Every Sketch Deserves To Be In The Trash

Paper sketches — why ability to throw them away is the best and worst thing about them

Sketching is a medium capable of continuously evolving our thoughts while they travel from brain to hand, hand to paper and back.

I work as a UX designer, so sketching is my bread and butter.

A lot has been talked about why sketching on paper is an excellent tool for building any idea. Sketching an idea on paper gives shape to it; something that helps you start and gives you momentum to keep working.

The ideas can be about an illustration, an application, a behavior change, a joke, an animation, a video, a travel journal, a photograph, a story or anything.

Sketching does not always mean drawing. It can be a combination of written content, doodles, scribbles and anything that a pen jots down on paper.

Frank Gehry is one of the most influential contemporary architects. Every Gehry building begins with a drawing which is characterized by the natural spontaneity.

His sketches conveyed spatial relationships and loose directions in a way only he could understand. Those sketches would go through several refinements and eventually become architecture marvels, unlike any others.

Gehry’s 1991 sketches of the Bilbao Guggenheim and the actual building. Image courtesy of Gehry Partners, LLP.

If you are a user experience designer, you probably spend large amount of time creating wireframes on paper.

In the design world, there is an unwritten rule about making wireframes.

One is not supposed to think about how the final application should look like during the wireframe stage.

This rule is to let the designer’s mind focus on what is essential at that stage, that is, the user flow and information architecture.

But as a human being, you are biased.

You have ideas in mind about how your app should look or feel. You might have ideas about how the animation should work in the app, how the buttons should pop or the cards should move.

These are great ideas that help you make the product great.

So, why not sketch them too?

While making wireframes, I sketch my quick ideas on how the elements can look, animate or work in the same sheet. My wire-frames are more of a clumsy journal than neatly drawn screens. Yes, I do make those as well, but at a later stage.

What usually shapes my final output are those ugly sketches.