Blog
Graphic Recording
Wow, how time flies. Just last week I realized that my first graphic recording was almost exactly 10 years ago. Maybe the impulse to look back came from a visit to a client I've been working with almost since the beginning and who organizes a big event in Vienna every year where I capture the content with graphic recording. Until now, the preliminary meetings for this did not take place at headquarters. This year I was there for the first time for the preliminary discussion of the event and was amazed when I saw all the graphic recordings of the past years hanging on the walls. More than 20 meters of drawings and texts have accumulated there by now. Almost like an exhibition - my exhibition, of which I knew nothing until now. I got a guided tour and had a whole bouquet of emotions while reviewing the past events. And in the colorful mix of feelings there were also some insights. I want to share these with you.
But let's start at the beginning. With my first graphic recording. Accompany me from the first steps to some dead ends and new paths I have taken over the years.
I did my first graphic recording even before I knew the word for what I was actually doing. I had been visually documenting seminars and workshops I held for years before that. The resulting flipchart protocols were very popular with the participants and I was also repeatedly asked by fellow trainers what, where and how I was doing. So I started to give workshops for other trainers in which I shared my knowledge about flipchart design.
"We're planning a big event - would you join us and co-sign?"
I was asked this question at one of those workshops. And I did what I do with all new doors that open up to me and look exciting: I said "Yes!" with enthusiasm. And soon realized: I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
The event in question was to be documented by me and a second draftsman on whiteboards. These walls were huge and I had little experience with whiteboard work at the time. Today, I'm a bit embarrassed by the pictures I created back then, because my drawing style still had a lot of potential (to put it kindly). But I still enjoy looking at the pictures because I learned several important lessons from the project:
Don't. You won't get a consistent result and you'll just waste a lot of time trying. The solution is called: Pattern. It will save you a lot of time and nerves. And the result looks better. More generally, sometimes it's not about trying to force something you don't want (more of the same) with a lot of diligence and stubbornness; it's about realizing that you need new techniques. Then it's research or experimentation until you find a way that gives better results.
The question I didn't have an answer to at the time: How fast do I really draw? It is very important to know your own drawing speed and not to aim for more than you can actually manage in the time available. What I have learned since then: The better you know yourself and your strengths and weaknesses, the better you can assess how to handle a situation and how to achieve the best possible result.
During the event, the word "graphic recording" came up (as a description of what I was doing) and a whole universe suddenly opened up to me. I immediately researched what could be found online on the subject. At that time, unfortunately, there wasn't too much and most of the reports came from America, where the technology was already somewhat more widespread. However, one thing was clear to me: live recording of content is a great way to help participants understand and remember complex content and to stimulate discussion. Moreover, graphic recording combines several things that I find great:
The one event was followed by many more graphic recordings. Because my work is very public (at each event many people see what I do), word of my new activity spread quickly.
There were many great experiences: great events I was able to attend, exciting people I was able to meet, interesting content on a wide range of topics I might never have come into contact with otherwise (medicine, physics, economics, art, finance, spatial planning, industry, culture, didactics and many more) and many places I got to know.
But there was also the odd hiccup. Situations that challenged me, where I pondered for a long time afterwards what I could have done better or at least differently, and where I realized that I'm nowhere near the end of my graphic recording journey. Here are a few of the highlights from the list of things I learned:
When things have to go quickly, the content is presented only briefly or at a particularly fast pace, this is not the right time to devote to drawing portraits. However, these can be prepared without further ado. This saves a lot of time on site, which can be invested in capturing the content.
I quickly got used to paint, which is ALWAYS on me and my clothes after an event for reasons I don't understand. However, paint on walls or floors of locations is not acceptable to me. It took long research and trial and error (on my poor living room wall) to find the right combination of paper, pens, and mounting hardware that wouldn't leave marks. (read more here)
For drawing you need space (for the paper, the material and me). And this should be planned from the beginning. It is very annoying when participants leave empty coffee or tea cups on the bar table that is intended for the drawing material. However, it is not meant badly, but a sign that it was not clearly evident that this place is a "workplace" and also wants to be treated as such. It is the task of:the Graphic Recorder:in itself to create this space.
One of the weirdest experiences I ever had in graphic recording was in the Vienna City Hall. There I drew at an event for children. There were fairies, dragons and lots of mythical creatures, which were immortalized in the graphic recording at the request of the little ones. Once when I looked up from drawing, I was astonished to discover a mother with her (estimated not two years old) child, happily on the mother's arm, making his lasting contribution to the Graphic Recording. For a long time it was not clear to me how someone could come up with the idea of letting a toddler "paint along".
Even if I have always been very critical with my drawing skills, that the picture was not drawn by toddlers, was in my opinion very obvious. Only many years after the incident I realized that the "join in" was not an insult to my drawing skills but an expression of the joy of creating. They wanted to "join in." And that is a good impulse. Wherever it is possible and makes sense, a space should always be created that allows the participants to actively participate. Be it in the form of post-its on which they can contribute ideas, templates for flipcharts and pinboards that they can fill in, or icons that they can select and attach.
Not infrequently, I was introduced as "our artist." I was often honored and confused in equal measure. Artist seemed like such a big word that I didn't think I was doing justice to. After all, I wasn't standing in a studio pouring buckets of paint on room-high easels or creating oil paintings over weeks of work (yes... that was my idea of art for a while). It took me quite some time to realize that art is something that is not reserved for a select few. Today, for me, art has something to do with creating something. And that's what I do. Far more people do that than there are declared "artists".
I was also often asked "How do you do that?". Since I was standing with a pen next to a large sheet of paper, I suspected that the question was not sufficiently bentwortet with "I write and draw what I hear". It was kind of obvious. I did some soul-searching. What exactly happens in graphic recording? At some point I realized that graphic recording is not only a creative activity, but also a cognitive one. Yes, of course, the better you can draw, the more beautiful the result will be. And practice definitely pays off (with anything in life). You can see the drawing. The part you can't see is what happens before I even put the pencil down. Basically, there are four steps. Three of them happen before drawing:
Only then follows the translation (into images and metaphors). So what I do is a four-stage process of which only the last part is observable from the outside.
Remember the client I visited the other day and got a tour of the gallery of my Graphic Recordings? I want to share these pictures with you. I think you can see from them especially well how my style has evolved over time and how I have tried new things. Some of them I kept for the long term and others I discarded. See for yourself:
What do I think (besides a lot of practice, which we all know it always takes anyway) has changed my graphic recordings in the long run? Well, there are a few things I would like to pass on to my younger self, when there is the possibility to send messages into the past. Since I'm not quite sure how long that will take - here for you my most treasured aha moments:
Shading makes illustrations look much more vivid and exciting. It takes a bit of time to add that final touch to the images, but in my opinion, it always pays to go that extra mile.
The switch from pen and paper to a graphic tablet was one I resisted for a while. It wasn't until Corona, and with it the switch from many events to digital format (webinars instead of live events) that I was finally convinced of the many benefits of digital graphic recording (more on that here). Today, thankfully, there are live events again. The iPad, however, has stayed with me. Even if there is still an event here and there for which I decide to use paper (in consultation with the customers), analog graphic recordings are now clearly the exception.
The perfect home for my digital work - before, during and after the event - is the platform recapsy.com. Here I can enter the key data of the event, my contact details and those of the organizer before the event. On site, the participants can then call up the drawn pictures live via QR code, share them and comment on them. And best of all: after the event, a seminar report is automatically available - both as a website and as a downloadable .pdf document. A true game changer.
Meanwhile, I see Graphic Recording as so much more than just the colorful picture that is created live at the event. The goal is to bring the topics that are discussed, presented or worked on at the event into a visual form that allows the content to be understood, remembered, discussed and shared. And this can be much more than just live graphic recording. In the meantime, there are many more tools in my toolbox.
I believe that the journey is far from over. Everything is always changing. There will always be new technologies, new requirements of the organizers and new wishes and needs of the participants. And for these, new concepts and solutions are needed. I am already looking forward to developing them with my customers.
In this course, you will learn the basics of working with a flipchart. We explore materials, writing, structure, images and how you can achieve great results with little effort.
