While working on our first project in our design class this semester, I was reminded of something that I learned very early on in my design education: the more thumbnails, the better. Drawing a lot of thumbnails is something that a lot of students do not like to do, but when trying to come up with creative ideas and design, it is crucial. I like to draw a lot of thumbnails because I found that a lot of my ideas grew from one another. Even just changing small things from one sketch to another can make a huge difference in where your ideas are heading. A lot of the time I still end up using one of my first ideas but it is still good to push yourself to have a lot of ideas because back-up ideas are usually necessary! Some things look better in your head than on the page and then you have a whole list of other ideas to play around with.

Here are the thumbnails I made for my design project where we are making Shakespeare Posters. I did my first rough thumbnails and then after talking to the class in a group critique, I picked four to develop further. Then I will pick one to create!