/Graphics/ Design with sketches
15/07/2008 | Filed under Develop > Graphics
Even if you’re no sketch artist, you can still achieve a “sketchy” look to your site design. Elliot Jay Stocks grabs paper and pencil to show you how it’s done
Many websites start off as sketches in a notepad; rough ideas that are later mocked up before being turned into fully functional sites. But what happens to these sketches, confined to the notepad and forced to remain unseen by the general public? For this tutorial, I’d like to free some of those original drawings and include them in the end product. The drawings we’ll do for this project will not just be rough wireframes or ideas, they’ll be present on the finished page: logos, buttons and borders, all created by hand before being cut up in Photoshop and turned into background images defined via CSS.
Yet, this isn’t just about incorporating sketches into the finished piece. We’ll also explore the power of the hand-drawn aesthetic in invoking a certain kind of mood. Creating a site with a rough, handmade feel will help to dissipate some of the cold, sterile atmosphere present on all too many sites. The aesthetic will add a little friendliness to our project and provide some interesting eye candy for the user. Beneath this will sit a solid structure to ensure neatness and clarity – we don’t want our sketches to cause the user to get lost or confused!
About the author:
Name: Elliot Jay Stocks
Site: elliotjaystocks.com
Areas of expertise: Design, CSS, web standards, Photoshop
Clients: Apple Corps
Best cover version: Lost Souls – Nine Inch Nails
Click here to download the support files
Click here to download tutorial PDF
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Comments
Pamela Scoot / 02/04/2009 / 08:09 / http://www.dassnagar.co.uk
Excellent post inspiring to introduce sketches in my website. Help files and tutorial are downloaded
and i think this will be of great use.Thank you.
