Although we do a lot of interaction design—it's kind of our specialty, you know—we use a lot of whiteboards and paper around the office. Whiteboards are great for many occasions, but we still like the personal feel of a pen and paper every now and then. Here's a look at some of our favorite papers around the office.
Behance Dot Grid
Remember when you used to play connect the dots in school? Well, despite the occasional flashbacks, we like to play dots around the office using Behance's Dot Grid notebooks.
They're a great alternative to your regular printer paper and help give that little extra guidance that some beginning wireframes need.
The light and simple dots work well for us around the office as when you scan and import to Photoshop, you can easily adjust the levels to push those dots out of the picture, but the best part is the minimal approach to adding structure to your earlier concepts.
We can take that same minimal approach and add some more usefulness to the mix with enhanced graph paper.
Konigi Graph Paper
Konigi is a great resource for design tools and inspiration, and most recently, some outstanding graph paper.
Available as both PDF downloads and notepads, Konigi's graph papers appeal to interactions designers most of all. The storyboard paper is perfect for telling stories through design.
Most of Konigi's notepads also include a simple notes area and a simple bar for names and dates. It's a low-fi approach to graph paper, one that works great for focusing on the work at hand over the tools we use to create. The blue ink used also works great when scanning finished pages; it can fade right out with the proper Photoshopping.
And while grid and graph paper can really help produce some good work, we like to use our own paper most of all.
ZURBified Printer Paper
Plain white paper is an obvious choice for working with paper. We tend to stick to keeping things rough around the edges when it comes to working with paper, using black Sharpies over typical pen or pencil. This helps remind us that we're wireframing, ignoring some of the finer details until later on.
Plain printer paper is great because unlike lined paper, we're free to do whatever we want—it's literally a blank canvas for us to work with. To make it perform well for business needs, we take printer paper and make it useful for business results.
Adding the ZURB logo, our task box, and labels for client and project helps keep plain paper useful. With adding those few touches before beginning work, we make printer paper useful for selling work later on with context. It's great for hashing our rough wireframes and smaller mind maps.
Here at ZURB, we put a lot of emphasis on presentation. Using the right tools can really help to put that final polish on your ideas. We use everything from graph paper to moleskines to graph paper. Paper is one of the best ways to let concepts take charge and guide you to the next steps.
With a Sharpie in one hand and your favorite paper in the other, you can really churn out some great work.