Hardcopy Sprawl  and softcopy ease


In my opinion, it’s still a draw.

There is no clear front runner. No obvious winner.

I am referring to designing using traditional pen and paper vs using an iPad and Apple Pencil.

The former approach is very tactile and strangely fulfilling in how the paper, drawings, colour pencils all quickly take over your work space as you study the different options.

The latter is super space efficient, with all options done on overlays in a single screen. It’s arguable that it frees you up further to be bold, to test with a certain disregard. After all, there’s that magic button called ‘undo’. Or in the case of the iPad, ‘double finger double tap’. Yet, the whole process also lacks the traditional tactile feel and hence feels a bit cold and detached.

Regardless of the tools, we love to distill value from seeing the cup as half full (meaning there’s so much potential!) rather tha it being half empty. This approach when adopted to our work can create unanticipated results and that’s what keeps us going (and the client intrigued).
Further readings: 

1) Linkedin - where this article was first posted.
2) Linkedin - for more details on the project featured in ‘softcopy ease’.  


Design