Insights from attending the Bikablo ‘Visual Storytelling’ class
My thoughts and insights from attending a 2 day course on visual storytelling by Bikablo
Disclaimer
This blog post is not intended as a review for the training and should not be used to verify the training’s program validity if you are in the process of deciding whether you should take it or not. Generally speaking though I would recommend you attending the course anyway.
Please consider this post as a collection of thoughts and insights triggered by my attendance of the course and enjoy those separately.
Briefly about the course
The course I have attended was hosted by Bikablo in Ballerup, Denmark on June 18–19, 2019. It was a two day course. You can find more information about the course and upcoming classes here. We were a group of 15 people led by 2 trainers. There were a couple people more who helped with the logistics. We were occupying a medium sized room seated on chairs and drawing on large pieces of paper (something like 120x140cm) pinned to pin-boards.
Now let me share my biggest insights and thoughts that were triggered by this training.
1 — Drawing real people is a game changer
All of us non-artists are generally bad with drawing people. Drawing people is probably one of the most difficult tasks. We usually have a few postures we can quickly replicate and we often get by with that. During the training we were asked to break in pairs and draw each other, simplifying the drawings of course. In the beginning I was not super open to the idea but then I let it go. And I can tell you this — something clicked and then I re-discovered drawing people for myself. Suddenly it just opened up and started to happen. My first insight — let go of fears and just draw figures using real people around you as models. It does change the game. The drawn figures look much more realistic this way — as far as their postures dynamics.
2 — Drawing big is a significant challenge
We were instructed to draw big. We would draw on pieces of paper each being approx 120x140cm large and the main advice was to draw as big as possible so that if the poster was put into a large audience, everyone could see and read. From this I conclude that the training is customised to the needs and challenges of graphic recording — the practice of creating large hand-drawn murals during events. In my particular case this is not something I would practice at all — I am not a graphic recording and my usual media size is around flipcharts and whiteboards. My meeting rooms are small to medium size and it is not required to draw big. And then I experienced that it was quite difficult for me to draw that big and maintain the overview of the poster composition, that was quite challenging. Certainly drawing big requires a lot of practice and it does not come as granted just because you take a lot of visual notes, for example.
3 — Bikablo ‘muppets’ and drawing faces
Bikablo has a certain approach to drawing faces that also look realistic enough. This technique is not new or unique, I am using a similar one for drawing faces.
One of the differences is that I am using brows a lot also as a means to express emotions in a more powerful way. I would usually use this technique as an ice breaker at the beginning of a visual training session where people would be tasked to draw themselves. In the training we were asked to break in pairs and draw each other. It has been so much fun! Everyone enjoyed this particular exercise the most, as I could perceive.
4 — ‘Training from the Back of the Room’ techniques to encourage natural learning
Bikablo trainers were using a lot of the techniques similar to the ones found in the book ‘Training from the Back of the Room’. This book suggests an approach to teaching people which is the closest to what it calls the natural way for people to learn. This includes things like feeling of safety, building a community of learners, connecting to personal experience as so on. I like to build my trainings around this paradigm and as a student of this Bakablo course I have enjoyed them applying this approach to my learning experience. I liked it very much now as a participant. And now I am even more convinced to use the approach going forward.
5— Sketchnoting helps connecting to the material and memorize better
I use visual note taking as my main means of staying engaged with the activity, to connect deeper to the material I am working with and to memorize better what happened during an event. And no wonder I took my notepad with me in the training. I was taking visual notes throughout the entire course of the training. Usually I make my notes publicly available but I do not have the permission from Bikablo to share my notes — they are very detailed and they would like to protect their intellectual property. I can only share a few snapshots of how my notes looked like.
While the training was not shaped to encourage participants to take notes other than participating in exercises on the pin-boards, I was constantly taking notes. This is my habit now and I feel more comfortable when I do so — in this training you do not get a workbook and there are no slides (and I like it) to be shared with the participants afterward. This way my notes is the only detailed documentation from the training I could refer to later.
My last insight from the training is that you should be taking notes too. Even though the training has been full of creativity and deeply engaging, the notes provided me with a lot of value — e.g. I did not struggle with the afternoon fatigue also known as food coma :)
6 — Visual storytelling is not about drawings
I had this suspicion from before but now I am even more convinced. Visual storytelling is not all about drawings. If there was a formula for the appealing visual storytelling, it would be something like this.
The appealing visual storytelling recipe:
- 400gr of the story behind it.
- 300gr of the storyteller’s personality and charisma.
- 300gr of the visual structure and power and quality of visual symbols used to convey the story.
The sequence is not arbitrary. You do start with the story, then you make sure your performance is appealing and then you support it with a solid visual structure and quality of imagery. If you fail with the last part with a strong story and appealing personality — you will still be successful.
I used the final exercise of the training to practice my story for my blog post. I have written a separate post on that if you would like to read it:
Thanks for reading this piece. I am an agile coach, product owner and a visual thinker living in Copenhagen, Denmark. I blog on visual thinking and share my random agile thoughts, if you want to read more. You can get in touch with me via my Instagram account or on Twitter. All the best!
