Graphic Designers draw thumbnail sketches that speed up their design workflow and enable them to get to a final design with fewer revisions.
Professional Graphic Designers are not paid to draw, they’re paid to design. However having the ability to sketch out ideas can help communicate different design solutions to the wider team, which in turn helps designers get to a final design quicker. Basic knowledge of sketching and drawing can speed up the graphic design workflow with fewer revisions. So although graphic designers are not needed to be professional illustrators they should have the ability to sketch to allow them to communicate visually and clearly to themselves and to their team.
So let’s look at the ways Graphic Designers draw and sketch out ideas to help them communicate their ideas. The main way would be drawing thumbnail designs. These are small hand-drawn sketches that graphic designers use to quickly test out ideas or to help give clarity around an idea to their wider team.
For instance, if you were given a brief to design an Instagram advert, the brief might read like this:
Design Brief for a fake mobile game:
Design an Instagram advert for the mobile game ‘Space Crystals’
Include the logo, main crystal asset, copy that reads ‘download space crystal today to get a free boost!’ Also include the App store icons for Apple and Google Store.
Now, this is a made-up brand that I came up with – sadly it’s not on the app store! But on the left, we can see the thumbnail sketches I have drawn out. These do not need to be pretty, these are not portfolio pieces or art to impress your friends when they go through your notebook. These thumbnails are to help you visualize your ideas fast. On the left image, I am playing with various assets that the brief has told me about. I am testing out the hierarchy of the components. Should we have the large crystal render to front and center and text on its side and under it? Or perhaps have the copy directly above? I spent a few minutes drawing up these sketches and then moved into Photoshop to create the design. Now you might notice that the thumbnails and final design do not directly match up. There are a few ideas used from each of the thumbnails. I tend to allow for the ability to play with my design because going from sketch to actually working out the problems of a design are different. But using the sketch as a foundation to work from is a really good workflow.
Test out ideas, faster
Now if as the Graphic Designer we were to just dive straight in to Photoshop or Illustrator it might take longer for us to test out our ideas of layout of the advert. It’s far quicker for us to sketch out the thumbnails of many ideas and then choose one to create in our design program. We can also get feedback from our team before we even start designing. By incorporating this kind of workflow we can get to our final design quicker with less revisions.
Once you get comfortable with this kind of sketching for design you can come up with your own visual language to speed it up even further.
A heading is drawn as a large rectangle box, a sub heading is a thinner rectangle, body copy are straight lines – you can also add in whether they are centered, left-aligned right-aligned etc. The bold copy is lines but drawn on heavier. An image can be a box with a X through it or a simple sketch of what I intend it to be.
Some clever designer has probably come up with a proper rule system for this kind of sketching, but I wouldn’t worry about it. Just figure out the kind of things you need to communicate with your sketches and a fast and clear way to present them to yourself and to your team. As long as people know what you are trying to say then it’s fine.
With motion graphics you can take it a step further as these sketches become a Storyboard. Same concept but this time we direct animation and camera movement within them. Each frame is one main action of the animation. Use arrows to direct the motion that you think should happen in the animation. You can also use expressive lines to demonstrate something popping, exploding, moving fast etc. Have fun with it, there are no wrong answers to this. Just clarity of message.
So in the above sketch we see a logo and copy underneath slide to the left, a mobile phone then slides up with a roundel sliding from the right along with text. Then the phone slides back down, the roundel slides off to the right and the text fades out. The logo then fades back in meaning that this animation can loop as it’s the same as the first frame.
I highly recommend putting this into your workflow as it helps get across your ideas rather than just relying on someone else understanding. It can minimize confusion and also get you to the finished version far quicker. Have fun with it and come up with your own ways of drawing elements that you use a lot in your design.
If you are just getting started as a Graphic Designer then I highly suggest you read the guide to becoming a Graphic Design intern as it will help add a little clarity to the start of your career.