What Is the Importance of Sketching in Graphic Design?

So, you decided to enter the magical world of graphic design. As you start working on multiple projects, your creative flow is overwhelming and endless. 

What can help bring your ideas to life, especially if you want to combine different pieces? The answer is sketching. 

More often than not, we tend to forget the many things that come to our minds throughout the day, let alone during a more extended period. 

This is why sketching is a powerful tool that can help you bring your ideas to life rather than forget about them. 

What Exactly Is Sketching?

It is a draft or a template of your ideas. You may have noticed that your colleagues or other graphic designers often doodle and draw on pieces of paper or on their tablets’ little works of art. When you ask them what it is, they usually reply with “just something that popped into my mind.” 

In reality, this is what we call sketching. It helps you lay the foundation of your idea and keep it in a safe place for later, when you are ready to develop it.

A sketch should be simple, as you might not have the time to sketch in great detail what you had in mind.  

However, it should also make sense. What we mean by this is that we often sketch something when a burst of inspiration comes and later have no idea what it should be and why we drew it. 

This is why you should first practice your sketches, like this simple skeleton hand drawing for beginners. You never know when it might come in handy, and a step-by-step guide is always a good idea. 

What Are the Three Main Categories of Sketching?

There are many more types of sketching than we will mention. However, their definitions are seldom simple, and it takes a lot of time to go through them. 

While research is often a crucial part of designing and pulling ideas, we can avoid burying ourselves in many definitions. 

Keeping it straightforward and short is better in the long run because none of us want to dedicate hours to reading about things. Instead, we want to put them to practical use as soon as possible. 

So, let’s dive right in! 

• An unidentified sketch

We briefly mentioned this earlier. Most artists will often do a fast sketch and not know what it is until later. However, the most important thing when doing quick sketches is actually knowing how to decipher them. 

This is why practice is essential, and also getting to know your own “scribbles.”  

You can place one or more of these tiny sketches next to each other, but with practice, they will be more precise and help you interpret them faster. 

• I know what I sketched but not sure how it works.

The conundrum of the mind. You imagine something at the moment. You know how it would look, what it is, but you don’t know how to utilize it. This will still be a sketch, just more precise than the one above. 

• Technical drawing

This sketch is the pièce de résistance before the final finished product. When you combine the two previous illustrations, the technical drawing can come to life. It usually contains proportions, exact elements, angles, and other details. 

This piece will tie everything together before you present the final mockup and is most often used in engineering, architecture, and modeling.

Now that we’re acquainted with graphic design sketching, let’s move on to our next part.

Why is sketching important? 

There are many benefits to sketching, and as a graphic designer or someone looking to get into design, we hope you will be open to the new possibilities and what you can gain from this. 

1. It boosts creativity – We all know the creative process can often be messy and take a lot of time. And is there anything more annoying than having a brainstorming session and not putting it to paper right away, only to forget about it later? We’ve all been there, which is why sketching can help you safeguard your ideas and develop the seemingly small sketch into a masterpiece later. And that is the creativity booster we believe is the greatest and most rewarding. This way, you can test your creativity, and in the end, if you have no further inspiration from the initial sketch, nothing will come from it. 
2. It is limitless – Sketching is a perfect tool as there are no boundaries. You can sketch anything you want at any place and time, the only thing you would need is a piece of paper and a pen or a tablet. It is excellent because you don’t need a lot of time for it and the only limit is your imagination, nothing else. 

The role of sketching in the design process is vast. But how can you use this to your benefit?

How can you use sketching? 

1. Easier communication with the clients and the company – Sketches are the base of your work. They will allow your clients to imagine what the project can become once finished and approve or make changes on the spot. 
2. Getting your creative juices flowing – Once you have your initial idea, it is always a good step to make certain variations of that object or design element. Why is this, you may ask? Because that first burst of inspiration is always the strongest and most clear. The lines get blurrier as more time passes. This also allows you to brainstorm further options, either by yourself or with a client. Make sure you get all the necessary information from them; you can even suggest a mood board so that you can get a clearer picture of what the client needs and wants. 
3. Learning from your mistakes – Mistakes are a crucial part of any graphic designer’s art-making process, and sketches are an amazing instrument for that. Not only are mistakes welcomed, but they are also mandatory. Rarely will you sketch many versions and have each one to your liking, making it hard to choose the perfect one. Usually, through the sketching process, you will eliminate the weakest contenders and then further develop the ones that both you and the client like the most.
4. Putting the pieces together – While most of us hate to admit this, we all tend to forget. Considering all the information we receive daily, not to mention throughout our lives, some ideas can just slip our minds and be gone forever. This is why sketching can help you with that, especially if you have multiple projects going at once and have an overall hectic schedule. It will basically allow you to free up space in your mind for other, crucial matters happening right now, instead of hitting yourself trying to remember something that you developed an idea for.