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Vote Now: What’s the Best Sketchbook for Designers?

Creative Market Last updated: April 9, 2024 · 1 min read

With the right tools, a designer can transform companies, brands, communities and him or herself. Throughout the next few weeks, we will ask you to vote on the most amazing, influential creative tools of the year. In December, we will announce the winners of the first Creative Market Awards, hoping that you can grow as a designer by trying the very best tools out there. Ready to help us build this list? Vote on the question below:

What’s the Best Sketchbook for Designers?

What’s your go-to notebook or sketchbook when trying to come up with new design concepts? Select your favorite from the following options.

Field Notes

Piccadilly

Moleskine

Baron Fig

Canson Sketchpads

Whitelines

Rhodia

Behance’s Dot Grid Book

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9 Comments
  • Woops, clicked Behance's Dot Grid to learn more about it, ended up voting for it. :P I've only used Moleskine out of these bunch, and they're great. All kinds of sizes, paper patterns (blank, grid, lined), and hard or soft cover choices. 11 years ago
  • Love Moleskine too! @Sean Coady I will say Field Notes have saved the day a couple of times. They're so small and light that you can carry them anywhere. 11 years ago
  • MOLESKINES! Never even heard of the other ones :/ 11 years ago
  • Most of these sketchbook are really good products...I have tested many of them...I love the format of Rhodia and the style of Behance Dot Grid, but Moleskine is THE SKECHBOOK. I use that for agenda too! It's a MUST HAVE for every designer. 11 years ago
  • Strathmore 400 Series Drawing Paper (pad). Off-white paper with wire-binding at the top (for us left-handers). I use either a mechanical pencil or uni-ball signo pen with it. 11 years ago
  • My favorite is tracing paper to get down several versions of an idea quickly. i store them in a clear envelope that goes into binder. In theory I like all of them, but they are not universal. Every designer can't use a little book. 11 years ago
  • The best sketchbook is the one you actually use. It doesn't matter if it's expensive and fancy like a Moleskine, a yellow legal pad or just a simple school lined paper binder...as long as you keep drawing and sketching. 11 years ago
  • The best Sketchbooks I've used are 'leuchtturm1917', they're very similar in construction to the Moleskine books, but are much thicker paper (more like 160gsm rather than Moleskine's 80-100gsm). I personally prefer to not see through the pages or let pens bleed through, depending on the illustrations I'm drawing up, however the Moleskine Sketchbooks are great if you are doing multiple variations on a single design, due to the less opaque paper. ...and I have to agree 100% with creativefish on the comment above, as long as you're sketching, the best sketchbook is the one you are using...well said. 11 years ago
  • I'll actually have to try any of these to say. As creativefish said...the one I use is the one I like...and to be honest...try as I might...50% of the time it's white printer/typing paper from the drawer nearby. I have a few notebooks...always bought with good intentions...but maybe it's the odd way I cherish good or interesting paper a little too much...I never can bring myself to waste my paper on such random scribblings. I'm sure I may be weird but I'm also sure I'm not alone. I sketch so much that it would cost me way too much to buy specialty notepads. I end up pulling a stack of paper out and sorting various pages...sketching...crumpling...or sketching and then sketching another option on another paper to compare and feel things out...and keep working with the one that keeps my juices going steady. I keep some of them to refer to later and build upon...but eventually most get tossed because after a certain portion of time the idea starts to feel stale...perhaps simply because I've gotten too used to it. It may very well be flawed but I only do it lest I hoard it instead. If I felt like every time I was gonna doodle was going to be in a special meditative inspired time I might be more inclined to have a notebook...but my sketching is much more like manic brainstorming...little additions in random corners. And then when I feel artsier and more meditative...I use my standard art media pads and play. I probably would really love some of these sketchpads...but I'd also probably be more likely to buy it and tend to avoid using it because I'd find it hard to 'waste' the pages in them. Lol. 11 years ago