When a speaker takes the stage, the room falls into focused silence. It was their name that drew the crowds to this conference. Slides begin to complement their words, and hundreds of eyes fixed on them try to commit as much as possible to memory.

Meanwhile, there is one person in the room looking in a completely different direction. They stand on the left side of the stage, their gaze fixed on a large, illuminated paper board. Or rather, on the drawings they are deftly creating right now.

What are they doing at this conference? Why do the world's largest corporations ask for their help? And what is all this supposed to achieve? Read on!

What's missing at conferences?

Many years ago, when the first business conferences appeared in Poland, they were greeted with great enthusiasm. After all, you could finally meet everyone in the industry in one place. Conversations over coffee encouraged the exchange of views and building business contacts. Presentations helped keep up with the latest trends.

Today this market has developed enormously. Speakers are aware that it's not enough to walk on stage and read their slides in a monotone. They're getting better and better, because the bar keeps being raised. Thanks to the popularity of TED-style conferences, practically anyone can watch plenty of well-delivered talks without leaving home. And that raises the expectations of conference attendees.

Some even joke about this showmanship. Still, it can't be denied that today speakers are sometimes so engaging that you don't know whether to take notes, snap photos, record everything on your phone, or just immerse yourself in their words. And there are usually at least a few of them, so it's hard to remember this enormous amount of information. And there's one more problem. Conferences are for networking, but not everyone feels comfortable starting conversations with strangers (introverts, for example).

This is where the person standing off to the side of the stage comes in. That person is a graphic recorder, someone who creates a visual record. What do they do?

Using drawings that everyone can understand, along with essential, economical text, they capture each talk, supporting the memorization of the most important elements.

It looks something like this:

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When conference attendees know that the speakers' talks are being recorded, they listen more attentively. They no longer have to stand in an uncomfortable mental split between note-taking and listening. As a result, they remember the talks themselves better, and consequently – the entire conference.

What's more: if they have the graphic recorder within sight, they can also glance at the drawings being created in real time, because they are a visual summary of what the speaker is saying. This helps the knowledge stick even more.

What is it called?

In English, this type of service is most commonly called graphic recording. However, it goes by other creative names such as scribing, graphic harvesting, graphic facilitation (which is actually significantly different from graphic recording).

Interestingly:

in the US, this service is often named with the prefix graphic, meaning graphic (e.g. graphic recording, graphic harvesting, graphic facilitation etc.), while in the UK the word visual is preferred, meaning visual (similarly visual recording, visual harvesting, visual facilitation etc.). As you can see, naming dilemmas exist in every language – whether English or Polish.

In Poland, there are also multiple terms used to describe the same thing. A person who does graphic recording is, for example: graphic facilitator, visual scribe, visual translator, conference illustrator, thought stylist, mind draftsman (!) or rysliciel. And the service a graphic recorder performs is: graphic facilitation, (large-format) visual recording, graphic recording, thought recording or draw-writing.

Despite the multitude of names, the most popular term in Poland is still Graphic Recording.

Graphic Recording at a conference

So what does using Graphic Recording at a conference look like? During the break, attendees go out to drink coffee and tea and grab a bite. Right next to the catering, there are drawn notes from the talks, eagerly photographed by participants.

They also serve as a natural pretext for starting a conversation, helping to break the ice.

It's easier to start a conversation when you have a shared topic

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Speakers also capture the drawings, which are a very surprising souvenir for them. They often then share the boards on their LinkedIn and Facebook and can't get over the fact that the board contains exactly what they talked about during their presentation.

GR shared by Łukasz Kosuniak, Marketing Manager at Samsung and author of the blog businessmarketer.pl

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The advantage of Graphic Recording / visual recording is creating an image on a single board. This gives us the so-called big picture, meaning the full picture of the talk (or even the entire conference). Unlike a sequence of a dozen or several dozen slides, it's easy to grasp the full picture of the topic at once.

When the conference ends, attendees receive high-quality photos of the boards. They have summaries of each talk at hand and can recall their content within seconds.

A brief history of Graphic Recording

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when this drawing during events was born. David Sibbet, called the Father (or perhaps even Grandfather) of visual practice by the International Forum of Visual Practitioners community, claims that the first graphic facilitations took place in the United States back in the 1970s.

Even then it was obvious that groups work much better, think much more productively, and remember much more when they have the opportunity to process information visually and textually at the same time.

As the industry develops, so do the possibilities of GR. Here with Natalia Klonowska and Ola Krawczyk against the backdrop of our work during the New Trends in Tourism 2017 conference ?

graphic recording

For several years now, we've been observing a real boom in these services in Poland. Beyond open conferences attended by dozens or hundreds of people, Graphic Recording is also commissioned by companies for their internal needs.

I myself (and I've been doing GR since 2013) have done it for companies like Google, PKN Orlen, IKEA, PepsiCo, DHL, Danone, Hilti, Bank BPH, and Aviva. My colleagues in the profession (professional Polish scribes can be counted on the fingers of one, at most two hands) also serve many well-known brands.

Although visual support has only been popular in Poland for a few years, they've already written about us in:

Importantly: although graphic recording and visual support for events has only been flourishing in Poland for a few years, that doesn't mean it was only born here recently.

I often meet people at the training sessions I lead, or during closed meetings I facilitate, or at conferences where I do graphic recording, who say "oh wow, I remember this, I used to do it myself maybe 20 years ago, and I didn't know that's what it's called!" or "I remember, once a German came to our company and drew like that" ?

Graphic facilitation during key meetings

I've already mentioned that there's an important difference between Graphic Recording and Graphic Facilitation. What is it? The answer lies in the reasons why companies use Graphic Facilitation.

During strategic and project meetings, a few problems keep recurring like a refrain.

The first is low engagement.

Not all participants are always willing to take an active part in meetings. Sometimes because they don't see the point, often it's also due to fatigue. A good agenda and a dynamic facilitator help move through all the points efficiently.

A good support for a meeting can be exactly a graphic facilitator. They impartially record all statements, which gives employees a sense that they are being heard, and this encourages them to say more.

The meeting gains in productivity. Participants looking at the graphic record see what has already been discussed and where the discussion is heading. Additionally, it helps spark the team's creativity, because they look at the topic from a new, visual angle.

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The second is a lack of agreement.

The same words often carry different meanings. For the Finance Director, project success is something different than for the Marketing Director. Each of us looks through the prism of our position and its associated goals. Capturing the content by a visual facilitator and translating it into visual metaphors helps transparently show all the perspectives on a given topic. Visualization additionally facilitates agreement – because the image already symbolizes a specific interpretation and direction of thinking.

If we symbolize project success on the board with a $ sign, it will mean financial success. The marketing director may then ask to add clasped hands, representing new customers.

This in turn can lead to further discussion in the group led by the facilitator: for example, the group might say: no, we don't mean two hands, but rather a gesture of a dozen hands that are warming up before a fight and placed one on top of another, preparing to chant a motivational slogan.... This will allow the group to realize that it's those dozen or so people jointly striving for financial success.

A Graphic Recorder organizes and summarizes the entire discussion on a given topic, so the team gains a full picture of the situation. This allows them to make the best possible decision about strategy, product or communication.

Sometimes they also ask the participants themselves to draw something. This significantly increases their engagement, and through this unusual form of communication the atmosphere warms up

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Is Graphic Recording for everyone?

Of course, visual translators are not invited to every meeting. It would be cost-inefficient and would create difficulties in matching schedules with graphic recorders' busy calendars.

They usually appear at key meetings, where the decisions made can have far-reaching consequences for the company. In such cases, the visual record created during the meeting is often photographed and distributed to employees. It serves as a summary of the most important points regarding the new strategy or product.

And companies, once they've experienced creative and productive work, tend to be very eager for further experiments and to make use of the work already done by the visual translator. One of my clients used photos of the completed boards to create a wall calendar, as a gift for every employee.

The completed drawings (provided, of course, that the contract with the graphic recorder covers this) can also be used to create various gadgets for employees or clients, such as printed mugs, notebooks, fridge magnets, pins or mouse pads.

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Summary

There are plenty of ways to use Graphic Recording – both at conferences and during meetings. The movement itself has been evolving for over 40 years and its popularity keeps growing. This is particularly visible today, when we have to process vast amounts of information every day and have less and less time.

Professionally made drawings help us grasp the whole message faster and add some relaxing "freshness" to serious topics. And drawings can be used in many ways. Graphic Recorders are usually very creative, so new ideas often emerge during conversations with clients. That's why you never know what the next drawing will bring. And that's the whole charm of Graphic Recording!

If this topic caught your interest and you'd be interested in using Graphic Recording in your organization, let me know at kontakt@klaudiatolman.pl ?

GR8M

PS: Many thanks to Maciek Budkowski, who works with me at ExplainVisually, for his enormous contribution to writing this article ?

Interesting links:

[The article was originally published on http://www.klaudiatolman.pl]