The Importance of Sketchbooks

What kind of sketchbook do I need?

Your sketchbook should be an 8 1/2 " x 11" coiled book, or hard cover book containing (mostly)
unlined paper. This size of your sketchbook is important - The pages should be large enough to
accommodate your ideas and development and still be easy to carry around at all times.

Why a Sketchbook?

Real progress in developing yourself as an artist will depend on you frequently and habitually
sketching out your ideas and their variations, reflecting on your ideas, and then developing the ideas that seem promising. You should use your sketchbook to help develop this habit. Sketchbooks are useful in many ways.

• It will serve as a way for you to refer back to your ideas over time.
• It will provide you with the opportunities for immediate and then repeated application of the lessons learned in class.
• It is a place for you to jot down and annotate your own ideas.
• You can jot down good ideas you see elsewhere e.g., in other systems, in your readings,
and in your classmates' work.
• You can also collect existing material (e.g., pictures from magazines, screen snapshots) and tape them into the sketchbook.
• Regular use of the sketchbook will help you develop your skills, your accuracy and your confidence in sketching out your ideas.

Sketches do not have to be pretty, beautiful, or even immediately understandable by others.
However, you should be able to explain your sketches when anyone asks about them.

Learning Objectives
The sketchbook will help you learn the following:

• You will develop your skills in freehand sketching and annotation as a way to describe visual information (ideas and descriptive details) related to the course materials you are learning.
• You will develop the sketchbook as a personal reference of tracing your interaction design ideas and for reflecting on the progress of these ideas.
• You will acquire the habit of using a sketchbook for freehand sketching and annotations of interface ideas (from casual and spontaneous ideas to studied interface design development) and for detailing where inspirations came from (other systems, students, magazines, etc.)


REMEMBER!!!

1. Keep your sketchbook handy and use it!
2. As you learn things in class, apply them to develop ideas in your sketchbook.
3. Refer back to you sketches. Reflect on your ideas, and add to them.