Drawing Our Way Out of Our Minds
An interview with the Doodle King
An aficionado of high-end ice creams. A fashion designer of hand-embroidered sweatshirts. A fleet-footed man about town who runs 30 miles a week with three regular clubs. A gifted pizza architect. A devoted roommate to a half-pug, half-poodle mix named Dempsey. An incredibly talented front-end web developer.
Who, you may ask, is this man of mystery? None other than my colleague Adam Crigger.
Disarmingly honest and incredibly kind, Adam has shared his talents as a developer with our team at Journey Group since 2018. He also brought his background as an illustrator to bear on his work and taught us all how to love doodling in the process.
Every Wednesday, our full team gathers for “Midweek”: a team lunch and presentation from one of us on a given subject, followed by group discussion. To close our time together, we’re now led by Adam in what has become known as the “Doodle Lab” — a half hour with Sharpies, paper, music, and a creative prompt.
A sample of past Doodle Lab prompts
- Draw only lines and dots.
- Start with a bird.
- Draw a self-portrait in the style of folk artist Howard Finster.
- Draw a letter inspired by a drop cap from an illuminated manuscript.
- Sketch a word. Then another word it makes you think of.
- Don’t pick your pen up!
- Draw a horse from memory.
- Draw some tree roots.
- Create a new doodle every 30 seconds.
It’s a time to unwind, step away from our screens, and clear our minds. But it’s also a time that was crafted with a lot of thought and intention. I sat down with Adam, our prevailing Doodle King, to talk about the origin and values of Doodle Lab.
How do you define doodling? How is it different from drawing?
With doodling, I don’t usually have a specific vision in mind. I’m not trying to draw something particular, which is what really frustrated me about drawing as a kid. I always felt like I was making a mistake and then I’d spend all my time trying to fix it. But doodling is almost like starting with the mistake: I’m digging myself out of a hole. I put something down on the paper and then try to find a way out of it. I prefer doodling something 100 times over and then let chance work its way in there. That’s when I find something I really like, when I didn’t mean to do something.
When did you start doodling in your particular style?
My first full-time job out of college was as an illustrator. The title was “graphic designer,” but in reality, it was 90% illustration. I had all of these computer tools, and I realized I didn’t know how to draw. But I had to make a thousand illustrations a month, so I just had to keep doing it. I had to become an illustrator. And I had to find a way to not be a really bad one. So that’s when I started drawing and doodling all the time. I would draw things in front of my coworkers, to get a general idea of what they wanted. I’d encourage them to draw things for me too. It was overwhelming, and I feel like I never really caught up, but it was a good way to learn the craft of drawing.
Why do you think doodling is important?
Doodling is something that separates you from whatever’s at the front of your head, your forethoughts. Doodling is like having a shower thought: You’re doing something routine, some action that you’re used to, something that’s not particularly taxing on your thought processes — and then you have a breakthrough. Doodling allows you to continue working out something that could be a real problem in your head. It helps get you out of whatever is trapped in your mind.
Does doodling contribute to your work as a web developer?
I sometimes think I do my front-end work the same way that I doodle. I don’t know if that’s actually a good thing. I mess with something quickly and then tidy along the way. I find that this process actually gives me a nice way to stop looking at the screen and remember that there are other things in the world, other ideas, other solutions.
When I go home at night, I still want to work on ideas I’ve had, but I’m so sick of looking at a computer screen. Doodling helps me work out problems on paper. It’s helpful to work on a problem without having to present anything to anybody or address an actual goal. I do something, and then maybe later I can find a use for it.
Doodling allows me to take a break from writing code. That’s the therapeutic part of it for me. I can think through something I’m trying to solve and if I feel a bit overwhelmed, I can just fill up this 3 x 3 square with something. That gives me a little boost of achievement that I often need, which will sometimes translate over to whatever code I’m writing.
How do you set the mood for a good doodle session?
When I’m at home, my doodling process is to put something on TV that I’m not paying attention to, such as Planet Earth or a Netflix special on the mating rituals of birds, and then a familiar album. This way, I don’t have to focus too much on one particular thing, but nothing in my environment is distracting.
Music featured at Doodle Lab
- Alabama Shakes, Boys & Girls
- BADBADNOTGOOD, IV
- Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
- Brian Eno, Another Green World
- Gorillaz, Plastic Beach
- Herb Alpert Presents Sergio Mendes & Brasil ‘66
- J Dilla, Donuts
- Kamasi Washington, The Epic
- Kate Bollinger, I Don’t Wanna Lose
- Pacific Breeze: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1976–1986
- R.E.M., Reckoning
- Snail Mail, Habit
- Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life
- Sufjan Stevens, Michigan
- Summer Salt, Happy Camper
- Vulfpeck, My First Car
- Yasuaki Shimizu, Music for Commercials
Some of my favorite music for doodling includes Plastic Beach by Gorillaz, local Charlottesville musician Kate Bollinger, or playlists from the YouTube channel Nice Guys or any of those for low-fi “chill beats to study to.”
Do you have a favorite medium?
I really like the Pigma Micron pens. They don’t bleed through anything; they don’t smell. And I really like Field Notes notebooks and taking notes with a Pilot Precise V5/V7. For Doodle Lab, Sharpies have proven to be a more approachable implement.
For the paper, I’ve found that framing a bit of watercolor paper with a black border makes it seem more important. When you have just a piece of computer printer paper, it’s so disposable that you don’t treat it with any reverence. Adding a border makes the canvas feel like something you can’t just throw away. You have to think about what you’re going to put down. There’s already value present because there are already lines on the paper. And when you’re breaking out the watercolor paper, you know that some planning has been involved.
How do you hope Doodle Lab will evolve in the future?
I’d love to get more people involved as hosts, and I’d love to refocus on more specific prompts. I enjoy using Doodle Lab as an outlet and generator of ideas for Story Matters. I love seeing how other people have taken the role of hosting Doodle Lab in different directions, involving collage or origami or free-form writing. I hope that we can continue to use our doodles outside of the Lab itself. I’m not sure what that looks like, but I’ve dreamed of a Journey Group typeface made out of doodle letterforms, or using duct tape paired with our handwriting. It’d be interesting and fun to create an artifact together.
What advice would you give to other companies or organizations who want to implement doodle sessions?
As long as you make the space and time for doodling, no matter what comes out of it, you’ll learn something — about yourself, about your people as a group. The hardest part is explicitly saying, “Here’s a half hour. We’re going to let these people ‘do nothing.’” It’s important to think of doodling as something valuable. It’s the kind of screen-free distraction that could be, for some people, the same as going for a walk or going out to lunch. Because Journey Group is an artistically oriented group, it was easy for us to implement. But we also knew it would become a shared space to express our creativity.
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