Graphic recording: visual protocol
Hundreds of people in a room follow a presentation more or less attentively. A lot of talking, a lot of theory and unfortunately often a lot of incomprehensible things. You listen, stare at the monotonous PowerPoint battle, occasionally glance at your smartphone and then look back again, bored. We are all familiar with long seminars, conferences and workshops. Graphic recording proves that such conferences are not always monotonous.
But what is graphic recording? Graphic recording (also known as scribing) is nothing more than the visual documentation of the spoken content of a conference or lecture. An illustrator stands in front of an easel or a flipchart and summarizes what is being said in drawings in real time. A large picture is ultimately created from various strokes and colors, illustrating the topic, supporting and summarizing it in a playful way. During a break or at the end, the audience can take another look at the "in-time documentation" of the presentation and view or photograph it at their leisure. This creates exciting dialogs among the participants and a viral distribution of the content on social networks. There are already several companies in the United States that successfully offer graphic recording. ImageThink (imagethink.net) is playing a pioneering role here, transforming large white surfaces into works of art with its slogan "visuals make meetings better", even at huge conferences such as South by Southwest.
Animated videos are another form of graphic recording. These are often so-called explanatory videos, which are ideal for presenting complex issues in a simple way. A good example of this is RSA Animate (thersa.org), which has already achieved over 12 million views on YouTube with its illustration video "What really motivates us".
In Switzerland and Germany too, more and more illustrators are specializing in the new visual documentation method. Everyone has their own style and that's a good thing - at least that's the opinion of Gabriele Heinzel (gabriele-heinzel.com), a graphic recorder from Germany. She likes to travel to Switzerland for her job and has already supported companies such as Allianz, Novartis and us at the HWZ Arena on the subject of digital disruption. In the past, it was often said that picture books were for illiterates. But today we all know that visualizations with infographics help us to understand many things more easily and condense the masses to the essentials. Graphic recording captures exactly what is essential, links content together, shows structures of thoughts and anchors them with witty images and bright colors, according to the motto of Confucius: "Tell me and I forget - show me and I remember."
Manuel P. NappoHead of Studies CAS Social Media Management HWZ University of Applied Sciences in Business Administration Zurich.
www.fh-hwz.ch/smm
