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Chat with a retired graphic designer made me rethink my whole workflow

Was at a coffee shop last Wednesday and sat next to this older guy who noticed me adjusting a vector on my laptop. Turns out he did album covers back in the 80s for some pretty big bands. He asked me what software I used and I showed him my process with layers and masking and all that. He just laughed and said "you kids have too many options" and pulled out this beat up sketchbook from his bag. Showed me how he used to plan every single element on paper first with colored pencils before touching a computer. It hit different because I've been jumping straight into digital without any real planning and then spending hours undoing things. He was done with his coffee and gone in 10 minutes but I spent the whole afternoon sketching first before opening any program and it honestly saved me like 2 hours of editing. Has anyone else found that going old school with pencil and paper first actually speeds things up?
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kellymurphy
kellymurphy3d agoMost Upvoted
you kids have too many options" - yeah that's me, I've got 47 panel windows open and still can't figure out what I'm doing. Tried the sketchbook thing after reading this and my first drawing looked like a stick figure having a stroke. But weirdly enough, the final design actually came together faster because I wasn't moving boxes around on screen for an hour trying to decide if I wanted the button on the left or the right. Pencil and paper basically forced me to commit to stuff instead of endlessly tweaking.
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emma_ramirez
Ugh that's such a good point about committing to stuff.
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