My design process always starts with a pen and paper. Jotting ideas down and sketching them out helps form my vision. When I finally moved this project into Sketch and Affinity Designer, I already had ideas about the colors I wanted to use, the kinds of typefaces I liked, and how I would eventually style the HTML.

Based on my concept sketches, I felt like using a nautical theme and somehow incorporating a life preserver would be cool. Earlier in the week, I'd seen a help icon on another site that inspired that this specific kind of life preserver. By this point, it came down to deciding the color scheme and specific typefaces.

I then brought my color palette and layout ideas into Sketch. I was able to quickly create diagrams of usability and even compare color schemes, helping me arrive at my final decisions.