Back to Designing and Sketching on Traditional Mediums

Feng Zhu, Entertainment Design Guru and friend of Design Sojourn, recently released a really cool video filled with tips and techniques on designing with traditional mediums, i.e. pens, paper and sketchbooks. Remember those? Just kidding!
With many designers now working with digital sketching tools such as Wacom tablets as well as considering that the iPad is fast becoming the next a sketchbook, it is nice to see a designer as established and experienced as Feng, looking back and focusing on the basics.

In the video above, you will get to see a range of drawing techniques, including how to hold a pen, drawing straight lines and ellipses from the elbow, and how to maintain the energy and looseness in a sketch. You also get a lot of tips in selecting sketchbooks, using sketchpads, and how designers should treat these sketchbooks.
Feng’s thoughts on how designers should treat their sketchbooks echoes my philosophy behind keeping the Spaces for Ideas Sketchbooks as minimal as possible. (He was one of my early product testers after all!) In other words, a sketchbook that is designed for use rather than for show, as it is the content that matters.
This video is a really nice refresher for all of us and I hope you’ll enjoy as much as I did!