16/07/2012 20:14The simple power of the doodle - FT.com

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July 16, 2012 7:11 pm

The simple power of thedoodleBy Ian Sanders

In the offices of Brille Records on London’s trendyShoreditch/Dalston borders, managing directorPaul Benney is wrapping up a meeting. Hisnotepad is full of notes that have captured ideasfor a business strategy.

But there is little text on the page – he has simplydoodled a diagram showing the core business in abox at the centre, with arrows branching off topotential new revenue streams. “Pictures are agreat way of capturing your thoughts,” he says.

It might only be a basic diagram but Mr Benney isone of a growing number of business people whosee the merits of visual note-taking.

Communicating through pictures is not new:people have always doodled thoughts on blotter

pads, agenda papers and the backs of napkins. Indeed DanRoam wrote The Back Of The Napkin, an entire book about visual thinking for the businessworld.

At the Edelman Academic Summit at Stanford University in June, Richard Edelman,president of the global public relations company, argued that visual storytelling is moreimportant than ever. He cited the big social media success stories of 2012: the imagecuration site Pinterest; the blogging platform Tumblr; and the mobile photo-!sharing appInstagram that was acquired by Facebook for $1bn. In a content-saturated world whereideas compete for attention, a visual representation of a meeting, project, business or ideamay be more effective than reams of text.

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Mr Benney says he started doodling by accident after he had switched his “to do” lists to anonline app that syncs with his digital devices. All of a sudden, the pages of his papernotepad remained empty. Without thinking, he started filling them with doodles. Now, hesays diagrams are more effective than a bullet-point list. He rarely revisits the drawings asthe exercise is more a way of ordering and visualising his thinking at that particularmoment. “Putting it in a diagram, not a list, is a more positive way of outlining a businessstrategy. And doing it like this made me more excited about the process,” he says.

Mr Benney’s discovery that doodling could help him run the business is no surprise toSunni Brown who is leading a self-billed “doodle revolution”. The continued use of simplepen and paper may seem surprising in the digital age but she believes few digital tools canmatch analogue for the physicality involved in human learning and thinking. “We still learnvery much through visceral experience – through the acts of moving and manipulatingobjects, sketching and doodling, seeing things take shape before our eyes and shapingthose things with our hands and bodies,” she says.

Ms Brown and her team at BrightSpot Info Design, based in Austin, Texas run visual-thinking workshops for businesses such as banks, retailers and television networks,including Dell, Disney and Turner Broadcasting. She acknowledges that executives’preconceptions range from “bemused to sceptical”, but she finds their new skills givebusinesses the chance to expand their approach to solving problems.

Jennifer Dorian, senior vice-president, strategy and brand development, at TurnerBroadcasting is a convert. “I have found visual thinking a powerful tool for getting others toexplain their concepts,” she says.

Visual note-taking can also be a useful way to summarise meetings. It is tempting to try toemulate the speed and accuracy of a court stenographer, but the fact is no one else writesas fast as people speak. Ms Brown argues that incorporating visual imagery into note-taking is a good solution. “Imagery doesn’t compete with words for your brain’s attention.It literally moves us into a different head space and allows verbal information to be takenin and better absorbed.”

This side of the process was recently employed at Google’s London headquarters. Duringthe latest of its quarterly Firestarters talks, as one guest speaker addressed an audience ofdigital media executives, an illustrator from graphic facilitation company Scriberia usedcoloured pens to make a graphical representation of the speech on huge sheets of paper.Fast sketched cartoons, arrows, icons and quotes captured the themes of the presentation.

Neil Perkin, organiser of the Firestarters series, says that using Scriberia gives an addeddimension to the talks. “We deliberately place the scribe in line of sight to the audience toenable a visual narrative for the talks to emerge as it unfolds. When it’s finished, we have a

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graphic record of the event and a great piece of equity to send to attendees” he says.

Dan Porter, creative director at Scriberia, believes anchoring discussions with a drawingcan become a touchstone in a way that text cannot. “It’s attractive as an antidote tocharmless, boxy PowerPoint slides and spreadsheets. It doesn’t look too finished, whichmakes it more approachable and easier to engage with than more polished messaging,” hesays.

Mike Rohde is a designer and professional visual note-taker from Milwaukee. He dotsdown details from meetings and conferences in his pocket Moleskine notebooks thenuploads scans of his sketches to Flickr, the photo-sharing website, making them availableto executives attending the event.

Mr Rohde has expanded his note-taking to include hand-drawn letters, arrows, icons andother visual elements to help capture and express the ideas he is hearing. “Sketch notesoffer more options for emphasising concepts, which also means I can more easily read,remember and comprehend notes later on. As a bonus, I find sketch noting an enjoyableprocess, so I take more notes and take better notes,” he says.

However sophisticated digital tools are, pen-and-paper have the edge for speed, efficiencyand portability.

But why stick to one piece of paper? John Willshire, former chief innovation officer at PHDMedia, the communications agency, has come up with Artefact, a pack of cards where youcan lay out thoughts as drawings and headings, and move them around quickly. “Someonesaid it’s like building a dry stone wall; lay out all your thinking around you on the cards,and work out how they all fit together in the strongest way,” he says. Mr Willshire believesworking with the current range of digital tools makes people think in too linear a way.

At Brille Records, Mr Benney confesses that, apart from meetings with lawyers, the musicindustry does not have a reputation for diligent note taking. “I wasn’t a big note-takermyself, but now I’ve started doodling I’m motivated to capture more meetings and ideas inpictures,” he says.

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