Having had the pleasure to be employed in the advertising world before the Mac came out, I had to rely on the strength of my brain, not my microprocessor to come up with ideas. And I loved it. My partners and I sketched, doodled, and markered our way to brilliance with nothing more than a marker and sheet of paper. And yes, the occasional cocktail napkin.
While some thumbnails were more detailed than others, it was concepting in its purest form: just a visual and a headline. That was all that was needed to convey the idea. And if you were lucky enough to work for a great creative director, that was all they needed to get the idea.
We didn’t waste time choosing fonts, pouring through hundreds of stock images, or adding Gaussain blurs to give our ideas the appearance of being more sophisticated than they were. Instead we spent our time coming up with strong ideas and not worrying about the execution. Working this way forced us to quickly weed through the shitty ideas to get to the less shitty ones. And, eventually, we’d get around to the good ones.
There was a certain art to crafting these thumbnails. They all started with the obligatory horizontal box. Then a quick doodle to represent the visual. And if you were fortunate enough to work with an art director who could actually draw, these tiny works of art were quite stunning. Then all that was needed was a smart headline to tie it all together. There was nowhere to hide. We knew in an instant whether this two-by-three inch sketch was worthy of a multi-million dollar campaign or whether it was fodder for the receptacle.
There was also a wonderful unfinished aspect to these thumbnails. Since they were just loose drawings, they were easier to sell to the account team and the clients based on the overall idea. And, when we sold the idea, there was plenty of room for interpretation to bring the idea to life with photographers, designers, and yes, even clients. We weren’t locked into shooting a red-headed woman wearing a black trench coat on a 40-ft boat in the Maldives because that’s what the computer pumped out.
I see too many young creatives today pumping out dozens of highly polished computer comps that have no idea, no soul, no originality. Sure, they look stunning, but if you peel back the photoshop layers you’ll see there’s nothing there.
So do yourself and your creative director a favor. Pick up a sketch pad, or an old marker pad—yes, they still sell them, and a few Sharpies. Then grab your partner and find a quiet spot in the back of the agency, bar, or airplane and start thumbnailing it.
