And using a dotted grid journal for the first time.
I stared at the blank page of dotted grid paper for some time. I was afraid to make a mark on an otherwise perfect surface — paralyzed by the feeling that I had no good ideas and stood only to make a fool of myself. But to who? Myself? My therapist likes to say: not trying at all is the surest way to fail. He has said it enough for my brain to accept it as accurate.
I researched how to best warm-up for pen and paper wireframing. I came across an exercise from Dan Roam’s “Back of the Napkin.” The task was simple — to take an object and draw it in a bunch of different circumstances and to do it quickly, so your mind didn’t have time to second-guess the first thing that came to it. My favorite warm-up I discovered was one called “Squiggle Birds.” It is as simple as taking a pen to paper, making a few circular marks (or squiggles), and then adding a beak, eyes, feet, and a cute little tail. This removed a lot of the anxiety I had when I first set out to start sketching.
I found myself consistently worrying about planning the readability of the wireframes on the pages — would people know, looking at this, what the next step would be? As if I would be showing them these initial sketches. Maybe I would, but I needed to focus on getting the ideas out of my head and onto paper. I found this to be a challenging exercise that I know will become easier with practice, but a fascinating experience nonetheless. I noticed how my mind liked to hesitate and get “stuck” on the aesthetic concerns of how the screen sketches were organized on the page.
To not try at all is the surest way to fail.
I love notebooks and sketchbooks, especially the super cute ones with so much potential for artistry (which is all of them). I have struggled to find joy in creating or drawing in recent years. Put simply, I believe this is due to the fear of “failure.” I am afraid that what I make will not be good enough. There was a strange sort of pressure that was placed on me after obtaining a degree in design. I loved sketching before — but suddenly felt like I had no right to suck or be “bad” at drawing and make “bad” art.
In performing the exercise and pushing myself outside the “stare at a blank page” comfort zone, I could start sketching messily, jotting ideas down as they entered my mind, and quickly assessing if it was a direction that could work for the project. I entered a creative flow state. Wireframing was the perfect level of challenge and demanded that I apply the right amount of skill without falling into self-judgment. It gave me permission to get good at something again. I needed to be told it is okay to suck at something — that is the first step to being kind of good at something, after all.