Today Bob critiqued our thumbnail sketches. Mine were pretty bad in retrospect. Bad in the sense that they didn’t look like much time or thought went into them, which is true for the time part. However, as it turns out, I followed my thumbnail sketch for my final production.

Mine were full scale: 10.5 x 6.125. I wanted to see the space I was working with, and get a sense of the organization of the content in that space. I only added a few design details. And I used a pen.

So it wasn’t a big surprise to me that Bob did not spend much time critiquing my thumbnails.

I believe in the idea of sketching out ideas. I was always an advocate for wireframes for web design if time and budget allowed. But I don’t know that there has to be a specific format or look for thumbnail sketches to be useful.

For this project, I felt confident moving forward with the sketches I created. What I’m getting at is I think that part of the process of creating a design is whatever works for you. Thumbnail sketches and wireframes can be very useful, and I believe that complex designs should be sketched and explored before taking them to the computer. But I’m not sure there’s a rule to follow.

Like I said, my sketches helped me and provided direction for my final product. So in effect, they did the job, despite looking like I did not put a lot of time into them.