This is the first of a series of stones I made for my garden - little bits of whimsey and wonder about the plants that make up my midwestern backyard.
Developing graphic recording and sketchnoting skills
Are you curious about the field or building your skills? Here are a few resources:
Creating notes that incorporate drawing, different scales of lettering, or and other visual cues help you remember and make sense of conversations, presentations or information. Here’s a couple TED talks explaining the value:
Sketchnoting
Sketchnoting for teachers and students
Graphic Recording
Large scale documentation done live to capture discussions, presentations, meetings, panel discussions using words and pictures. Graphic recorders listen, synthesize, and make visual what they hear. As a graphic recorder, I often work alongside a facilitator who is running the meetings. I’m there to capture what happens.
Books:
Online Courses:
Lettering: Let’s Letter Together
The Grove (and they provide Visual Facilitation Services, tools and templates)
History
Visual Facilitation:
Visual facilitators help you design the whole process of change - working closely with clients to plan meetings that incorporate visual templates or live drawing along with capturing the important content to help groups of people meet a goal, reach consensus, or successfully navigate change. I don’t provide visual facilitation services but I can refer you to people I work with who can.
And, the International Forum of Visual Practitioners (IFVP) holds an annual conference and shares resources regularly.
International Forum of Visual Practitioners (IFVP) - you can find a map of practitioners around the world here.
Check out more resources at IFVP’s Visual practices database of resources
Learning about Procreate
I do virtual graphic recording using Procreate and have been appreciating the multitude of people sharing tools and resources that have helped me learn. Here’s a few of my favorites.
The workflow of a digital scribe - Linda at https://redanredan.fi
Intro to Procreate - Bardot Brush
Procreate for Beginners - Every Tuesday
Tutorials, drawing, and brushes - Bardot Brush
A variety of Procreate tutorials - iPad Calligraphy
Malgosia’s top 8 tips video - part of the IFVP Digital Scribing Series
Malgosia’s PDF guide to the top eight features of Procreate - part of the IFVP Digital Scribing Series
Using Grid Builder Brushes to create lettering compositions - iPad Calligraphy
Procreate’s manual and support page
Lisa Bardot’s Procreate Facebook Page
How to create a brush in Procreate - Teela Cunningham
How to make a stamp in Procreate - Naptime Alternative on YouTube
And another version: How to make a stamp brush in Procreate
How have you learned Procreate? Any great resources I should add to the list?
The history and field of visual process work
Graphic recording, visual facilitation, sketchnoting, scribing, mind-mapping, and generative scribing are all names for the work that pairs words and images to facilitate groups. Want to learn more about it’s history? Here are four articles by leaders in the field: Kelvy Bird, David Sibbet, Christina Merkely and Susan Kelly.
Mathias Weitbrecht and David Sibbet developed the following map, (with input from many conference participants at the EuViz conference in 2018) in an effort to visualize the entire network of visual practice.
Susan Kelly’s image of the visual universe from 2015.
Read the article and see Christina Merkely’s visuals depicting the history and evolution of graphic facilitation.
From the article by Christina Merkely.
Before and after
Sometimes meetings go fast, there's lots of discussion, and the most important thing is to capture the words of the participants. But if you're looking for an organized document to use as a reference for future discussions, I can edit documents in Photoshop. Here's an example of how I cleaned up a graphic recording after the fact.
Do visuals just "pimp a meeting" or do they promote change?
Kim S van den berg writes about the power of visuals to increase the odds of change given that "research showed around 70% of planned changed projects failed. Goals were not met and people lost track. I could imagine people growing ‘tired of change’." Read her article here.
Picture Superiority Effect
I love it when Science tells us what we already know but in bigger words. Pictures help us remember things. It's the Picture Superiority Effect. (I knew that.)
