Used to sketch by hand before every design, now I just use digital mood boards

For about 10 years I would sit down with a sketchbook and draw every single piece before I touched fabric. I thought that was the only real way to design, like anything else was cheating. Then last spring I had a project with a crazy tight deadline, 20 pieces in 3 weeks, and I forced myself to try digital mood boards using photos and fabric swatches I found online. Honestly it clicked way faster and let me play with colors and textures without wasting paper. Now I feel like hand sketching was just slowing me down and making me stuck on one idea. Has anyone else had that moment where you realized the old way was just a habit, not a better way?

3 comments

3 Comments

lopez.karen1mo ago

So did you ever go back and try hand sketching just for fun after switching, or did you completely ditch it? I ask because I had a similar shift a few years ago with pattern drafting by hand vs using software. I still keep a sketchbook around for random ideas, but it's more like a diary now, not a design tool. Do you think you lost anything creative by giving up the hand work completely, or was it a net win?

paigem451mo agoTop Commenter

Oh man, that's such a good point about the sketchbook becoming more of a diary... I think you nailed it. I've definitely lost that raw, messy energy that came from just dumping a bunch of half-baked hand sketches on paper. Like sometimes you'd draw something weird and the line would go wrong but it actually sparked a better idea than what you started with. Software is so clean and precise that you kind of skip over those happy accidents where your hand just does something unexpected. But honestly the net win for me was huge because I was spending so much time on rendering and not enough on actually thinking through the function of the piece. Now I can rough out five variations in the time it used to take me to finish one hand drawing and that's way more valuable than the nostalgia of smudged graphite.

felix1471mo ago

Wait, you mean to tell me you were sketching out 20 individual pieces by hand before every single design? That's a crazy amount of paper and time. I have to ask, did you ever run out of ideas halfway through one of those sketches? I can't imagine doing that much manual work and then just switching to a mood board like it was nothing. It sounds like you were just stuck in a routine that was burning you out.