to flow. It can generate new ideas and lead the creator in new directions. Thoughts are quickly scribbled down and whatever does not work is scrapped and the successful ideas continue to develop. Remember your first idea is seldom your best. It is much more effective to spend time on quick simple drawings to establish your ideas, than spending hours on the computer working on one idea that was a failure.

Not all preliminary sketches will be come successful. If you have a sketchbook full of doodles you will discover that you have pages full of failures and rejects, but we learn from those mistakes and become better designers because of them. Some ideas become good ideas, good ideas then become great ideas and great ideas could become timeless like a successful logo.


99designs has an excellent blog entry by Rebecca Greger with examples of logos that began as simple sketch concepts.

https://99designs.ca/blog/creative-inspiration/famous-logo-process-sketches/

No matter what level of expertise whether you are a young designer, or and established illustrators, your beginning doodles and sketches will make you a better professional.

A few months ago we had a project to create Canadian Stamps. I started with several ideas that I drew out. After some critiques I decided to go with my gut feeling and created a wildlife stamp. Here are the thumbnails.

And here is the finished stamp.


As simple as doodling and sketching are, you can make it as purposeful as you want. Keep it loose though, remember you are not drawing a finished concept, rather many possible concepts that could one day become million dollar ideas.