Draw to Communicate: Create Your Visual Profile

1. Introduction: So a couple of months ago, I put out a class called think visually, communicate your ideas. So a simple drawing. And it had taken me down several avenues since I went from helping a group of entrepreneurs. You buys their business ideas, potentially communicating it to future investors or clients. To guiding a group of hotel managers, brainstorm visually, come up with ideas and communicate with each other to them working on starting a local society here next to your peer that would help people from different walks of life be able to identify and then solve problems more effectively and communicate among each other more efficiently. And then tying that society to the community of visual thinkers worldwide. And then that class has led me to this high and winter, pronounced the way British people say winter. And I'm a Saudi born Ethiopia architect, Illustrator and storyteller, following the release of big visual and communicate your ideas. So a simple drawing, I received several responses online and smooth or in-person trainings that are conducted. And those inputs are what's forming this class. So in this one, we'll first go through an exercise to help you visually capture something from your surroundings in the most efficient, effective way possible. So you'll be capturing just enough detail to communicate what it is you're trying to show in this exercise could inform what we'll be doing in the class project, where you will be creating your persona. So you'll be drawing an illustration of yourself along with several characteristics or qualities or hobbies that you're known for. Possibly the things that your friends would use to describe you when introducing you to someone new. And finally, in our bonus lesson, I'm gonna be showing you a few books that you can then use as guides or inspirations. Who knows journey to becoming very comfortable with visual communication. But in the end of all of this, my hope and my goal for you is that after you've picked up on some of the elements that are commonly used in the visual communication world. Probably seen some of the books that I'll be sharing with you and exercises that we'll go through in this class. I hope that you're able to develop this further and have your own style whenever you express your ideas. So you'd have your touch whenever you are communicating or concept. So let's get to it. 2. Class Materials: So all you'll need with this one is something to draw with. So either a pen or a marker, something to do on any kind of paper that you are comfortable using, and possibly a coloring medium like a marker or a color pencil that can add that pop to your drawings for the coloring mediums, very flexible. You can use anything from markers, water-based or alcohol-based. Two watercolor paints and pastels, crayons, anything that you're comfortable with, anything that you have available to you. If I had markers, I would have used those instead of the color pencils that I'll be using in this exercise, the next lesson is an exercise called draw from life. And I'll be trying to capture a few things from my surroundings here and I hope that you'll be doing the same. See you in the next one. 3. Exercise: Draw From Life: So I hope you have your drawing medium, probably coloring medium and piece of paper or sketchbook ready. We'll be drawing something, anything from your surroundings. So the thing about this exercise is that I want you to be able to train your eye to visually capture anything that you do want to draw, no matter how many visual communication or growing related books you go through and how many exercises you follow online, there will always be things in your immediate surroundings that are unique to you and unique to your context. So it would be great skill to have to be able to look at anything and be like, I want to be able to draw that in a very simple way, in a way that would capture its essence to show what it is and how the visual record of this thing that I want to either show to someone else or keep for myself, right? So for this exercise, I'm going to be using the sketchbook which was made by my friends at the bulb. And it has these really beautiful pages that I just, I just love how this feels, how it looks, the color. So I'm going to be using that for my exercise and I think also for my class project actually a page and get to it. I want this to be spontaneous. I'm going to be swatching what I have. I have this pen. I want you to just be comfortable with the tool that you're gonna be using first. Because I'm always a fan of visual warm-ups. It's just fun and it kinda hurts. You get loose. And once you have that loose feel to your drawings, you can really create some really dynamic illustrations diagram, since it's cool, I recommend you do it. Test your lines. Like don't be precious about the page just to do it over. I'm literally just scribbling like I hope you just encourage to do the same. You know, just all about loosening up your hand. This one looks now. So I'll just be writing exercise one. This marker is very extra for that, but just be calling it exercise. I'm gonna be getting right into it with a pen because yeah, I want you to be brave with this. I want you to be able to do this live in public, in front of your friends, just by yourself. I don't want you to be very precious with over planning what, what's gonna be happening. So I'm gonna be starting with the first item that I see that I want to capture. Maybe it's gonna be something in my pouch or something that I already have it here. If I can, I can just draw this marker. I can just start with that. I can do my warm-up. I just want to reduce every shape that I have in mind to its most basic shapes, every item that I have in mind. So I'm just going to do that to the marker and write little chisel end. And I'm just going to add few more details here. We can look at something that is written here. Something is written here. And that's it. I have my marker with its slit. That's it. This is the marker. Maybe I'm just going to be filling in the inside because it's black. I'll just get right into it with the same pen I used. I'm gonna be picking a color to bring all of these elements together in the end. But for now I just want to stick with black and white, so I have my marker and now I want to draw something that I use commonly. So I have these brush debt my mom used to use to map down my baby here back when I was a kid and I still use it to this day. So I think I just saw it on my way back into my room. So you actually draw that here. I'll try to respect the scale because the brush is kind of the same size as this marker. So I'm just going to which perspective do I want? Okay, it's there. It has a round head and I'm just going to have the brushes. And this tiny handle. Then it has these little bristles. Want to be able to capture those bristles, not all of them obviously because I just I don't want to waste time. So I'm just going to call that leave that as it is. And another item that maybe I use a lot and I love using with probably be at this point, I want you to look around you and pick something that you can go. I can draw that. Let me try. I'm just going to go for my is this plant. I'm just going to leave a gap here or should I leave the gap here, I think, yeah, kinda do this. And I'm going to draw the pot and be very deliberate with my strokes. Like, I don't want to be precious about like Cusco very slowly. I feel like that's what creates the dynamism. To be able to just go, oop. If I mess up, I must see this one is very thick, but what can you do about it? Now just to match that, I'm going to make this one also very thick. It doesn't have to be very true to life only I know exactly how this plant looks, so that goes that way and I'm just going to try to capture the foliage around. It's not really foliage is just leaves, but I don't want to draw them individually. Feel like when you do this, it shows enough detail that that's a plant. Okay, we get it. I'm going to add a few details to this and maybe just add some this to show that there's the, there's movement in the leaves and plants are going to be coloring in the pot. Okay. So what's something else I want to draw? I want to draw, I want to draw. I want to draw this Giovanna. And remember how I said I want to respect to scale. I changed my mind. I'm just going to be twisting it this way and going, Okay, I have this, I have this, I have this, I have this. Remember, I have the biggest parts, so not very accurate at all, but just include enough detail right here. So this is something that we use a lot in Ethiopia. This is where how we boil our coffee and it's part of this entire elaborate ceremony for drinking coffee. The coffee boils down here, the heat source is here, and then smoke comes out. And then at some point you got to pour the coffee. So finally, I'm just going to be doing something to fill up whatever is left here. So what can I what can I do? Something that I use to some extent would probably be my drawing tablet. I want to draw something more geometric. So not the circled part is here, I think. And then there's a line here. And then there's buttons on here. Draw the walk on pen beside it. I don't know how much of the walk home I should color should I color anything at all? Maybe it's gonna be overwhelming on the page. But this is about making very quick decisions and being able to just go again. If it's, if it works, it works. If it doesn't, it's just an exercise. So I'm going to use a colored pencil for this one. It's going to be lighter gray. Then I'm going to have a lighter gray one here. Just going to add a frame right here. And I want to add just a touch off a glue throw from like, I want you to use this as probably just a chance to just practice your lettering. That's generally a cool skill to have to just be able to write in a way that will be legible from far away or in a way that it look consistent throughout the page. Whether the page is Kanye or it's gonna be on a larger sheet of paper in a team setting, e.g. so I'm gonna be adding colors here now, I don't know what I should be doing. We should I go for a green or brown or maybe I should just go for the brown eyed, just color the parts that are brown. Leave the rest. I don't want to color all these leaves. I just want to pop of color. I don't want to go into a coloring exercise. I kinda just want to be able to color parts and leave some. Like I don't want to color everything either. If you'd like to add some more dynamism that way, the marker to be brown, the marker tip. And this was brown. Brown. I think they should be brown. Black somehow. I'm going to make this gray just so the bristles part stands out. And I'm gonna make this a darker gray or black. I just want to add these fun little touches that can make it look more sketchy and dynamics. So I'm just gonna do this. Do this with the brush. Kinda helps fill up the page a bit more and make it really unfinished and have this cool. Sign off, whatever you do. And I think we're done with this one. Yeah, this is it. I drew my marker, my hair brush as if I know that my grandma gave my mom the Wacom tablet that I tend to use in a plant that I have in my room. So you can draw anything from around your life, from your surroundings, from your workplace or something from memory. But I think it's really helps to have that thing in front of you and to be able to just use that as an exercise. But instead of it being a real life or a still-life drawing, like a very accurate one. This is more sketchy, more fun and just about capturing the essence of that item that you want to show. Now that we're done with this exercise, we're gonna be moving on to our main class project. This is again going to be a very simple one. So I hope that you have your sketch book and you're probably the same material to use for the exercise. And let's get to it. 4. Class Project: Create Your Visual Profile: So this is gonna be the meat of this class. This is where you're gonna be drawing an illustrated profile of yourself. And I hope that you have the same materials that are used in the previous exercise. I'll be using my sketchbook and let's just dive right into it. So for the visual profile, I want us to be able to capture ourselves on paper in the most simple, cliche way possible. So your hobbies, your family structure, the things that you love doing, and possibly your pets, your profession. It can be anything that your friends would use to describe you to someone you're introducing you to? My case. I'm probably just going to start with myself. So I want you to be able to draw yourself in your favorite outfit or something that looks like it. So again, minimal details. Usually in pants at home. And so I get this structured is to show my body and my head would be right here. Usually I have my hair all over the place. But my hair can be wild. So I just I did this for my hairstyle and I'm gonna be adding just a few details inside where my parents would end. So usually wear layers of clothing at home because I get cold very easily. So I'm probably just in a shower or a poncho. Be drawing the ground underneath me. For that, I'm gonna be using a thicker marker because I want to be able to ground myself here. I suggest drawing the ground after you draw the person or whatever subject that you have, because you don't really know when you're drawing very fast where your feet will land. So I don't want to slide to put the ground, say, okay, the ground is here and then, then I don't reach it when I'm drawing quickly. So just wanted to do that. And I probably also, I love the color black, so I'm probably just going to cut off my pants black. This is also a way of hiding any flaws that you find. Like let's say I want to know what to call the Saudis bell bottoms like this. My hands in my pockets. And now I'm going to get to the different things that describe me as a person. So probably just want to add a little grass here and there. And why I'm out in the grass. I like the hippie vibe. I have probably going to be using this right here. You can either draw the circle by hand. It doesn't have to be perfect or find any circular objects that you can draw with me. Do that right here. I'm going to have one right here. You can use certain templates to add that contrast. So you have some very accurate looking geometric shapes, and then you have more blobby, more fun whimsical shapes along with it. So that creates a nice interesting contrast or place where you have frame or some kind of outline. And then you can go crazy with it or have your drawings fit into that outline in a way I feel like for me this is the purpose of this. He made a mistake. This is the purpose of this tracing right here where I'm not doing it by hand. Sometimes I like to do it by hand, but right now I want it template. Should I do? Should I use a stamp like another? Hey, I think I should use this. Alright, I have this stamp thing that I bought. And then I want to, I don't want it to be very uniform and symmetrical to this. I'm just going to play with placements until I'm happy with it. Now I'm gonna be getting to drawing the different aspects of myself that I think people would describe me, used to describe me. So I'd probably start with what I usually do, which is either writing, editing videos, and planning scripts. So I think all of that can be encompassed in a laptop. So I'm probably just going to have a laptop right here. I want you to be able to draw very confident lines whenever you are doing any geometric shapes and overlap the ends of each line. Usually it doesn't show confidence when you are drawing feathered lines like you're not really sure what you want to do. So even if you're not sure what he wanted, which is risk messing up. Just go ahead and do it. And even if it's a wiggly weird shape, try to have one continuous line that begins at a certain point and then the end point overlaps that beginning point. So that really shows confidence even in geometric shapes, it's really shows confidence when you do this. And this set of two just, you know, your, your box really doesn't overlap. There are little gaps here. The show us more confidence. So I think that when you're drawing any kind of flights, it really helps to connect them to each other. And two As much as possible reduce the number of lines you're using. So more continuous lines instead of unless you're drawing in a different direction. So let's say for this box, I could have done this. But doing this also makes sense because it's more comfortable for my hand movement twice. But whatever you do, your stroke should have some kind of intentionality or should show that for it to look more dynamic and for it to actually look like a very, have that fresh quality to it. So I suggest that you practice this in your warm-up. So I'm just gonna do this and laptop is open. I want to draw the frame inside. Also probably want to have like a document that is open. Color the inside black. Play with just a pen and paper in the contrast, I feel like it's really develops your muscle, your drawing muscle actually helped me a lot to be able to block things immediately to not eat color in the first place. Another thing that I have probably known for is I'm a cat lady. So I have like six cats now. Have the ginger capture their tail. I love their tail and how? Philosophy? Okay, so I have these three cats and then I have She's a stray that we adopted some time ago. When I have a little three of milk. Again, I want to be able to reduce anything that I draw into its simplest, most easy to grasp shapes. So this is literally just an oval with another upside down oval with the cat ears. And then for the tail is just like an S shape and that's it. It's a tail. And since you had a few black marks on her and probably just going to add that here in there. Then the next one will probably be that I graduated from architecture school and I have been doing some architectural works. So maybe something engineers and architects are known for is using these tools. Then just how something inside, just like lines inside. It's easy to add. It takes you less than 5 min. I suggest you add a few details here and there. But if it's going to take a bit too long and it's just not making it fun anymore than I suggest that you don't do it. Another thing that I do is I play the guitar. So I'm just especially during quarantine, I really sat down dedicated hours writing music and it was just this really relaxing thing for me. Really cool. And just like my little secret, I heard my friends who I shared my work with, but I don't really share all of it online. So I think just going to add these little musical notes. I'm going to be adding my pop of color now. So I'm just going to add it to the cat section here. Okay, So now this is, these are the things that I'm known for and I'm just going to be attributable to myself. So I'm going to be using the same pen tool. Just draw a line like this and pointed to me, I want you to have fun with this can be an arrow that you can go crazy with. We can go something like this, something like this. You can make it like a rigid line like this. I talked about adults and about how to connect one idea or diagram to the next in my previous class and think visual. I want to end it with a circle. Actually, I just decided that I want to end it with a circus or have a breaking line, and then it ended to the circle. Now, I want to darken some of the edges, like especially the ones on my left. So it's going to be adding that here. Okay. So I've gotten a bit obsessive over this one a bit more than I would like. So I'm just going to add a few more touches just to make it feel more dynamic and stuff. So I'm just going to add a grass or like sorry, like a ground thing here, just add some dimension. And then I'm going to be adding some shapes just to show more sketchiness so it doesn't look very pressures or anything. I just want to add that freshness to call this my visual proof. I'm just going to title it. I am using this piece of paper so that I don't smudge what I already did, sign it off. So now that we're done with this, I hope that you can take a picture of whatever You mean, even if you think it's incomplete or you can do more, I hope that you can take a picture of what you've done so far and upload it in the projects and resources section. Again, this is about visual communication. So I really hope that you don't have the pressure to create something that is perfect or pretty, or something that is artistically exceptional. That's not the point here. We're trying to communicate a few ideas and I hope that you're able to do that through this project. In the next lesson, I'm going to be sharing a few books that I really think would show you how different elements and ideas, abstract ideas, even in our world, can be captured in a very simple visual way that is very easy to communicate. Seeing the next one. 5. Bonus Lesson: Book Recommendations: So I'm gonna be showing you a few books that I think would be good examples of how visual communication works and the different elements that go into it. And I hope that you don't treat these books the way you would read any book that is non-visual. I hope that you'll have a sketchbook or a piece of paper in hand that you can draw examples from here as you go. So it's not just going through the pages like a magazine catalog or like a regular book, it's going to be packaged for you as well as this one is Bye, David submit. This guy is a very highly held figure in the visual communication, visual facilitation world. And he lists some very good examples of how visual communication can work among team members, small or big, how teams can brainstorm effectively. There are several templates here. David Silva found a group of consultants and with a lot of these books you can Google. The authors are the people behind this work and you'll see that they're very active on their websites. They have services that they provide, and it's pretty cool. This was really, really helpful for me for the last training that are conducted in a hotel here in Sabah, it gave me a lot of guidance and a lot of inspiration for how systems can be really understood. And brainstorming sessions can be held in a very effective way where there is a certain element of looseness or a certain element of serendipity and just letting whatever happens happen and letting ideas flow seamlessly. But there's also some kind of structure or outline that we will be getting the takeaway from all of these ideas into by the end of the day. So that we have some results from all of this brainstorming and all of this ideation in a team. So it's not just about creating beautiful visuals by the end of brainstorming sessions or by the end of meetings, or any kind of event where you have a group of people in your relaying ideas. It's also about communicating very effectively and communicating in a way that would make sense to everyone on board. So there aren't as many misunderstandings or misinterpretations of what someone proposed. This one is a very fun book. This is called the backup load visual dictionary. Basically it's a bilingual book and its features, this magical marker, I think it's called an oil gland marker. It's pretty cool. I tried it out the other day and Q. Brook or someone who I met after my first class and he's the one who had given me a lot of these books. This is the, basically a really good visual vocabulary for if you really just want to say, okay, you know what today, I want to add this up and be able to draw something from here, whether it's from a template or one of the figures that they have or the different interpretations of abstractions, whether it is t moving forward through a phase or a restructuring of a company, or abstract things that you think, How can this be visualized? They will have ideas for that. It's pretty cool actually, and I love that, Dave, if you can see these colors, they've kind of divided each section into a color theme. You can look for this by theme and be level one day. It can be like, okay, my meeting is gonna be about methods, or about technology, or about company structures, about finances. So I want to be able to have a few ideas of how I can portray ideas that we'll commonly used in the field that I'm trying to get into, the field that I'm trying to communicate. And x1 would be like seminars and conferences related. So they would have these very simple drawings. I love that they use markers. It has that hand-drawn touch to it that I believed that can be translated digitally sometimes. But something is when it's really done by hand. And again, there's leaning into cliches, are leaning into visual vocabulary that we're already familiar with, whether in science that we encounter in daily life or in the different media that we consume, our phones, emojis that we have. So it's all things that are already familiar with. You don't want to be very different when trying to portray something that you want to communicate. That is your primary purpose. You want to communicate something that you both understand, but you want to capture it visually and share it. When you do that, you try to lean to the thing that is most familiar to people. So I think that's what they are leaning into here. You can see the different name badges. You can see the registration person just standing here. You can see the sound system over here. So there's English section and there's this one in German, I think it's in German. So the black one would be in German in there, green one would be in English. I think this would also be a way to permit practice. Some German, I don't know any German by the way, so it's just the same. So there are several examples like that. So now this one is called visual thinking by Willoughby and brand, and she's the founder of the Buddha brand. I suggest that you go online and you check them out, check out the work that she has on there and on her person and Instagram too. So this is a really huge fan of the cupboard and how everything is laid out. Now a lot of the drawings here are kind of familiar to the ones that I've been doing for some time, but it was really cool to see. It's done with a different twist. Like I said. The more you do this, you're going to have style of your own. You're going to have your own touch that these books would be a very good guide for, like the visual meeting spoke. There are some templates on here that you can use as a team or in a corporate setting. A lot of these books are targeted at the corporate world. So it's about sharing information among team members very effectively and recording that information. And also about really listening to what's being said and being able to record that information life visually. So as you can see, there's some beautiful graphics on here. She uses minimal number of colors. I really like that. They don't use that many colors in most of these books. They're very intentional with the kind of fiber that they're going for in that it shouldn't be very overwhelming, shouldn't feel very chaotic. So she has been individually facilitation visual communication world for years now and she has experienced with different methods that work determining cause and effect or an cataloging information in a very effective, very easy to grasp way. And it's just such a beautiful book. I have to say it's, if you're going to dive into this rabbit hole, you might as well do it well, right. This one is called back of a napkin by Dan Roam, is that the coverage is pretty this book I've heard of and started reading a long, long time ago. Actually, I ever read the story or Dan Roam how he was in the meeting room with the penguins book publishers. And he's just supposed to, he was pitching this idea that he had and they told him that was too expensive. So he came up with this idea right there in front of those people. So it was just, you know, being able to draw on the back of the napkin, being able to do something very quickly and taking advantage of drawing to really be able to break the barriers of culture and language. One of the main takeaways I took from here is that it might actually be harder for people who are in the design industry. So let's say architects, graphic designers, people who already draw professionally do more graphics related work. He actually argues in parts of the book that it's actually harder for these people to be able to go, you know what, I'm just going to be drawing to communicate. Well, I'm just going to make this as simple as possible and not worry about making it pretty or professional or whatever. So he was kind of talking about that kind of being a hurdle of sorts and that really resonated with me and with my experience being able to, being known as a person who's been drawing for her whole life and drawing with sand being paid for my illustration, my animation work. And it can be kinda hard to be like, Okay, now, I can just do something and be judged for it right now. Just draw something and even if it doesn't look good, I'll be okay with it. Do you know it's hard to get to that level if you are someone who's known for your drawings. So I kinda, yeah, I would recommend this book. It has gone very far with this book. And yeah, then we have Guzman thinking with your pen by Martin Hoffman. We kinda get into the technique aspect and the explanations morning shows you why he does certain diagrams or restrictions the way that he does. He explains the colors, how colors would be harmonious with each other, especially when you're going to be drawing on a large piece of paper or a large board. You have to be very careful with not having too many colors on there to kind of visually disturb the person who's going to be perceiving this information. And so he talks about the very basics of what colors should be harmonious and being very intentional with them and how you use them. And then you kinda talks about relationships, how to portray those in the most effective, simple way possible. I really like his illustration style. If you like, there's a, he has a nice touch to his work. I really like when people use these kind of visuals to portray layers and layers of information and seeing how far it can go without it looking too jumbled or needing a more refined technique off Recording. And then he talks about lettering. And he talks about how it's important to have your own lettering style and being able to write in a way that's very clear and legible and easy to grasp. This is something that I did in a training that I conducted some time ago. And this was where I asked people to write each other's names. So I had the names of everybody in the training and I wrote each of their names, cut it into different pieces of paper right before the meeting. I will read those papers containing these names and I put them under everybody's chairs Randomly and the name that they got was the name that they have to write on a piece of paper with no line and with different pens and markers types. So that was just then practicing their lettering style. And I try to encourage them to use more capitalisation and to be able to write in a straight line and very consistent where there isn't an odd spacing between each letters. So maybe they felt like they were in primary school again, maybe they went, Oh, why are we writing these simple words like this again, like, you know, like are we kids? But I really think that being able to produce really large handwriting and being able to write in straight lines or in whatever shape that you like is really going to help if we're going to take this visual communication brainstorming thing into the team level and being able to write live. Now, this is generated describing a social art of the 21st century. It's by CalliBird and I suggest that you go to her website or website is amazing. She has some gorgeous examples of graphic recording such as they can in meetings worldwide. And this book is more deep in the theory aspect into how drawing isn't just a method of showing what you're thinking, but it's also a method of thinking itself. A few of these books have gotten to that, but I think that she really gets deep into that, into the psychological aspect of it and how it works and what visualization does to us and for us. Yeah, So if you get a chance, I hope that you get into one or two or more of these books. And I hope that you always have a piece of paper, use it even as a bookmark and draw while you're seeing the examples right there on the page, try to capture what you see. And that application is usually how we get good and comfortable with any technique. So I hope that you get to it and have fun. 6. Closing: Okay, Now that we are done, I'm really grateful that you spent these precious minutes of yours with me and I hope that this bite-sized class has nudged you to pick up a pen, any medium that you have around you and just start drawing. The whole point of visual is to use the human bias to visual information to your advantage. So this would be a way for you to be able to express your ideas in a way that is very easy for most of the population to understand this. I hope it would be a lot more comfortable with a pen and paper, even transfer those skills to digital drawing. You can watch my first think visually, communicate your ideas through a simple drawing right here on Skillshare from my profile and you can follow me on social. So the Instagram, Facebook, media, YouTube, all the links are right down here in the description box. If you do create any drawings, whether in the exercise section or the class project section, I hope that you can upload whatever you make in the projects and resources section. I would love to see that, or if you want to share it on social media, I hope that you use the hashtag, think visual with winter on Instagram. Be sure to check those out. I hope you have a wonderful day or night or evening, whatever time it is where you are and see you next time. Hi.