- Sketch is a unique app that offers amazing features and functionality for creating app UI designs and mockups. Creating an effective UI for an application requires time, detailed attention, and—most importantly—an idea to get started with!
- From pixel-perfect icons and scalable vector graphics, to full user flows and interactive prototypes, Sketch is the perfect place to design, create, test and iterate. Build designs that scale Lay the foundations for your product's design system with reusable, responsive components that automatically scale to fit their content.
- Sketch is one of the top apps professionals use for UI and icon design. Learn how to get the most out of it in our brand new course, Up and Running With Sketch. Create Amazing Prototypes in No Time with the Envato Elements Sketch Plugin.
From pixel-perfect icons and scalable vector graphics, to full user flows and interactive prototypes, Sketch is the perfect place to design, create, test and iterate. Build designs that scale Lay the foundations for your product's design.
From our sponsor:Elevate all your marketing with Mailchimp Smarts.
There are plenty of foundational courses taught in design school. And it's no surprise that big agencies and startups are taking a back-to-basics approach to their design processes.
Whether you've been a lifelong doodler or have serious sketch ‘chops,' being able to use paper to explore new ideas is an important skill in the design field.
Fear not! The analog power of the pencil isn't dead. In this device-focused era, there's still plenty of room for a simple, proven design process.
In fact, I've heard of a growing backlash against wasted billable hours developing fully-rendered Photoshop comps. Sketching gives you the flexibility to finesse and generate iterative, evolutionary designs without blowing the budget on fully realized spec work and digital comps.
Whether you're a big agency or freelancer, being able to communicate ideas to clients with a quick sketch is a valuable tool.
Why Sketch?
Sketching has some advantages to digital wireframes or even digital drawing. It's portable, approachable, creative and time-tested. There's nothing simpler than paper and pencil — or pen.
I've found, too, that clients tend to find the work informal enough that they can suggest changes and make edits. Fully rendered comps look 'finished' or nearly complete. I think that can hamper a client's willingness to suggest improvements or changes. Sketches are loose, friendly, informal… you can erase them and change them.
By sketching, you can do rapid, almost train-of-thought development to get your ideas down quickly. It works on-the-fly, so you can spend less billable hours at the monitor and more time generating ideas. Simply roll up your sleeves and find solutions.
And sketching kills the need for-placement-only (FPO) images. You know, the big 'x' images, you put in your mock-ups and comps to show where you'll put real assets. And you'll save on using expensive stock photography for FPO.
How to Get Started
One thing is for sure, practice makes perfect. So get those sea-legs in shape with some pocket sketchbook doodles, idea iteration and sketching.
I've found that the best way to do this is by sketching whenever you're queued-up in a line — for coffee, grocery shopping or waiting on the train. Any form of waiting is an opportunity to sketch.
And draw what you see, this skill will help you later, when you want to 'perform' for your clients. Sketching everyday things helps you to be prepared with ideas and carrying a sketchbook means you can always be ready to write down ideas for later.
As you sketch more, you'll learn to refine your sketches and develop them into more formal illustrations or drawings.
Sketching for Web Designers
When planning a website, sketching can be an invaluable part of planning. You can use it for designs, UX testing, UI elements and even trying out typography ideas.
I've used it on several websites to ideate the creative assets of a project like photography and icons. And I've also used it when faced with critical UI problems, like how to make a button or icon intuitive or user-friendly.
- Sketch is a unique app that offers amazing features and functionality for creating app UI designs and mockups. Creating an effective UI for an application requires time, detailed attention, and—most importantly—an idea to get started with!
- From pixel-perfect icons and scalable vector graphics, to full user flows and interactive prototypes, Sketch is the perfect place to design, create, test and iterate. Build designs that scale Lay the foundations for your product's design system with reusable, responsive components that automatically scale to fit their content.
- Sketch is one of the top apps professionals use for UI and icon design. Learn how to get the most out of it in our brand new course, Up and Running With Sketch. Create Amazing Prototypes in No Time with the Envato Elements Sketch Plugin.
From pixel-perfect icons and scalable vector graphics, to full user flows and interactive prototypes, Sketch is the perfect place to design, create, test and iterate. Build designs that scale Lay the foundations for your product's design.
From our sponsor:Elevate all your marketing with Mailchimp Smarts.
There are plenty of foundational courses taught in design school. And it's no surprise that big agencies and startups are taking a back-to-basics approach to their design processes.
Whether you've been a lifelong doodler or have serious sketch ‘chops,' being able to use paper to explore new ideas is an important skill in the design field.
Fear not! The analog power of the pencil isn't dead. In this device-focused era, there's still plenty of room for a simple, proven design process.
In fact, I've heard of a growing backlash against wasted billable hours developing fully-rendered Photoshop comps. Sketching gives you the flexibility to finesse and generate iterative, evolutionary designs without blowing the budget on fully realized spec work and digital comps.
Whether you're a big agency or freelancer, being able to communicate ideas to clients with a quick sketch is a valuable tool.
Why Sketch?
Sketching has some advantages to digital wireframes or even digital drawing. It's portable, approachable, creative and time-tested. There's nothing simpler than paper and pencil — or pen.
I've found, too, that clients tend to find the work informal enough that they can suggest changes and make edits. Fully rendered comps look 'finished' or nearly complete. I think that can hamper a client's willingness to suggest improvements or changes. Sketches are loose, friendly, informal… you can erase them and change them.
By sketching, you can do rapid, almost train-of-thought development to get your ideas down quickly. It works on-the-fly, so you can spend less billable hours at the monitor and more time generating ideas. Simply roll up your sleeves and find solutions.
And sketching kills the need for-placement-only (FPO) images. You know, the big 'x' images, you put in your mock-ups and comps to show where you'll put real assets. And you'll save on using expensive stock photography for FPO.
How to Get Started
One thing is for sure, practice makes perfect. So get those sea-legs in shape with some pocket sketchbook doodles, idea iteration and sketching.
I've found that the best way to do this is by sketching whenever you're queued-up in a line — for coffee, grocery shopping or waiting on the train. Any form of waiting is an opportunity to sketch.
And draw what you see, this skill will help you later, when you want to 'perform' for your clients. Sketching everyday things helps you to be prepared with ideas and carrying a sketchbook means you can always be ready to write down ideas for later.
As you sketch more, you'll learn to refine your sketches and develop them into more formal illustrations or drawings.
Sketching for Web Designers
When planning a website, sketching can be an invaluable part of planning. You can use it for designs, UX testing, UI elements and even trying out typography ideas.
I've used it on several websites to ideate the creative assets of a project like photography and icons. And I've also used it when faced with critical UI problems, like how to make a button or icon intuitive or user-friendly.
Sketches are perfect tools for communicating inference in design elements, too. And clients love the creativity component. They get into the process. You'll find that they like to sketch, too.
I had a client once say 'wow, it's like I think it and you just draw it. Incredible!' And that's the power and magic of sketching on-the-fly in client meetings.
Warning! Practice, Practice, Practice
Be warned, the world is a cruel place. Diving into sketches can be rough. If you're not a seasoned sketcher or don't have your drawing chops honed and prepared… then take some time to sketch independently of work.
For inspiration, visit sites like the Worldwide Sketchcrawl, Doodlers Anonymous and Urban Sketchers.
Read up on journaling and sketching by subscribing to sketch blogs. Then ask yourself… am I ready to sketch for my client?
Remember, stick figures don't impress. So being ABLE to sketch can be an important first step. You might want to take time to 'practice' and understand how to sketch your ideas before you dive into client projects.
Questions to Ask When Sketching Design Projects
First I ask myself, do I know all the things I'm going to use on the page I'm designing? If it's a redesign, I take inventory of the content that exists and also what users will be expecting to see.
If it's a new site, I'll review peer sites, do competitive analysis on those sites and then look at the really 'clear' user needs and add those bits of content to a list.
Next, I ask if the clients has any sort of design preferences. In many cases, clients have sites they like or admire. Knowing those and understanding the design language they favor is helpful. Color palettes, font uses, language / writing style, visual elements and design trends tend to influence marketing professionals. Pinterest, mood boards and design 'treasure hunts' can help understand a client's personal preferences.
Sketching a Design
First, gather the critical content for the page. I either do this with sticky notes or I write a document. Sure, I still start with written words on a page, but the words are typically the initial place to get ideas down and have a comprehensive list of all the nav, content and support content I need.
Second, I'll thumbnail my ideas from the initial list of page items. So I'll sketch out navigation, content blocks, ads, columns, related support content blocks, headers, footers and so on. If I run out of paper, I just tape more pages at the bottom of the sheet.
Third, I'll pick idea winners and losers for final sketches. Once I have a series of helpful ideas, I make a design decision and go with it. I usually get lots of feedback at this stage from client and peer designers. Sketching is so visually informal, too, that clients tend to feel more relaxed about picking winning ideas — long before a formal PSD mockup is produced.
Typical Project Process
On most projects, I start with a simple rectangle and sketch a series of thumbnails. This process is super simple, but it helps me generate a solid collection of choices for clients, project managers and peers designers.
Once we talk about thumbnails and the ideas behind thumbs, I produce some rough sketches from the down-selected thumbnails. These roughs are generally just to help get content priority together and page layout nailed down. I'll sketch up photography and asset ideas too, for buttons or other iconic / graphic elements of the layout.
In the rough phase I'm looking to answer questions like 'what's the user looking for' and 'how can I prioritize content.' This phase is also very collaborative. I'll share my sketches with clients, managers, project peers and other designers. If needed, we'll even get the pulse of test users and drop a sketch or two in front of them. Then I refine, iterate and evolve the sketch again by working through this stage again.
Once there's a clear direction for the rough sketch, I'll draw a formal sketch wireframe. Like a traditional wireframe, a sketch wireframe has solid content on the page… words, icons and photography. So my art direction ideas for photography are tested and explored in this sketch. I also use the sketch wireframe to flesh out the final UI elements and make sure they will work. We test these, generally and even have 'tween' wireframes for working through the very complex screens that a user might encounter in the design.
Many times, if there are formal presentations for clients, I'll sketch in ink instead of graphite. Ink adds a bit of formality to the sketch and if color is added, I don't have to worry about losing the real UI elements on the page to soft edges and lines.
In the end, you'll develop your own process. The fantastic thing about sketching is it leads to complete design freedom. You can capture ideas any time.
Helpful Meeting 'Add-Ons' for Good Sketching
So, in general, here are some 'meeting' related items that make for good interactive sketching.
Pens — I love to use pens for sketching. Sure, it takes a level of confidence to dive in with ink, but you can always restate your lines. And clients love the visibility of ink. My favorite pen is the Uni-Ball Vision. It's waterproof when you want to use watercolor washes to add color.
The 'Portable' White Board — Take an old white board and cut it into smaller, more portable 'mobile' whiteboards. Your mobile whiteboard can go with you from office to office and be used with Evernote to capture iterative work and sketches.
Big Sketchbook — Don't wimp out and get the small sketchbook for client work. Find something that's 14 inches on the longest side. Show up with something you can use.
Flip Charts — Flip charts work like portable white boards… and are incredible tools for getting your clients to congeal around an idea or notion. And the sticky kind can be attached to the wall for long design sessions and afternoon-long work groups.
So What?
As a designer, your best asset is your mind. Your ability to present visual information in quick, improvisational ways sets you apart from others in the web development workflow. And sketching can liberate you from the mouse and monitor to ad lib client solutions.
With solid sketch skills, designers can riff on ideas and turn conversations into genuine paths to innovation. And sketches can be informal and laid-back, keeping projects approachable.
So grab a pen or pencil, a sketchbook and turn your doodling into something marketable to your employer and clients.
A wireframe sketch is the initial hand-drawn design process, using paper and pen/pencil, of what a website design will look like. And to help you get inspiration as well as effective reference points, this article features 20 impressive web and mobile wireframe sketches.
But first, you might be wondering why the heck you should create a wireframe sketch of your web design. A wireframe sketch is effective in that:
- You can capture your creative spark and fluidly sketch out your design.
- You can work with your client without committing anything to code, thus saving yourself time and number of actual design revisions.
- You get a relatively quick sample that you can show the client and then work off of – think of is as an outline to an essay.
Basically, creating a wireframe sketch saves you time by reducing the number of revisions you'd need to do, and it helps you stay on track with your design by being a prototype you can work off of.
Hand-drawn Wireframe Sketches
A nice touch with this sketch are the visual cues – such as the play button with the triangle and circle – which make the otherwise-stripped-down sketch detailed. You know that the rectangle is a media player rather than just some content to be decided on later.
The above sketch uses highlighted numbers and zoom-ins nicely, which makes the entire sketch much cleaner and more readable. The column to the right of the sketch has all of the numbered text descriptions of each element, and the zoomed-in elements give more detail without cluttering up the main sketch.
A complex and detailed sketch that uses illustrations nicely by showing an example of what would be contained in a rectangle and square element. Web optimize png. It doesn't just rely on text or the client visualizing it.
Another nice use of illustrations. Despite the hand-drawn nature of the sketch, the details – the logo, a vivid splash image at the top – give a concrete prototype of what the final design will look like.
Another solid illustration example. The arrow-using descriptions on the sides effectively explain technical details, like the width of the page being the width of the browser window.
A nice grid design sketch. Using perpendicular lines that extend past the design reinforces the grid of the design, especially since hand-drawing a sketch can make a other-wise solid design appear loose and floating.
A clean and crisp sketch that shows a fairly simple web page design in great detail.
This design shows that you don't have to be an artist to draw effective wireframe sketches. The squares are all warped, there's not much artistic detail in the elements, and the text is crooked in places.
Sketch Web Design
Despite all that, you get a clear sense of how the design will look like and what each element will be. Ultimately, it's about creating a wireframe with your sketch, not a finished stylized design.
Another example of a grid design. Though the lines aren't straight or there aren't lines reinforcing the grid design, the elements are close enough together that you understand that the tables will be parallel to each other.
Digital Wireframe Sketches
A sketch of a mobile calendar. It's not only detailed but wisely illustrates a pop-up when you select an element. This way, you can see how the design will function as well as how it will look.
This homepage design gives you a clear idea of how the big elements – image, block of text – will look like without wasting time on 'lorem ipsum' text and sample images.
A grid design sketch that reinforces itself with vertical bars. You can see how each element will line up and where it's located relative to other elements.
This spare bare-bones sketch shows that, like with the hand-drawn sketches, you don't need to be a digital artist wiz to create an effective wireframe sketch. A few squares, rectangles, lines, and pieces of text are enough to show how the design will be.
Another example of a spare bare-bones sketch, this time showing a design that's more complex. As long as the elements are where they need to be, different shades of grey are used to differentiate elements, and some simple text describes what each thing does (when needed), then you're good to go.
The homepage wireframe sketch of a social network that was shown in the previous sketch (which was the main/activity screen).
Color is effectively used in this e-commerce sketch. The light blue illustrates what are buttons, and the rest of the rectangles in the sketch are either for text input or selectors.
This sketch almost-finalizes all the essential elements (like buttons) while not wasting time on colors, background, and other styling whoseawhatsits.
Shades of grey are used effectively here to differentiate images from the background, and the blocks of text give you a clear idea of how the real content and web page will look like.
This sketch goes so far as to style the text, buttons, and other elements while not wasting time on colors, the background, and sample images. This shows that by completing the 20% of elements that are most important – while ignoring styling the 80% that isn't – you can get a almost-complete picture of the design with only a wireframe sketch.
Like with the above sketch, this wireframe sketch also focuses on styling only the 20% of essential elements while ignoring the rest. You get a very clear picture of what the final web page will look like without the sketch needing to add colors, backgrounds, and the rest.
Do You Create Web and Mobile Wireframe Sketches?
Sketch Web Design Tutorial
Over to you: What do you feel are the most effective reasons for wireframe sketching? Feel free to share them in the comments section below.
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