Visual Practice Starter Pack

Resources for developing as a graphic recorder

I’ve had a few requests on where to get started to develop a practice in graphic facilitation, so I thought I would write my response here instead of firing off a few links.

I still remember walking into my first MGTaylor environment and seeing a krew member scribing on the whiteboards. The first thing I noticed was that she was writing in a font. She was capturing what a group was saying, as they were saying it. When I asked her afterwards if she knew what they were going to be saying beforehand, she just shrugged, and said she just listens and lets it flow. I was awestruck, and knew that if we got to choose which role we would do, I wanted to do that.

A lot of people seem to have the same reaction when they see graphic facilitation for the first time, but as I’ve seen the practice become more common, I’ve also seen a lot of drift, and a much wider range of practice into some that is more utility-focused, and some that seems mostly aesthetic.

If you'd like some more context and background on what graphic facilitation is and where it comes from, I suggest you read this great post by Christopher Fuller. I'm grateful that he wrote it, so I can avoid writing that context and get down to answering the question of how to get started.

This post is for anyone hoping to take visual notes either for themselves, or in a group setting. While I use these techniques in workshops all the time now, as a side note, this is a skill I wish I had when I was in college. Oh, the notes I would have had!

The most useful distinction I found early on in trying to learn scribing was made by Tony Buzan in "The Mind Map Book" in which he differentiates between note taking and note making. Note taking is capturing information uncritically, usually as it comes at you in time. It tends to be linear, and reflect the order in which information is presented. Note making, by contrast, requires the listener to reflect on the meaning, structure and connectivity of information before recording it in order to capture it in a way that reflects the information at a conceptual level, as opposed to a strictly sequential level.

Whatever style you end up choosing for how you represent information, if you pay attention to this difference, you'll immediately get a few benefits:

• Improved Memory: by taking the extra step of considering how pieces of information connect with one another, we switch our brains from passive consumption to active processing, which aids in our ability to recall that information later.

• Pattern Recognition: Actively listening and recording connections over time allows you to spot patterns and structure in the information, which can give you a second order of understanding in the content.

• Surfacing Meaning: Information on its own isn't necessarily useful, but as patterns emerge we can start to find new meaning in the flow. Depending on the amount of information and the length of time in which it is presented, that can easily outstrip our working memory - by visually structuring information as it comes, we can go beyond our cognitive "buffer" and find meaning in larger pools of information.

• Useful Reference: By creating a distinct visual structure that we associate with a time, place or conversation, we create a handy reference that we can use for later recall. Well structured visual notes can allow you to replay a conversation months and years later, creating a strong association with the moment they were captured.

These benefits apply both to when you use these techniques in your own notebook, but also when you use them to capture notes for a group on a whiteboard in a meeting. It is also worth noting that in a group setting, having a shared experience of those benefits can create a very positive dynamic on a collective conversation.

I would also say that each of those benefits should be applied as a kind of design principle for whatever style you choose to develop in your scribing. As graphic facilitation has become more popular as a profession, there has been a swing towards more form over function, where scribes create beautiful murals with little informational density or usefulness. Always ask yourself what the purpose is for the record that you are making, and be sure that the way that you are making that record will serve that purpose. I have actually found that my style has become more austere over time, as I focus on adding just enough beauty to trigger interest, but with an emphasis on the ideas that emerge and creating a record that will live beyond the moment in its usefulness.

So, on to where to get started. Accept that this is a journey, and that mastery will come slowly, but utility can come relatively quickly. There are a few dimensions you will need to consider as you develop, and I'll give some guiding questions for each in the interests of keeping this from getting too long. You'll need to work on technique, practice and structure.

Technique

There are some basic techniques involved in scribing, and these are what give learners the greatest amount of anxiety coming in. "But I can't draw!" is the usual refrain. While artistic talent never hurts, focusing on the basics will get you 80% of the benefit.

First, you need good lettering. There are lots of resources out there, but I'm biased towards lettering from architectural drafting. I learned old-school drafting in high school, and the discipline of that style has informed my lettering ever since. I found a great video here, which you can use as a starting point, but developing a legible, consistent style is an important baseline.

Along with great lettering, you’ll need some basic shapes, connectors and basic iconography. Graphic Facilitators Guillaume Lagane and Nicolas Gros did a great job of laying out hundreds of common objects in three levels of visual fidelity in this book, but you can find plenty of inspiration in comics and across the internet. If you’re in the “but I can’t draw!” camp, get some inspiration from books like Stickman Odyssey (the entire story of Homer’s Odyssey, illustrated with stickmen) or classics like Ed Eberly’s “Drawing Book of Animals” (did anyone else grow up with this?).

When in Doubt, Copy

There are so many talented graphic facilitators out there, it can help when you’re starting out to find someone with a style that you like and start out by trying to emulate their style. Some are illustration-heavy, some very text-based. Some use colour in novel ways and others are monochrome. Structure, hierarchy, layout all manifest differently in different styles, so it helps to look at what is out there and see what speaks to you. Some examples of practitioners that I admire (in no particular order, and also just based on who has some of their stuff online: Alicia Bramlett, Kelvy Bird, Guillaume Lagane, Alfredo Carlo & Housatonic, and Liisa Sorsa. There are so many others, but I’ve realized to my dismay that many of us don’t have much out there online - I’d be grateful if anyone sends me links to more that I can include here.

Practice

A common misperception is that good graphic recording is all about drawing. What many of us have found as we’ve tried to structure trainings around graphic recording, however, is that it is much more about listening and structuring information. I found a very old piece I wrote on the topic (2009!!) when I was working in parallel rooms with Sita Magnuson and Kelvy Bird. Between sessions, I took a peek at their work and realized that we were all representing what we heard in fundamentally different ways. It got me thinking about how we were engaging with what we heard, and how we structured that on the boards.

I have a lot of other materials that I’ll be formatting on to this Substack soon on developing a listening practice. Kelvy Bird has also published a great book on her approach called “Generative Scribing” that is worth a read.

Other Stuff

A few other resources that are out and about:

• Christopher Fuller’s take on how to get started in graphic facilitation

• Lots of examples from Peter Durand at Alphachimp

• Dave Gray’s Marks and Meaning

• Graphic Facilitation Group on Facebook (I know, Facebook…remember that?)

I am aware that I am leaving so much out of this - this post has been a classic case of having so much that I want to include in it, that I get overwhelmed and put it off until I have more time to get it all in. Which never happens.

So, this is the starter pack. I welcome any other links or resources people want to send my way, and for my part, there are more detailed parts of this I’ll dive into at a later date, but here’s to a first draft seeing the light of day.