1. It Isn’t Nothing,
It’s A Creative Outlet
Or, You Only Call It That Because
That’s The Word For It
2. All this talk of inspirational links
I’m an artist first, a web professional second
I come from a long line of artistic folk:
– Teachers
– Designers
– Photographers
– Phone doodlers
Personal inspiration: marks on paper
3.
4. According to Sunni Brown, there’s never been a positive
definition of “doodle”
Current dictionary definition:
– To scribble absentmindedly; engage in idle activity; dawdle; a
rough drawing made absentmindedly.
Sunni’s proposed definition:
– To make spontaneous marks to help yourself think
5. Doodling…
Engages more of your brain than listening alone
– Increased focus
– Better retention
Can tap into your subconscious
Allows creative problem solving – finding ways around
creative roadblocks
6. Four modalities of absorbing information
–
–
–
–
To successfully retain info, a learner must engage two of
the four, or one plus a strong emotion
7. Doodling engages all four modalities
plus the opportunity for an emotional response
Doodlers have been shown to have better
retention than non-doodlers
Doodling can be extremely helpful in situations with high
info density, where retention is key
But… how to incorporate it?
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13. Doodling can
– Help the visually-minded process information, organize
thoughts, and solve problems
– Improve focus and retention
– Serve as an outlet for the subconscious
– Lead to great art and design
Use with care – make sure everyone in the meeting isn’t
there to see what you draw
This was a difficult presentation to put together for me, as I haven’t been with Active for that long, and I’ve only seen two of these so far. I don’t have a lot of info about everyone else’s backgrounds or levels of knowledge, and I felt a little awkward presuming to know more about UI than anyone else here. However, one of the topics Margaret kept touching on was “inspiration”. While my bookmarks aren’t as wide-ranging as the list of inspirational links which Margaret sent around, it got me thinking about what drives us as creatives. My background is fine art, and I come from a long line of creative people, but I still didn’t have clue as to what to present to you.My grandmother taught grade school. My mother graduated from RISD and worked for a cartographer, and eventually pre-computer desktop publishing. Both were prolific phone doodlers – my house and my grandmother’s had an area near the phone littered with notepaper covered in scribbles, notes, phone numbers turned into faces, all sorts of stuff. On my dad’s side: my dad was a commercial photographer, and his father was an advertising designers in the 40s and 50s. Somewhere back there is WIlliam Addison Dwiggins, an American Renaissance man made puppets, designed buildings, and created typefaces and the logo for Knopff. So I took a long look at what inspires me, and that’s marks on paper. Almost every piece of paper I have sports some sort of margin art, notes, and otherwise “idle” mark-making, so it’s clearly something deeply ingrained in me. A co-worker suggested, mostly in jest, that I do a presentation on my meeting notes, because I’m the only one around here who goes to meetings with a sketchbook instead of a notebook. Eventually I realized it wasn’t such a joke, so today’s topic is …
Doodles.
A while back, I was pointed to a TED talk by Sunni Brown, an “infodoodler” and leading proponent of “gamestorming” rather than brainstorming, and Sharpie’s Resident Doodle Expert. Her talk looks at the topic of doodling and how it’s viewed, as well as what a powerful tool it can be when it’s allowed to flourish. I took her message to heart – I have the video on my iPhone and watch it often – and realized that what I do is actually useful to my process, rather than a cause for medication.Old definitions include: simpleton, rube, someone to take advantage of, to make meaningless marksEven once it moved from an insult to a dismissive category of drawing, doodling retained its negative connotation – it’s seen as wasting time, or a lack of attentionShe hopes to change that perception by championing doodling as a tool, and proposing a new def, one that more accurately reflects the power doodling can have to learning new information.
