I’ve always preferred sketching UIs with an as-thick-as-I-can-find Sharpie over a thin ballpoint pen or finely sharpened pencil.
Ballpoints and fine tips just don’t fill the page like a Sharpie does. Fine tips invite you to draw while Sharpies invite you to just to get your concepts out into big bold shapes and lines. When you sketch with a thin tip you tend to draw at a higher resolution and worry a bit too much about making things look good. Sharpies encourage you to ignore details early on.
If you sketch, try a thick Sharpie next time. You may find you’re better able to focus on the concept and less on the drawing. That’s a good thing.
Jason Fried wrote this on Jul 01 2009 There are 29 comments.
Braxo 01 Jul 09
I find copic sketch markers the best.
They have two tips and work like watercolor paint for shading if you want to add a little more artistic flair to your UI sketches. I carry 6 colors around with me.
Anonymous Coward 01 Jul 09
true but that sketch there is ultimately useless, I mean what does that actually show that you can’t just imagine in your head
Thijs Cadier 01 Jul 09
http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups
This is a really nice way of doing these kind of sketches too.
Rex Riepe 01 Jul 09
This is so true.
It’s like using a thick brush in photoshop (with a tablet) vs. trying to draw something in Illustrator with vectors. Vectors make things impossible to concept unless you’re really good at that type of stuff.
Don Schenck 01 Jul 09
LOVE this! You are purposely constructing a constraint within you must work and limit your level of detail.
I PREVENTS over-thinking, over-planning, and delay-by-analysis.
In a word: Brilliant.
James Grimes 01 Jul 09
Yep – couldn’t agree with Thijs more. I too was a pencil man too and discovered Balsamiq mockups recently. I find it quicker than using a whiteboard – once you have your components imagined you can move them about real easy without having to erase/redraw/erase/redraw…. The fact that it looks like a pencil drawn mockup is subconsciously appealing too I think
HB 01 Jul 09
I have a penchant for felt tip pens as well … I love their feeling and they bleed a bit less than Sharpies.
pwb 01 Jul 09
Agreeing with Thijs. That’s a main reason I like Balsamiq: http://www.balsamiq.com/
No arguing over pixels!
FN 01 Jul 09
Squiggle is the new lorem ipsum. I love it!
I do the same but just on a white board. I suppose a sharpie and paper is better in that you can save the sheet for posterity in the event you’re successful…
GeeIWonder 01 Jul 09
Fingerpainting is the way to go.
H 01 Jul 09
I’m sure that’s how they did it at NASA . They’d use crayons to draw pictures of rocket ships, then show them to their clients – saying “well these are low fidelity sketches, but you get the picture…. Not this, but like this… you know?”
Sometimes there’s such a thing as TOO low fidelity.
Radoslav Stankov 01 Jul 09
As Thijs and pwb I have tried balsamiq, but have found something much better – http://iplotz.com/app/
joelarson 01 Jul 09
same reason whiteboards are good for this
seth godin 01 Jul 09
Careful!
Sharpies have some volatile chemicals in them. For some people (like me) it leads to a nasty headache.
Just pay attention and if it hits you, switch to grease pencils.
Tim 01 Jul 09
Does this still apply since screen resolutions are getting higher and higher … now requiring you to have to fill up even more screen space.
Anonymous 01 Jul 09
Why stop at a sharpie? Bust out the Magnum or a 2.5” Molotow
Elizabeth Rock 01 Jul 09
So great. This feels very liberating to me. Doesn’t matter how much I strive for initial looseness; invariably I go down the rabbit hole over details that end up just choking the process. Sharpies would break away from that and also give the quantity of black I want. thanks.
Truffle Apps 01 Jul 09
Thijs Cadier is right
Love Balsamiq too. Simple.
RS 01 Jul 09
Higher resolution doesn’t mean you need more stuff on the screen. It just means the stuff you do put on screen can be sharper and clearer. Take the Kindle screen for example. The type isn’t smaller because of the high resolution, it’s clearer.
JZ 01 Jul 09
I tend to stick with smaller pens, but draw very small thumbnails in a small notebook. Same resolution, different scale ;)
Charlie 01 Jul 09
Was there a time warp or something? I could’ve sworn I’ve already seen this exact same post a few months ago ;-)
Jake Boxer 02 Jul 09
I love Balsamiq. When people talk about how great marker wireframes are, I take a strong opinion (which Getting Real made me comfortable doing): Balsamiq is better than marker wireframes, in almost every way.
Matthew Sanders 02 Jul 09
I prefer a medium sized Moleskin sketch book with a fine pen. I use thumbnail sized sketches so it too is limited in detail early on. leaving the extreme details to come in when working on the actual design comp.
I might give it a try on a full page of my sketchbook in my next discovery meeting.
RJ 02 Jul 09
And let’s not forget this awesome parody of this post, which kicked off the summer of 38th signal:
http://38thsignal.blogspot.com/2007/06/wireframing-with-blood-of-your-enemies.html
Grant 04 Jul 09
I prefer a Moleskine for proper ui sketches, but I find the “Sharpie Approach” to work really well when in a meeting with a client because it forces me to be fast helps communicate ideas.
I love a good Sharpie with large, blank (no lines) index cards. I think clients like seeing a “web guy” do something tactile that shows I’m thinking with more than just pixels.
vizyondaki filmler 04 Jul 09
lol nice man thanx admin
O'Bunny 06 Jul 09
FWIW —I’ve used crayons for exactly this purpose. A basic 8-colour set of standard Crayolas and a pad of 1/4” graph paper can do amazing things for UI/webpage/whatever development.
Brett Lutchman 06 Jul 09
I agree with the notion that Sharpies help encourage a higher level of mockup focus. I personally love extremely fine tip ball pens. I have the discipline to not focus so much on detail- but am also readily available to get very detailed if the need should arise.
I’m also hearing what everyone is saying about Balsamiq. But just a reminder, no matter how good an online application may be, it will never be the “pen & paper” way of doing things.
This writeup is about thin tip pens vs think tipped pens. I don’t see where anything online is mentioned for the purposes of wireframing.
I’ve tried both iPlotz and Balsamiq…I think I like iPlotz better, however, I bet I can whip up a document with my professional sketch pad and Sharpie much faster then anyone could in any online app.
Whether it be a sketch pad, index cards, whiteboard, blackboard, or whatever, hand to surface is much faster and adaptable. There are pros and cons to both paper and screen, but for initial meetings, war room sessions, quick meets and banging out problems in JAD sessions, “hand to surface” can not be beat.
When I believe I have something enough to make a milestone out of it, that’s when I’ll mock it up in an application for the purposes of showcasing to clients via handouts and PPT presentations.
Ezra Sandoval 07 Jul 09
This is a great idea. In art school we used chalk for gesture drawing. This is basically an extension of that. So simple but a great method to loosen up. Thanks for the tip.
Long live the sharpie.
This discussion is closed.