Sketching your ideas.

Portfolio Marketing - Communication

Sketching your ideas.

Project information

Project: Scribbles workshop
Client: Internal workshop
Industry: Marketing - Communication
Company: Plan.net Pulse
Location: Munich
Date: September 2019

For me, sketching on paper is extremely practical. I don't draw well, not at all, but the truth is that you don't have to be an artist to make four scribbles that are more or less understandable. It is an ideal way to communicate ideas, concepts or even perform rapid prototypes. Sometimes I have even made user personas or user journeys through sketches to be able to make a quick presentation, for example in workshops. The results are also usually very funny as well as attractive.

For all these reasons, I thought it would be interesting to share sketching techniques with the rest of my colleagues in the UX department of my company. So in September 2019 I gave a Workshop for my colleagues in order to put into practice the basic concepts of working with scribbles.

The Workshop lasted a whole morning and I tried to make it as fun as possible, so I started from the idea that each participant could freely choose the topic they were going to present. But let's start at the beginning.

My agenda for the day
My agenda for the day
First geometric shapes
First geometric shapes
Exercises with titles
Exercises with titles

The first hour and a half consisted of a short introduction and joint performance of small basic exercises: drawings of basic geometric shapes, shading, isometries, writing titles, arrows and boxes, and finally tuning of characters emphasizing faces and hands.

The next part consisted of creating a story board of the topic that each participant wanted to present. For this, Post-its were used in which the participants defined each step that they were going to describe, including a small illustration. In this way we were able to make the intermediate step between what was wanted to be exposed and how it was going to be exposed.

After a short break, the participants made a quick first draft and in a lower format of the poster they were going to present, in order to check that all the graphic elements fit together correctly, that everything was proportioned and that there was an understandable reading flow.

Each participant made their own poster and the session ended with the presentation of each of the works by its creator.

Turning the story board into sketches
Turning the story board into sketches
Finishing the poster
Finishing the poster
Ready to present
Ready to present
Moment of the workshop
Moment of the workshop

Finally, each participant made their own poster and the session ended with the presentation of each of the works by its creator, naturally among many laughs.

We had a really good time. The workshop was very well received and it really helped my classmates to lose a bit of their fear and shame about expressing their ideas through sketches, since in reality absolutely everyone is capable of doing it, it just takes a little practice :)

 

All photos taken during the workshop are courtesy of Kathrin Heinzle.