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43
2 WORK VISUALLY
equipment
You don’t need much to work visually, but here are
some items that you’ll find useful along the way.
Felt tips (lots of black ones, but also colours).
Chisel tip marker pens. Again, black ones
but also some colours are good.
Paper. A4 paper, flip chart paper and if
you can get your hands on it, some of the
big stuff.
Sticky notes. Ideally 4 or 5 different colours.
Index cards.
Stuff to stick with. In my toolkit I have Scotch
tape and white tack.
Sticky dots, for voting.
Washi tape. I find it useful for making
connections when I’m working up on
the wall with sheets of paper, index cards or
sticky notes.
A blank‑page A5 notebook.
A cheap sketchbook. Mine is A3.
If you want a linked kit list, then you can find one
you’re designed to
be visual
3
why?
46 DRAW A BETTER BUSINESS
the evidence as to why
we should all be working
more visually is pretty
overwhelming
No doubt you’ve already heard a lot of it,
otherwise you wouldn’t have bought this book in
the first place.
I’m not going to delve too deeply into the science,
but I will summarise some of the key reasons why
it’s worth it. Worth it for you, for your business and
for your clients.
You might already feel that you have a preference
for visual learning styles, and that some of us have
a natural preference for Visual Learning. Now of
course, if that sounds like you, then this way of
working will appeal to you very strongly, but that is
just a tiny part of the story.
you’re designed to be
visual
Your brain is so clever that it can take in massive
quantities of data, decipher it, translate it into a
format you can understand and relay it to you in a
way that you can make use of. Genius.
You are so well designed you can take in huge
amounts of complex information, literally in the
47
3 WHY?
blink of an eye. In fact, with most of our sensory
receptors being in our eyes, 90% of data is already
communicated to us visually.
3
it’s more engaging
Working visually engages more of your brain.
4
Literally. Visuals connect with all four of your
brain’s lobes: the frontal lobe: emotions, planning,
problem solving, concentration and writing skills;
your parietal lobe: spatial and visual perception;
your occipital lobe: interpreting vision; and
your temporal lobe: language, memory and
organisation. So more of your brain is engaged
when you are looking at visual communications.
it’s quicker
Communicating visually works so well that it’s not
whether your drawings are good enough that you
need to worry about, it’s that you are using the
right visual, in the right place at the right time. In
fact, you can process visuals so efficiently that
you can absorb more information, more efficiently
than in any other way.
48 DRAW A BETTER BUSINESS
try this
If you’re not sure whether or not to believe me
set aside 15 minutes and try this exercise:
1. Find a magazine.
2. Flick through and pick a photograph of a
scene. Any type of scene is fine.
3. What did the photo make you think and
feel when you first saw it?
4. Now get into literal mode and write down
everything the picture is communicating.
I mean EVERYTHING. What can you see, what
size are the objects? What are they doing?
Are they interacting with each other or with
you? Make a note of colour, emotion, feelings,
the weather, the lighting, the placement
of objects. Be as thorough as you can — I
promise I’ll only make you do this once!
Did you fill one paragraph? Three? More?? All
of that information. That detail and minutiae,
those feelings and emotions, the message
the photographer wanted to convey…all of
that you pretty much picked up in a couple
of seconds of looking at the image. You saw
it, you interpreted it and you made sense of it.
You can get a sense of a visual scene in less
than 1/10 of a second.
5
That is pretty powerful
stuff, especially when a study from Microsoft
revealed we now have an attention span
shorter than a goldfish.