I'm getting towards the end of the most recent sketchbook I'm using! I got it over a year ago for a class, and even after the class ended this was my go-to for sketching and writing down ideas. It's not that big and it's kind of a mess inside, but it's where my ideas live, big or small.
This is the cover, and as you can see, it has seen some better days. It's 7x10" and about an inch thick right now, because the pages I've used take up more space and I also store miscellaneous things in here.
There is the pocket I put in for miscellaneous things! When I started the sketchbook, I also didn't have a use for the first single page, so I put some motivational hand lettering on it. My hand lettering has greatly improved in a year!
For the class I needed this sketchbook for, we didn't take "traditional" notes. The professor didn't want us to focus on that, he wanted us to take down information in a way we would remember, whether that was doodling, bullet points, or anything like that. This spread is an actual mess because I was trying out that style of note-taking, but I don't like it too much. I need some more organization.
A normal spread for the class looked more like this. We had a couple of books to read from and we included our reflections afterwards, we would often have a list of ten, this one was a list of ten ways to make someone's day, and a weekly sketch. The professor would give us a word or phrase, and our sketch had to be based on that. He didn't want us to do the obvious though, he wanted us to dig deeper. My sketch might not scream "toy", but I will let you take your own interpretation of it!
Once that specific class ended, I was free to fill the pages however I pleased. They often look like an mess, but if I'm just trying to get ideas down, I'm not worrying about making it look perfect. Here you can see my initial sketches for my Tel Aviv branding project on the right, and ideas for the 3D stop motion on the left, though I didn't notice that the book was upside down when I did all of my sketching.
Often, my professors will tell the students to do at least 50 sketches for a new project. That's what this spread is, and when everyone had their sketches, we all passed around our sketchbooks and put marks by the logos we liked. Getting feedback from peers is scary, but its so valuable and can completely change the direction of a project because someone else might see something that I don't.
These were random logo ideas I had a year ago, but I was able to go back to them and be inspired by them for my tea shop project. Even the name I chose appeared here, even though I was thinking of a coffee shop then.
And that's a peek into my sketchbook! It's something that I value a lot and I plan to hang on to it so I can always go back and be inspired, or to just have a laugh at my old work.
Thanks for reading!
xx, Hannah