The past few days, I’ve been working for Franco from XTM Online as he gears up for his big event, Exposure, on August 7th. Our line, We Are The Process, will be featured in his fashion show, as well as some of our favorite designers from Atlanta. This post isn’t really about the fashion show, per se. It’s more about one of the fundamental skills I learned while in design school that I was reminded of today. It dawned on me that this could be the proper forum to drop some knowledge on (or at least remind) a few readers on the benefits of sketching.

All too often, designers will skip the essential step of sketching. Going straight to the computer to work through all of your good and bad ideas typically leads to a generic/cold result. People forget that a freakin’ Apple computer is really just a design tool, not a way of doing things.

Usually my sketches aren’t very detailed (I like to spend more time getting the ideas out as quickly as possible), yet I still take the time to put pen to paper. Whether it is a layout challenge or a logo, you have to commit to working things out by hand before going to the computer. Sketching actually saves time in the long run!

I apologize if this post has put-off anyone. However, if you guys are into this kind of post, I have a lot more where that came from… “Logo Basics” could be a 10 part series in itself!