The benefits of sketching logo ideas

Sketching is an important part of any design project, sometimes we are tempted to jump straight into our design program with the first seemingly decent idea that pops into our heads and skip this important step.

Not the best idea.

Sketching is the most productive portion of your design project. By taking your first idea into your design program, lets say a logo in illustrator for this example, you inevitably get caught up trying to turn it into the final product.

You try a few fonts, change a few stroke weights and fills, get all your alignments right and make a few varieties of the logo. Suddenly its 2 hours later and you’ve only got 1 idea, what if it doesn’t work ? At this rate you’ll do a full days work and have 5 ideas to show for it.

A computer is a tool for refining the final product, not for designing it. In the time it takes to render a few versions of 1 idea, you could have 50 different sketches down.

Presenting sketches to a client also has its benefits. Computer generated work can appear very final, while presenting some quality sketches leaves the work open to change.

What are you thoughts?

How many sketches do you do before moving onto your computer?