{"course":{"slug":"vector-and-print","title":"Vectors, Logos and Things That Get Printed","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/vector-and-print","level":"beginner","track":"create"},"lesson":{"slug":"sketching-and-narrowing","title":"Thumbnails, and why you never show a concept you would not ship","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/vector-and-print/sketching-and-narrowing","position":39,"of":73,"minutes":8,"answer":"Generate thirty thumbnails at 30 mm on paper before opening any software, develop six into real geometry, and present exactly three you would all be happy to ship, with rationale about function rather than story.","keyIdea":"Generate thirty thumbnails at 30 mm on paper before opening any software, develop six into real geometry, and present exactly three you would all be happy to ship, with rationale about function rather than story, because a functional reason cannot be argued with."},"body":{"format":"markdown","text":"## Quantity first, on paper\n\nThe first twenty ideas are the obvious ones, and they are obvious because everybody has them. Getting past them requires producing them and discarding them, which is faster on paper than on screen.\n\nThe method:\n\n1. A sheet of A4, divided into 30 boxes about 30 mm square.\n2. Fill every box. Thirty marks, in perhaps forty minutes. Nothing careful, nothing shaded, no lettering unless the lettering is the idea.\n3. Do a second sheet. The second sheet is where the work is.\n4. Go away for a few hours. Come back and circle six.\n\nThe box size is deliberate. At 30 mm you physically cannot draw detail, so you are forced to work in silhouette, which is the same discipline the 16-pixel test enforces later.\n\nEveryone who does this seriously says the same thing: the good idea is somewhere between sheet two and sheet four, and it is never on sheet one.\n\n## Why not to start on screen\n\nOn screen, the tools push you towards refinement. You will spend twenty minutes adjusting one curve on a mediocre idea instead of generating the next fifteen ideas. Paper has no undo, no alignment guides and no temptation to pick a colour, so it produces more ideas per hour.\n\nIf you have no paper, use the crudest tool available: a brush in Krita at a large size, on a small canvas. The point is the constraint, not the material.\n\n## Developing six into three\n\nTake the six circled thumbnails into vector. Build each one properly: primitives, booleans, real geometry, black only.\n\nThen apply the tests you already know:\n\n- Black on white, and white on black.\n- 16 px on a phone.\n- Flipped horizontally.\n- Beside the competitor sheet at the same size.\n\nTwo or three will fail one of these outright. Good: that is the test doing its job, before anyone has seen them.\n\n## Show three, and mean all three\n\nThis is the rule that separates a professional presentation from a portfolio dump: **never show a concept you would be unhappy to see used.**\n\nClients choose. If you show one strong concept and two weak ones to make the strong one look better, you will sometimes get a weak one chosen, and then you have to produce it. Everyone who has done this has a logo in the world they are quietly ashamed of.\n\nThree is the right number. One looks like you did not explore. Five or more makes the client feel responsible for design decisions they are not equipped to make, and the usual outcome is \"can we combine the top of two with the bottom of three\".\n\n## Presenting the three\n\nEach concept gets:\n\n- The mark, large, in black.\n- The mark at 16 px and at 30 mm.\n- The mark in its intended colour.\n- One realistic application from the surfaces list: the actual shop board, the actual bag, not a generic mockup of a billboard in a European city.\n- **Two sentences** of rationale, about function rather than story.\n\nThe rationale is where most presentations go wrong. \"The upward stroke represents your journey of growth\" invites an argument about whether the client feels they are growing. \"This holds at 12 mm on your invoice and can be embroidered in one thread\" cannot be argued with, and it is also true.\n\n## The uncomfortable part\n\nClients will ask to combine concepts, ask for a fourth direction, ask what their nephew thinks. This is normal and it is not disrespect; they are anxious about a decision they cannot evaluate.\n\nThe answer is to return to the brief you wrote down. \"The brief says it must work embroidered in one colour at 8 mm. Concept two does; the combination you are describing does not.\" A written brief converts taste arguments into requirement arguments, and requirement arguments have answers.\n\n## Presenting remotely\n\nMuch of this work is now shown over a video call or as a PDF sent by email, and both weaken the presentation in the same way: the client sees the work without you beside it, at a size you did not choose, on a screen you have not seen.\n\nTwo defences. First, send a PDF rather than images, sized so each mark appears at a sensible physical size when the page is viewed whole, and say in the covering note \"please view at 100%, not zoomed\". Second, if it is a call, share your screen and present it rather than sending the file in advance. People form an opinion in the first four seconds of looking, and if those four seconds happen alone in an inbox on a phone, you were not there for them.\n\nIf the client insists on seeing files in advance, send one page: the recommended concept only. The other two follow in the call."},"check":{"question":"A designer presents one strong concept alongside two deliberately weaker ones to steer the client towards the strong one. The client picks a weak one. Beyond the immediate awkwardness, what does this reveal about the method?","options":[{"text":"The rationale was written in terms of story rather than function, so the client had no basis for comparison.","correct":false,"tempting":"A weak rationale makes selection arbitrary, but the structural problem is that a concept the designer would refuse to build was put in front of someone with the power to choose it."},{"text":"Three concepts is too many for a client without design training, and one concept should have been presented instead.","correct":false,"tempting":"Showing one looks like no exploration was done and removes the client's agency entirely; the failure here is what was shown, not how many."},{"text":"Any concept shown can be chosen, so presenting work you would not ship guarantees some clients will ship it.","correct":true},{"text":"The weak concepts should have been shown at a much smaller size, so that their failure at 16 pixels was visible during the presentation.","correct":false,"tempting":"Presenting a weak option badly is still presenting it. The remedy is not to show it in a less flattering way but not to show it."}]},"prev":{"slug":"the-five-kinds-of-mark","title":"Five kinds of mark, and what each one costs","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/vector-and-print/the-five-kinds-of-mark"},"next":{"slug":"construction-and-the-golden-ratio","title":"Real construction, and the golden-ratio story","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/vector-and-print/construction-and-the-golden-ratio"},"authorship":"Founder and series editor: Dr Mustafa Mun. Written by AI models to a written standard. Exam keys checked blind by a second model: 3,665 of 3,666 agreed. Academic review invited.","review":{"status":"Draft, open for academic review"},"cite":"Addaly (2026) 'Thumbnails, and why you never show a concept you would not ship', in Vectors, Logos and Things That Get Printed. Edited by M. Mun. Addaly. Available at: https://addaly.com/learn/vector-and-print/sketching-and-narrowing (Accessed: 13 October 2026).","licence":{"name":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"},"reader":{"schema":1,"title":"Thumbnails, and why you never show a concept you would not ship","courseTitle":"Vectors, Logos and Things That Get Printed","module":{"index":5,"slug":"designing-a-mark","title":"Designing a mark"},"answer":null,"keyIdea":"Generate thirty thumbnails at 30 mm on paper before opening any software, develop six into real geometry, and present exactly three you would all be happy to ship, with rationale about function rather than story, because a functional reason cannot be argued with.","hero":{"kind":"plate","image":null,"alt":null,"caption":null},"blocks":[{"t":"h2","id":"quantity-first-on-paper","runs":[{"text":"Quantity first, on paper"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The first twenty ideas are the obvious ones, and they are obvious because everybody has them. Getting past them requires producing them and discarding them, which is faster on paper than on screen."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The method:"}]},{"t":"ol","start":1,"items":[[{"text":"A sheet of A4, divided into 30 boxes about 30 mm square."}],[{"text":"Fill every box. Thirty marks, in perhaps forty minutes. Nothing careful, nothing shaded, no lettering unless the lettering is the idea."}],[{"text":"Do a second sheet. The second sheet is where the work is."}],[{"text":"Go away for a few hours. Come back and circle six."}]]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The box size is deliberate. At 30 mm you physically cannot draw detail, so you are forced to work in silhouette, which is the same discipline the 16-pixel test enforces later."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Everyone who does this seriously says the same thing: the good idea is somewhere between sheet two and sheet four, and it is never on sheet one."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"why-not-to-start-on-screen","runs":[{"text":"Why not to start on screen"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"On screen, the tools push you towards refinement. You will spend twenty minutes adjusting one curve on a mediocre idea instead of generating the next fifteen ideas. Paper has no undo, no alignment guides and no temptation to pick a colour, so it produces more ideas per hour."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"If you have no paper, use the crudest tool available: a brush in Krita at a large size, on a small canvas. The point is the constraint, not the material."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"developing-six-into-three","runs":[{"text":"Developing six into three"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Take the six circled thumbnails into vector. Build each one properly: primitives, booleans, real geometry, black only."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Then apply the tests you already know:"}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"Black on white, and white on black."}],[{"text":"16 px on a phone."}],[{"text":"Flipped horizontally."}],[{"text":"Beside the competitor sheet at the same size."}]]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Two or three will fail one of these outright. Good: that is the test doing its job, before anyone has seen them."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"show-three-and-mean-all-three","runs":[{"text":"Show three, and mean all three"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"This is the rule that separates a professional presentation from a portfolio dump: "},{"text":"never show a concept you would be unhappy to see used.","b":true}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Clients choose. If you show one strong concept and two weak ones to make the strong one look better, you will sometimes get a weak one chosen, and then you have to produce it. Everyone who has done this has a logo in the world they are quietly ashamed of."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Three is the right number. One looks like you did not explore. Five or more makes the client feel responsible for design decisions they are not equipped to make, and the usual outcome is “can we combine the top of two with the bottom of three”."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"presenting-the-three","runs":[{"text":"Presenting the three"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Each concept gets:"}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"The mark, large, in black."}],[{"text":"The mark at 16 px and at 30 mm."}],[{"text":"The mark in its intended colour."}],[{"text":"One realistic application from the surfaces list: the actual shop board, the actual bag, not a generic mockup of a billboard in a European city."}],[{"text":"Two sentences","b":true},{"text":" of rationale, about function rather than story."}]]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The rationale is where most presentations go wrong. “The upward stroke represents your journey of growth” invites an argument about whether the client feels they are growing. “This holds at 12 mm on your invoice and can be embroidered in one thread” cannot be argued with, and it is also true."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-uncomfortable-part","runs":[{"text":"The uncomfortable part"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Clients will ask to combine concepts, ask for a fourth direction, ask what their nephew thinks. This is normal and it is not disrespect; they are anxious about a decision they cannot evaluate."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The answer is to return to the brief you wrote down. “The brief says it must work embroidered in one colour at 8 mm. Concept two does; the combination you are describing does not.” A written brief converts taste arguments into requirement arguments, and requirement arguments have answers."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"presenting-remotely","runs":[{"text":"Presenting remotely"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Much of this work is now shown over a video call or as a PDF sent by email, and both weaken the presentation in the same way: the client sees the work without you beside it, at a size you did not choose, on a screen you have not seen."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Two defences. First, send a PDF rather than images, sized so each mark appears at a sensible physical size when the page is viewed whole, and say in the covering note “please view at 100%, not zoomed”. Second, if it is a call, share your screen and present it rather than sending the file in advance. People form an opinion in the first four seconds of looking, and if those four seconds happen alone in an inbox on a phone, you were not there for them."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"If the client insists on seeing files in advance, send one page: the recommended concept only. The other two follow in the call."}]}],"check":{"question":[{"text":"A designer presents one strong concept alongside two deliberately weaker ones to steer the client towards the strong one. The client picks a weak one. Beyond the immediate awkwardness, what does this reveal about the method?"}],"options":[{"text":[{"text":"The rationale was written in terms of story rather than function, so the client had no basis for comparison."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"A weak rationale makes selection arbitrary, but the structural problem is that a concept the designer would refuse to build was put in front of someone with the power to choose it."}]},{"text":[{"text":"Three concepts is too many for a client without design training, and one concept should have been presented instead."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Showing one looks like no exploration was done and removes the client’s agency entirely; the failure here is what was shown, not how many."}]},{"text":[{"text":"Any concept shown can be chosen, so presenting work you would not ship guarantees some clients will ship it."}],"correct":true,"tempting":null},{"text":[{"text":"The weak concepts should have been shown at a much smaller size, so that their failure at 16 pixels was visible during the presentation."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Presenting a weak option badly is still presenting it. The remedy is not to show it in a less flattering way but not to show it."}]}],"order":[3,0,2,1],"why":null},"prev":{"slug":"the-five-kinds-of-mark","title":"Five kinds of mark, and what each one costs","minutes":8},"next":{"slug":"construction-and-the-golden-ratio","title":"Real construction, and the golden-ratio story","minutes":8}}}