Filed under: Odds and ends, Developer, iPhone, Graphic Design
A sketchpaper version of the iPhone
I don't design websites very often (I've done maybe five or six total), but whenever I do, the first thing I do isn't anywhere near the web: I grab a pad of paper and a pencil and sit down somewhere away from the computer to sketch out my ideas for how the design will go.Lots of developers will do the same thing with applications, and so, to help those developers, the folks at Labs.Boulevart were kind enough to put together sketchpaper versions of the iPhone. It's a free download (in PDF or Photoshop flavors) of just a bunch of images of the iPhone, left completely blank (sometimes with the MobileSafari and/or carrier bar on there) for designers of all kinds to sketch on and imagine with as they will.
Very cool idea, and the number of different setups and implementations they've thought of is impressive -- just the kind of thing to get the iPhone creative development juices flowing. If you're doing any kind of design for iPhone applications, native or on the web, this should be a cool tool to use.


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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brandon Martinez said 3:44PM on 6-05-2008
Awesome; props to this.
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nz said 4:12PM on 6-05-2008
design should actually be the *last* thing you do for a website :)
god i love being contrary!
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Brandon Martinez said 4:35PM on 6-05-2008
Database layout is first! :P
Mike Schramm said 4:14PM on 6-06-2008
I'm glad you love being contrary, and I'm glad we can serve your need. But the sitting down to sketch ideas is actually the first thing I do when designing websites, not making them. :)
nz said 11:15PM on 6-06-2008
Fair enough. I don't think I've ever just designed a website -- although I've developed websites end to end by starting with a design and then wondered why the finished product didn't solve any of the problems I wanted :)
I should probably say that I think the idea is pretty sound (some nice grey grid lines might've helped), but I'm a lousy designer. No amount of guidance is really ever going to change that :)
kurt.tappe said 4:22PM on 6-05-2008
Major syntactical mistakes in the headline and the text of the article...it's sketchpaper FOR the iPhone, not OF the iPhone. I was like "Why would someone be sketching an iPhone??"
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Brandon Martinez said 4:35PM on 6-05-2008
Well, either way would work. It is sketchpaper that is of the iPhone (as in, the iPhone is the subject of the paper). But, saying for could imply that it is used directly, when really, it's being used *indirectly* to the iPhone.
Maybe? no clue...
Rick said 7:21PM on 6-05-2008
I thought the same thing. It's kind of confusing.
Tony Bowman said 5:18PM on 6-05-2008
even better would be to export the straight images to your Camera Roll and use the fantastic Sketches installer.app program to design right ON the iPhone itself.
one thing i wish though is taht Sketches had an offset cursorpoint from where you actually touch, so you can see what the fuck you're drawing. hah. either way, i use it all the time for designs, while i'm on the Metro in D.C. and i frequently use it to doodle on pictures of other passengers on the train...hah.
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Will said 5:31PM on 6-05-2008
The point of a "sketchpaper" design is the rought design, not the surrounding shell. You don't roughly sketch out a normal website layout inside of a PSD of browser chrome.
This is a stupid gimmick and a waste of time.
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jww said 7:31PM on 6-05-2008
On the iPhone space is limited and users can't just resize a window to get more space. An actual-size image like this could be very helpful when deciding how to use this limited space. Plus, developers want their designs to match the iPhone's interface and the iPhone itself.
I think plenty of developers will find this worth their time. And it's free, so I doubt it's a gimmick.
Robert said 9:23AM on 6-06-2008
Exactly. The iPone should also be a sketch or maybe an outline. But with the super-polished iPhone shell around your sketch, you won't get a good idea of what your app will really be like.
JAQ said 7:47PM on 6-05-2008
What I'd really like is a sketchpaper app for the iPhone, to make it like a ModBook Nano.
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Tony Bowman said 11:39PM on 6-05-2008
there already is one. i just mentioned it in my last post. it's called Sketches, and can be gotten through Installer.app on a jailbroken iPhone.
Zeke said 8:35PM on 6-05-2008
Does this support rotation between portrait and landscape? :-D
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Jayden said 1:49AM on 6-06-2008
How amazing! Someone has created an iPhone picture with a blank screen
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