TRANSCRIPTION:

Intro dude: 00:03 Welcome to Design Speaks. This lovely podcast is brought to you by a graphic design geek and a regular human being, Aka a non-designer. We’re here to chat about music, pop culture, cool places, and basically, whatever we feel is relevant.

Brandi: 00:19 Hey guys, I’m Brandi Sea.

Michelle: 00:21 And I’m Michelle.

Brandi: 00:22 And you are listening to episode 88 of Design Speaks.

Michelle: 00:25 Welcome to it. Today we’re continuing our process series. Um, and we are going to be talking about

Brandi: 00:32 Sketching, narrowing your options and executing the design.

Michelle: 00:36 Yes.

Brandi: 00:36 So this is like the make it happen.

Michelle: 00:39 Make it happen.

Brandi: 00:40 Captain.

Michelle: 00:41 This is the, is this the executing bit of it?

Brandi: 00:45 I mean,

Michelle: 00:45 What’d you, would you call it it that?

Brandi: 00:46 My definition of executing is when you’re getting on the computer. So we are talking about sketching first, then narrowing your options and then executing the design.

Michelle: 00:55 Okay, got it. Got It. I’m really excited for this. Honestly, this is one of the scarier parts for me. Um.

Brandi: 01:02 No, this is the easy part.

Michelle: 01:03 Well

Brandi: 01:04 All the hard work is now like, done.

Michelle: 01:07 You’re, you’re right. You’re right. And I know that you’re right. But even so I’m, I’m kind of at this part in a project I’m working on at work and it’s just so hard for me cause it’s like up until now I’ve been figuring out what it is, um, what the feel of it is going to be gathering everything. And now I have to input everything onto what, see what looks like a blank canvas. It’s not, but it looks like it and it’s so overwhelming to me. So

Brandi: 01:37 Is this your photoshop thing?

Michelle: 01:39 No, no, this is, it’s, it’s just a video. So it’s a, it’s a blank timeline for me and I’m just like, oh gosh, here I go. But once I started, but once I start, I know it’s going to be easy because I have it all laid out. I just have to do it.

Brandi: 01:55 Blank, blank pages, quote-unquote blank pages, blank timelines, blank things are very overwhelming.

Michelle: 02:01 Yeah.

Brandi: 02:02 They were very intimidated.

Michelle: 02:02 I look at it and like you have nothing on you. Why I’ve done so much planning.

Brandi: 02:06 Yeah. Yeah, it does. It does take some, a little bit of like gumption to go like I can put something on here.

Michelle: 02:13 Yes.

Brandi: 02:13 I can do it.

Michelle: 02:15 This is possible.

Brandi: 02:15 So, unfortunately, you can’t sketch a timeline.

Michelle: 02:17 No.

Brandi: 02:18 That would be really, I mean I guess you kind of can plan like this block of time will be this, this block of time will be this.

Michelle: 02:23 Yeah. That’s kind of what I’ve done.

Brandi: 02:24 So you’ve got some

Michelle: 02:25 Comparable.

Brandi: 02:26 You’re doing okay.

Michelle: 02:27 Thank you. Thank you.

Brandi: 02:29 As long as you plan, you’ll be fine.

Michelle: 02:30 Yeah. And I’ve planned, so I know it’s going to be fine. And I know this next week I’m just going to get this done and it’s going to be done and it’s going to be great because I’ve planned it, but it’s just so much.

Brandi: 02:41 I believe in you.

Michelle: 02:42 Thank you.

Brandi: 02:42 I can’t wait to see what you will do.

Michelle: 02:44 Thank you. So the first step, sketching, step six, sketching.

Brandi: 02:47 Okay. So we are now assuming that by this time you’ve listened to all our other episodes, we have now officially covered client meeting and design brief, um, the word map to find visual elements in colors, um, research and brainstorming. And sleep.

Michelle: 03:05 Yes. Very important steps to take before this next one.

Brandi: 03:08 So let’s pretend like last night was the night you did all your research and you looked through all the books and you marked all the pages online and you got piles of all the magazines, all the things.

Michelle: 03:20 You watched, all the shows.

Brandi: 03:21 Yeah, you did, all the watched, all of the show, you binge a show because it’s research and you can cause we’re creative than we do what we want.

Michelle: 03:31 Yes. I don’t say it so quietly.

Brandi: 03:32 I know. Well, it’s cause we don’t always get to do what we want. We think we do.

Michelle: 03:36 Within reason.

Brandi: 03:36 Within reason. Um, and you slept, you slept on it. So now you wake up, let’s say for example sake that you are either in the office or you are sitting at your workspace, wherever that might be and you should now be ready for sketching. What does that mean? So in this context, I’m biased, um, I’m mainly going to be addressing like sketching and an actual physical tool kind of way. I understand that lots of people, especially nowadays, I say nowadays like I’m super old. Like, cause I am, um, I mean, um, use iPads to sketch or another sort of tablet devices. Um, I have tried it. I can. It doesn’t, it’s not the same. So, um, I think we’ve talked before about like how, how studies have shown that like putting an actual physical pen or paper-pencil to a physical paper actually does something to your brain.

Michelle: 04:34 Interesting. Yeah.

Brandi: 04:35 Um, and it, it allows you to remember things better. So in the context of this podcast, I’m going to be talking about sketching in a physical tool kind of way, not on a, not on an iPad.

Michelle: 04:47 Right.

Brandi: 04:48 Um, so, uh, why sketch? I’d just, I wanted to address this a little bit because at this point, even if I am, remember in the beginning, how I talked about, you know, people say, oh, I have a process to like, I do some of this already. Um, some of this.

Michelle: 05:03 Some, not all.

Brandi: 05:03 Some of this is where people fall off. And I find that it’s either in the, uh, they leave out. Obviously, most people leave out the word map because that’s like a thing that I do. Or they, uh, they go from the research to the computer. So this is often what I find is one of the most difficult things to explain. Like why it’s necessary.

Michelle: 05:25 It’s a step that most would just rather skip.

Brandi: 05:27 Yeah. Because it’s like, okay, I did all the research, I’ve got all my reasons, I know what I’m doing. I’m just going to go ahead and make something.

Michelle: 05:34 That sounds, it, it honestly, from a, from an unprofessional point of view, it really sounds like it could end up in a disaster.

Brandi: 05:42 I mean, because let’s, let’s be real, and we’ve talked about this again too, but before is your first idea is never your best idea. So how do you know that just because you, even though you’ve slept, and even though you took in all this inspiration, how do you know that you have in your brain right now that one thing that you’re like, I’ve got it. This is the thing. How do you know that’s the thing?

Michelle: 06:03 You don’t until you’ve tried all until you’ve exhausted your options.

Brandi: 06:07 Right. So in the, so in this case sketching is, is good because it allows a lot more ideas to come out when you go to the thumbnail stage of the ideating. You should be allowing every idea to come out.

Michelle: 06:21 Like even if it’s a dumb one.

Brandi: 06:23 Yeah. Just especially because if it’s a dumb one, like you want to get them all out because also you don’t, you won’t end up with like, oh, I wonder if there was something better. You won’t have that like self-doubt because I mean, as creatives we have a lot of self-doubts just inherently. So why not eliminate that anxiety just a little bit by trying to exhaust it. It might feel like a stupid idea and might not even go with your concept, but if you feel like you need to get it out, then you should get it out.

Michelle: 06:50 Right.

Brandi: 06:50 Um, so it also, um, allows you to not be confined by software.

Michelle: 06:56 Yes.

Brandi: 06:56 It feels like you have more options on your, on the computer, but you don’t, especially if you’re not super adept at using every kind of tool.

Michelle: 07:05 I think it’s important to recognize that eventually, you are going to go to the computer. That’s just where we are.

Brandi: 07:11 Yeah. And we talked with, um, well let’s see, at this point of the show I’m not sure.

Michelle: 07:15 We have not yet.

Brandi: 07:16 Okay.

Michelle: 07:16 But you can talk about it.

Brandi: 07:17 Okay. We talked with, um, with someone recently who said that you know, even though that they now do a lot of their, their process digitally, they still sketch like this is the one thing that they still do physically. And I think that speaks to the importance of it. Um, it, it ignites your creativity in a way that, that you just can’t get digitally.

Michelle: 07:43 Yeah.

Brandi: 07:43 Um, and that, that is my opinion, but also it is, it is like a fact. Um, so it also saves you time because I, at least for me, I find when I’m, if I were to go straight to the computer, I spend half the time undoing and redoing and redoing and redoing, creating

Michelle: 08:01 Is it because it’s so easy.

Brandi: 08:02 Yeah. Because it’s so easy. It’s like, oh, that was a bad idea. I’m going to delete it.

Michelle: 08:05 No, no. You want that there.

Brandi: 08:07 And you lose it. Your, you lose part of that process of figuring out how you got to where you are.

Michelle: 08:12 And have I done this already?

Brandi: 08:13 Yeah.

Michelle: 08:14 That’s so interesting.

Brandi: 08:14 You can just keep doing the same thing over just like in a slightly different way.

Michelle: 08:18 It seems so obvious, but you kind of have to lay it out there that this is another reason why it should be physical and not on a computer.

Brandi: 08:25 Yeah. It’s also really satisfying because you can look at your after an hour of work, say you sketch for an hour, um, you can look at your, your pages and go, oh my gosh, look at all the things I did as opposed to I have a document with a bunch of layers.

Michelle: 08:41 Yeah.

Brandi: 08:42 It just, it doesn’t feel the same. It doesn’t feel like you actually did a lot of work. Um, so the other thing is when you’re sketching, um, I have either go two ways. It’s similar to the word map. I either set a certain number of pages that I would like to fill and I don’t know how big these are. I usually do my thumbnails, thumbnail sketches. So that’s another thing. They should be thumbnails. So I’ve asked students, sometimes I want you to bring in sketches and um, they’d bring me like, like four pages of full size.

Michelle: 09:14 Oh no.

Brandi: 09:14 Four full-size sketches.

Michelle: 09:16 Oh no.

Brandi: 09:17 And they’re like, those were all my ideas and I’m like, well, okay, uh, now I know teaching, moving forward, I need to say thumbnails.

Michelle: 09:22 What does a thumbnail

Brandi: 09:23 A thumbnail is basically, it’s like one by two inch by two inch little rectangles or squares, whatever format you’re working in in that sort of general, you want to fit as many as you can on a piece of paper and either, I guess there’s three ways, either fill up the pages that you’ve set for yourself or work for a certain amount of time to get out as many as you can. All these, all these things are still as many as you can or just go until you can’t think of anything else. Yeah, I usually seteither a time or a number of, or like a, a certain amount of space to work in.

Michelle: 09:59 Because you are, you don’t have the luxury, the luxury of being given. Um, like, I dunno, like

Brandi: 10:09 All the time in the world?

Michelle: 10:10 Yeah.

Brandi: 10:10 To work?

Michelle: 10:11 I don’t know how to say it. Like it just, it just makes more sense for you to use time.

Brandi: 10:15 And when I was in college, I used to go until I couldn’t go anymore. And there are some projects

Michelle: 10:19 School versus real life. We talk about that later?

Brandi: 10:22 Yeah, I would literally have 12 pages of thumbnails.

Michelle: 10:25 Oh my gosh. Because that was what I was taught, like do as many as you can until you can’t think of any anymore. Um, and that trained me to be okay, you know, to be able to do that when necessary. That’s like a marathon.

Michelle: 10:37 A marathon of thumbnails.

Brandi: 10:38 Yeah, and usually I do a sprint and usually I still come up with enough ideas that are unique enough directionally because of all the past research that I did. Um, so it also helps you to zero in on a direction. Just like with the word map and the finding the likethe, the color words and comparing them and finding the visual words. And you know, when you go through the list to find your concept, you will, as you start creating thumbnails, you will start to see themes emerge. So, um, I’m going to go back to Kelly’s. Um, and this is going to be a little bit hard to describe on the podcast, but I will try and again, um, I will maybe, let’s see, I think I have this process in my stories and my little like features. I like the highlight thing on Instagram. So you should be able to go look at this whole process and see these sketches.

Michelle: 11:27 Cool.

Brandi: 11:27 Um, but I’m going to just try and like, say this a little bit. So some of the themes, oh, go ahead.

Michelle: 11:32 How many did you do to do set? You set a time?

Brandi: 11:35 I set, I set it a number of pages. It’s like, it’s like one and a half pages.

Michelle: 11:39 Okay.

Brandi: 11:39 Um and they’re really small.

Michelle: 11:41 Real small thumbnails.

Brandi: 11:42 Two, four, six, eight, 10, 12. 12 times three is what?

Michelle: 11:48 12 times three is

Brandi: 11:52 36

Michelle: 11:52 36! Yeah, you’re, Yep.

Brandi: 11:53 That’s like hours days. 36 hours. 36 thumbnails. I did somewhere in the range of like 36 to 50 thumbnails. I think. Yes, I did more on the next page.

Michelle: 12:03 Okay.

Brandi: 12:04 Um, but so basically as I went through this, I’ve got in my mind, um, so I have said this time and time again, I’m not an illustrator. I, I don’t like to go into detail. I’ve, my thumbnails look like something that my five year old would draw, but it doesn’t matter because I know the idea behind it. So I knew that I was going to be, so now I’ve got all this research in my head from those books I looked at. Um, sometimes I still will just go flip through real fast just to look over them and put them aside. I never opened the books that I got my inspiration from and sit it next to my computer or set it next to my sketch pad and sketch because then I’m just ripping them off.

Michelle: 12:45 Yes.

Brandi: 12:46 So I, I look, I peeked through my, my little tabbies one more time, look at any notes I might’ve written as far as elements and things I want to incorporate in the layout. And then I bring those elements into my sketches. So, um, some of the common elements on my thing here are triangles.

Michelle: 13:03 Okay.

Brandi: 13:04 Circles. I um, unintentionally, uh, was playing with triangles inside of circles and because of the juxtaposition of what those meanings were, which I talk about in the last episode, the last process episode, and ended up coming up with the logo for Kelly.

Michelle: 13:23 Which was awesome. And it was, and it, it was like, it was on purpose by accident.

Brandi: 13:28 Yeah. So I, there was all this meaning behind it already. So it just ended up working as a graphic geometric graphic element that looks like an abstract k for Kelly.

Michelle: 13:41 So the closer you stick to this process, the more fluid things fall into place.

Brandi: 13:49 Yeah.

Michelle: 13:49 It’s just, it just what it is, what it is.

Brandi: 13:51 And it seems like, oh well that, that just happened. But actually, it didn’t just happen. You planned you, you made every possible opportunity

Michelle: 14:03 For it to happen.

Brandi: 14:04 For it to happen.

Michelle: 14:05 And it did

Brandi: 14:05 And it did. So I have a lot of trees. I have a lot of um, circles and um, it’s real basic layout of like what I want it to look like graphically. And um, I just sketch, sketch, sketched. But as I went on, I started to see themes emerge of like this center layout.

Michelle: 14:26 Okay.

Brandi: 14:26 Like things in the center. Um, and that also plays a,

Michelle: 14:31 Let me see this, you’re saying you’re not like an illustrator. This looks so cool. Don’t even with me. That looks great. You’re like, okay, well

Brandi: 14:40 Those trees. What are those?

Michelle: 14:41 Apparently you haven’t seen mine. I can’t draw a Christmas tree to save my life. So those look great.

Brandi: 14:47 Okay, whatever. It’s triangle trees.

Michelle: 14:50 I can’t draw a triangle up to save my life.

Brandi: 14:52 Well, thank you. I really appreciate that. But I think it’s because I see real illustrators all the time and I’m like, I can’t do that.

Michelle: 14:58 Oh, see

Brandi: 14:58 I can’t do that at all.

Michelle: 15:00 I will, I will attain, I will try to be just as good as you while you’re trying to be just take

Brandi: 15:06 It won’t take much

Michelle: 15:08 For you. I can’t draw stick people. They were like all wonky and

Brandi: 15:12 I can illustrate I don’t like it and I don’t think it’s necessary. And this is another tip actually on that line. I at this phase in sketching these thumbnails do only as much detail as is absolutely necessary because ifif I was like trying to draw, say I was a really great illustrator and I could draw an amazing mountain scene, why would?

Michelle: 15:36 Right? For this?

Brandi: 15:37 This is not the phase for that. This is the time for you to spend 15-20 seconds on each one and move on and keep sketching.

Michelle: 15:45 So that’s how long you’ve spent on each of these? Maybe, maybe half a minute.

Brandi: 15:49 Yeah.

Michelle: 15:50 Okay.

Brandi: 15:50 About that? Um, I mean a minute at most like a minute’s a long time to spend on a, on a one-inch square. I mean, let’s sense be real, but that means I’m overthinking. If I spend more than that, I’m overthinking what’s happening.

Michelle: 16:03 And that’s all I do is overthink. So that one-inch square and be like, oh, that’s about five minutes. Yeah.

Brandi: 16:08 I do too. But that’s why it’s good to put these limits on yourself cause it’s like, okay, I need to fill this page and it should not take me more than a minute. If it’s more than a minute, do another one. And do the thing different that you wanted to do on the next, the last one.

Michelle: 16:19 So 36, approximately 36 thumbnails divided bymath. Um,

Brandi: 16:28 A Minute.

Michelle: 16:29 So it took 36 minutes total, obviously

Brandi: 16:32 Max. Yeah,

Michelle: 16:33 It could have taken you

Brandi: 16:34 Probably 15, 20.

Michelle: 16:35 15 Yeah. so

Brandi: 16:36 Yeah, so it’s not a lot of time

Michelle: 16:37 Perspective.

Brandi: 16:38 Yeah. And this should be, this should be a quick process. And I would say if you’re spending more than an hour total on your thumbnails, it’s probably too much. Um, you’ve probably exhausted most of the combinations of the elements that you could feasibly do with a pencil or a pen and a piece of paper.

Michelle: 16:55 Yeah.

Brandi: 16:55 Um, so once you’ve, once you’ve kind of identified your themes, um, and you, you kind of see what things are kind of popping out, that’s when you go in and I take just a colored pen or whatever and I circle like

Michelle: 17:08 The ones that you like

Brandi: 17:09 The ones that I think are working the best. Um, so this time I circled one, two, three, four, five, wait, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

Michelle: 17:19 Okay.

Brandi: 17:20 Um, I had circled eight and decided against it. Um, and then, um, I went on to this next stage, which isn’t always necessary and I don’t always do this. This is something that I learned in art school, which is like part of the old school way. Um, it’s called a rough.

Michelle: 17:34 Okay.

Brandi: 17:34 It’s like a step up from a sketch, but it’s not a finished design. It’s not even if not the detailed, not detailed. It’s a little more detail in a little bigger.

Michelle: 17:44 Okay. I see. So it’s like two by two.

Brandi: 17:46 Yeah. So then I went up to like a two by two, two and a half inch by three inch because it’s for a CD cover. And I just kind of laid it out a little cleaner and maybe thought about, start thinking about what I might want to put in those spaces. Um, so that is the rough stage. Um, and like I said, that’s, that’s kind of just depending on how you work, some people take that to the computer and that’s okay. As long as you do all your sketches by hand, the rough stage is kind of up to you.

Michelle: 18:13 Yeah. And I think it’s also important to, to put it out there that you’ve been doing this process for a few years now.

Brandi: 18:22 A few.

Michelle: 18:23 Quite a few. So the, to a person who’s just trying to really solidly implement a process into their work, into their daily life in this, um, it might start out a bit slower and that’s okay. But you were able to get those thumbnails down so quickly and also pick the ones that you liked the most so quickly because you’ve had the practice.

Brandi: 18:46 Right, but it’s also not just the ones I liked the most. Which ones

Michelle: 18:49 Work the best

Brandi: 18:50 Work the best to solve the problem, which ones reflect best on the concept.

Michelle: 18:54 And you, again, you are going back and referring to those things so you don’t stray,

Brandi: 19:00 Right

Michelle: 19:00 Um, in your remembering that

Brandi: 19:02 The checks and balances.

Michelle: 19:04 While, yeah, I, I’m thinking, man, if I were doing this I would forget that and then be like, oh shoot, I actually had to refer back to these words.

Brandi: 19:12 And I do sometimes, but, and I actually have, and this is something I do have because of doing it so much, but as you do this more, you will all of a sudden start to feel a little bit like you’re grasping for straws in the dark and go, oh, it’s because I haven’t referred back in a few minutes.

Michelle: 19:30 So that makes sense then.

Brandi: 19:31 You know, I haven’t looked back at my concept and actually these things don’t work at all. So that’s sometimes when I will circle things that I feel are working, look back at the concept, look back at the problem, look back at the target audience and go, oh, none of these, this one or this one actually don’t work even though I thought they did.

Michelle: 19:50 Yeah. Okay.

Brandi: 19:51 Um, so the other thing is like, you have more freedom and flexibility when you sketch. So especially if you’re, I don’t know many people who sketch with the pen, but some people do. Um, especially if you’re working, like with a pencil, you have the ability to like

Michelle: 20:06 Erase

Brandi: 20:07 Erase, turn the pencil sideways and have a nice thick mark. Like, and it’s all quick. It’s not like get on the computer and change tools, pick your, pick your color. Like you just turn the pencil on its side and draw a thicker line or you know, erase here, erase there, like the, the freedom and flexibility. Seems like you seem, it feels that first. I think like you’re limited by the paper and the Pencil, but you actually have a lot more in front of you than you think.

Michelle: 20:32 Yeah.

Brandi: 20:33 Um, so once you’ve narrowed your options, um, I would say go to the computer with no more than three or four at a rough stage. And these aren’t finished. These aren’t actually like collecting all of your, your resources. Um,

Michelle: 20:49 They’re like focused ideas.

Brandi: 20:50 Yeah. So this is like the rough, the rough stage of your execution. Um, some people call this like the concepting, but I obviously don’t like that because it’s not concepts, it’s executions. Um, so once you’ve narrowed them, so now we can go to the step that is actually execute. So seven steps, seven. So, um, this is where now this is like where you’re actually going to start putting the design together. Um, again, you, you still can’t just jump on and start creating because you probably need what we call assets. Um, you need photos, you need drawings or vectorization you need, um, maybe the copy if it’s, um, if it’s a broch