Hands-on Class Project

Practice these 7 basic elements whenever you draw in meetings

People.  Whenever is possible, start your drawing with people. People like to identify themselves in any picture, so take their attention instantly. To show a person, draw a star. You can create persons in many variations in just a few strokes. These are simple icons, which people will remember.

Place and time.  Context matters. Orient people in space and time. Avoid too much details. Add a platform. Just make a square and two lines down for a signpost. A flat horizon line can indicate inside, a curved line means outside.

Process. To show what happens or how something unfolds, use arrows. You can use simple ones, but remember that different arrows create different meanings.

Speech. You already can show people and process from a to b. Now you can add life to the picture by showing what people are saying, thinking and feeling. These are simple speech and thought bubbles which can do the job.

Texts add the vital information to your drawings, but don’t forget - less is more. Use as few precise words as possible. Change size, style, shape, and color to indicate meaning and value. To make lists easier to read, use bullets and different shapes - they will help separate information.

Color helps us navigate the information we see. Use color to make things stand out, show relations and add energy. Colors can add meaning to a simple illustration and add depth to a story.

Effects. With just a few lines you can add energy, attention to certain important parts, movement - to objects, emotions and moods - to people and depth and contrast to content.

Now you are ready to put the seven elements work together.

first, start by drawing the people involved. second, place them somewhere with platforms and signs. thirdly, show the process. then you add speech or thought bubbles and text, showing what people are thinking and saying. Finally, add color and effects to give depth and life to the poster.

With these seven building blocks, you can build stories. Using just seven elements you are now able to turn a white canvas into a powerful presentation tool or an engaging dialog tool.

Now you just need to add your eighth element - your own visual language - visuals specific to your area of work. what do you need to be able to draw in a simple way: strategy? diversity? green growth? or?..   you need your own large visual vocabulary which with your tools and basic 7 elements of graphic facilitation enables you to work specifically within your context.

Three easy steps and three simple tips to create your own visual language.

1. List keywords you need to be able to visualize. they communicate the essence of your work, knowledge, and expertise.

2. Categorise. Organize your listed words into these five categories:  things, people, places, processes, concepts. to find out how to draw each word, the following tips can help you.

tip. brain symbols. our brain is quick wen it comes to processing visual information, so when drawing you just need to use   very basic, simple symbols   like these:

Our brain distils what we see in the real world into very basic and recognizable symbols. simple icons put together are easy to understand by others. 

    tip. the easiest words to draw are what is visible to the eye. therefore it helps, so to speak, think like a camera. if you could take a picture of a meaning of the word, what artifacts would be in the picture? how is involved? how? look for and use brain symbols to draw it.

Now you are ready to the third step: drawing your categorized words. Things are often easiest to draw. They are easy to take photo if and distill into basic symbols. 

When drawing people, you often only need to add an extra object to a person or group to give meaning. The student needs a bag, the development team - an arrow, mankind could be people standing on a globe.

Illustrating place can also be done just by adding extra. classroom - desks and blackboard. remember - camera thinking and brain symbols. Company - this could be a building, Earth - the globe.

Processes is about someone doing something somewhere. this means finding creative ways combining people, things and arrows. Learning - a stairway, an arrow and a person. Brainstorm - a group of people and a lightbulb. Upcycling - a plastic bottle turned into a jacket.

Concepts are usually most abstract and hardest to draw. To find words fitting various concepts demands a great deal of creative thinking. Learning styles, innovation, sustainability. Concepts can be depicted by combining things, people, places and processes.

      3. tip. You define. Images are often ambiguous. They can be interpreted in many different ways. A very important aspect of creating a visual language is therefore to understand that you define the meaning of the visuals. The value of a visual language increases when done in a collective process. For example with your team where you build shared understanding which everyone benefits from.

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You are now ready to create and expand your own visual language. The next step is to practice and share it with others. And then start combining icons into larger context of meaning, bringing value not only to your team but also to your organisation and other stakeholders.