In a world obsessed with fancy 3D visualization, you might wonder if the good old-fashioned sketch still matters. In our opinion: it 100% does. In fact, sketching remains one of the most powerful tools designers have at their disposal, and the ability to quickly and accurately sketch by hand is still one of the most fundamental skills for an industrial designer.

Many design studios have different workflows, but at Prime Studio, we are big believers in the value that sketching by hand adds to the design process. There's something special about the hand-mind connection that happens when you sketch. It's different from working digitally - your brain engages in a unique way.

Here are some of the reasons we value sketching so highly.

Firstly, it's the primary way that we quickly communicate ideas among team members. Those sketches are not precious or labored, they only need to be of a level good enough for another designer to understand. It’s one of the few areas of our design process where “Good enough” really is good enough. Sketching is the fastest path from imagination to visualization. When an idea strikes, a designer can capture it in seconds with a few strokes of a pencil— no technical barriers between thought and expression. This immediacy makes sketching invaluable during the critical early phases of ideation when concepts need to flow freely.

Also, it’s important to be able to quickly illustrate an idea that surfaces in a client meeting that can be hard to communicate verbally. It keeps the momentum of the meeting going and really helps the co-creation process. There's something deeply collaborative about watching an idea take shape. It invites input in a way that polished presentations sometimes don't. A client often feels comfortable saying, "Can you make that part a bit larger?" or "What if we moved this there?" when they see you actively creating. This interactivity transforms the client relationship from transactional to collaborative. They're no longer just approving or rejecting finished work – they're participating in the evolution of the design. This shared ownership often leads to greater client satisfaction.

We don’t often use sketches as the final output for a client-facing presentation, but sometimes it’s the most efficient way to communicate a wide range of ideas without spending too much time developing CAD just for visualization purposes.

And even after we’ve moved into initial CAD sketching is still very much part of our design process. We’ll very often produce drawings which we print out and then use to sketch over to nuance details, proportions, and assembly methods before pushing the changes through into the final CAD.

And here's something we don't talk about enough: sketching makes you a better observer. When you sketch regularly, you start to really see the world differently - noticing proportions, relationships, and details that might otherwise slip past you. That sharp eye translates into better design work across the board.

Lastly, it’s worth noting that clients LOVE to see sketches. In a world where AI can generate a near-perfect image in seconds with just a few prompts, a great sketch is a reminder of the craft of design.