Paper - a creative canvas

thesheet started on the other side of the table. Its founders were clients, not designers, when they got a specification for their summer home as a Google Sheet with ten tabs. So the early work went into two things: a better experience for the client and less effort for the designer writing the specification.

A specification is where a project ends up, though, not where it begins. Before there's a product list there are screenshots, vague thoughts about one color or the other, a tile the client saw in a restaurant and a drawer of samples that don't really match with each other. Paper was made for that stage. It's a creative canvas for inspiration, images and ideas while the direction is still being found - something that's great for the early thinking, but also sticks around and supports the rest of the project.

Paper is the cornerstone of our approach of Simple is Good. Software should be easy to get started with and complexity you don't need shouldn't get in your way.

Bring your inspiration together

Early material turns up from everywhere at once. The client's Pinterest board via Whatsapp. A supplier's PDF in your inbox, the site photos are on your phone, the lamp you liked is in one of the tabs you haven't closed since last Tuesday and the note about the client hating anything orange is on the back of a delivery slip. It's all there - kind of -  but it is spread over six places and only you know where they all are, until you don't any more, because it's just too much.

In Paper all of that goes onto one canvas inside the project. You can add images, PDFs and products, import from links and pull in a Pinterest board whole, then write a note beside anything that needs one. A screenshot in your camera roll keeps the picture but not why you saved it. On the canvas you write the reason beside it, so three weeks later you still know the lamp was there for the height of its shade.

Give your ideas room to develop

Collecting images, links, materials - ideas - is the easy part. Putting everything together and seeing which ones work together and which really don't... that's a bit of a different story. 

Take a kitchen. You have a photo of a honed limestone worktop, two cabinet colours you can't choose between and a tile the client keeps mentioning. On Paper you can lay them out together, add colour cards for each cabinet option, move the tile from one pairing to the other and draw a rough line where the splashback might stop. You find out on the canvas, before anyone has booked a showroom visit, that the green which looked calm on its own turns muddy beside the stone.

The questions can go in a notebook, but they're easier to track next to the pictures they're about. A checklist beside the materials, asking whether the tile comes in a matt finish or whether the client really wants open shelving, is there the next time you open the canvas.

Make the direction easier to see and share

Paper is where the thinking can be untidy. When you want to show it, thesheet has other forms in the same project as the canvas: mood boards for the edited version of an idea, presentations for walking a client through a scheme and AI renders for showing a room that doesn't exist yet.

Paper is also multiplayer. A colleague can work on the same canvas as you, adding the reference they found or moving a sample next to the one they think it belongs with, so nobody in the studio is emailing images back and forth and asking which version is current.

Keep the thinking with the project

Most projects reach a point, often months in, where someone asks why. Why that oak, why the brass was dropped, why the kitchen went green. The answer is usually in the early thinking, and the early thinking is usually somewhere the specification isn't.

With Paper the canvas stays in thesheet with the rest of the project. The specification gets written in its own structured way when the products are settled, but the references, the rejected options and the notes about what the client said in the first meeting are still in the project when someone asks why the brass was dropped.

Simple to start but the tools are there when you need them

With Paper, our intention really was to bring simplicity into the picture by replacing 5-6-7 tools with just one. So that's why starting right now, this is what you can do on Paper:

• Images and PDFs. Bring reference photos, plans and selected PDF pages onto Paper so you can work with them beside your ideas.

• Import from a link. Add a product or image from the web without downloading and uploading it first.

• Pinterest import. Bring selected pins or entire boards from your connected Pinterest boards into the project.

• Project and Library products. Put products you've already collected onto the canvas to compare options visually.

• Docs. Write client briefs, meeting notes and scopes of work as longer documents alongside the project's visual references.

• Sticky notes. Keep quick thoughts, questions and decisions beside the material they relate to.

• Checklists. Keep track of next steps and who's responsible while you develop the project.

• Canvas text. Add titles, captions and explanations so the references make sense to other people too.

• Mood boards. Compose images, products, colours and text into an editable board that shows a design direction.

• Colour palettes. Create named colour cards, including colours picked from an image, to explore a palette alongside materials and products.

• Freehand drawing. Sketch and mark up ideas directly on Paper, rather than having to explain everything in words.

• Shapes and arrows. Add backgrounds, separators and visual connections to explain how ideas fit together.

• Bundles. Put related material together in its own working area without crowding the main canvas or throwing ideas away.

• Background removal. Isolate a product from its photo for a cleaner mood board or composition.

• Playground. Use AI to explore changes to a room's materials, lighting and furnishings, develop concepts from mood boards and make images or videos. Bring the results back into your work on Paper.

• Presentations. Build multi-page presentations in your studio's branding, bringing together visual concepts, selected products, schedules and costs from the Sheet.

• Live collaboration. Work on the canvas together and see where others are working as the project develops.

• Comments. Discuss a specific reference or idea where it sits, mention a colleague and resolve the conversation when it's settled.

• Add to the Sheet. Move a chosen product or image card into the specification with its available details, rather than starting the entry again.

• Client review in Folder. Save mood boards as images and presentations or Docs as PDFs in Folder, where clients with access can review and comment on the saved files.

Start with the ideas you already have

You don't need a new project to try it. Pick one room you're working on now, the one with the most screenshots, and bring its references, Pinterest board and loose notes onto a Paper canvas.

If you already use thesheet, log in and open a project. If you're new, create an account and start with that room.