Lecture 1

Do Thumbnail Sketches

Explore Layout Options Quickly with Rough Thumbnail Sketches

Thumbnail sketches are rough drawings, often only comprehensible to the designer, used to explore layout options. These quick pen or pencil sketches allow the designer to try out several ideas and focus on the most likely layouts before beginning a project.

Creating thumbnail sketches is a crucial part of the brainstorming phase of your design work. Don't discount the value of this step in the design process.


Designing with Thumbnail Sketches

• Don't worry about details. Use thumbnails to establish approximate locations for major elements. (don't worry about making "pretty" pictures.)

• Try for an approximately proportional page size (if doing sketches for a full page layout) but don't get out the ruler. You're aiming for a general idea of how the piece might look.


• Make lots of rough sketches. Repeat: lots of sketches. You'll rule out many design ideas quickly this way before wasting time in your page layout program.

• Don't try doing these initial rough designs in your software, even if using dummy text and placeholder graphics. You're likely to get caught up in things like changing the fonts or doing perfectly aligned graphics. Save that step until after you've done the initial brainstorming for ideas with thumbnails.