A few of my readers have asked me about the significance of the name “yellowtrace” and where it came from, so I thought it would be worth while writing a little post about it.

Yellowtrace is a soft tone transparent sketch paper ideal for overlaying, concept drawings and sketches, preliminary layouts and studies for final renderings. The paper responds beautifully to ink, charcoal, chalk or felt tip pens and markers and it is commonly used by designers, architects, engineers, illustrators and the like.

I go through kilometers of yellowtrace when starting any project – it is where most of my ideas and concepts are born before they are developed into final designs and built forms.

So you see, Husband and I thought it was a very fitting name to choose for a design practice and a design blog.

Everything begins as an idea, and all ideas, irrespective of their size or complexity, are created and developed on yellowtrace…

Apart from being an invaluable design tool, yellowtrace has many other unofficial uses. I quite like to use it as wrapping paper as per Exhibit A. It’s a perfect shade of yellow – just add fun stickers…

…and some ribbon…

… and voila!

x dana