Jens Thanks a lot for coming by our house. It's great to see you.

You know, I have a Samsung Note and the draw was the stylus for drawing. I'm sure it will take some practice to get used to it but it's not really the same as traditional writing as you may imagine.

Some folks are just prone to digital Jens and you may be one of them. That's fantastic! To be honest, I love to sketch but as i admitted technology makes it very easy to avoid writing this way. Now, drawing, that's a different story. Still totally old school that way.

Keep those napkins handy, my man, just in case you have an inspirational idea and your IPad is out of juice. ;-)

 Mark_Harai Yeah, I can imagine.

It's like the old school architects, my wife's father one, who often talk about the infamous napkin sketch to describe the "idea" central to a building design. But really, when you see an old set of drawings for a building the beauty and art behind the work is amazing. Like CrossBetsy said and was apparent  back then, it forces you to slow down, think and thereby potentially offering a better thought out solution.

How's it work these day? Still napkins over a beer? Sometimes it's probably the best way.

Thanks for dropping in. You are my 8th commenter here today so you win the big prize (via my Facebook campaign). So, here you go.

A smile.

:-)

Don't use it all in one place......

 rdopping  CrossBetsy NICE!

 CrossBetsy Slowing down and retaining information! That's a great way to see this thing. It actually helps to move your hands in the shapes and styles of letters and it certainly helps to retain the ideas because it takes longer to form thoughts with hand writing. Like I mentioned to Hajra  you can actually express feeling that is enhanced by the visual, inflections of the strokes and the tone of hand. Pretty awesome, huh?

I think these feeling are strong because of the reliance we have on technology. Just imagining the feel of the texture of paper and the feeling of the words or images forming in front of you is so different than typing them on a keyboard.

Recording information manually may seem archaic but you have made it essential to your process which i respect and i am sure your clients do too. As always, thanks for your comments.

 bdorman264 Love it! You found it in your reader. You do know that I get an email from you twice a week that I always have to explore.  I do remember you mentioning a similar approach elsewhere and am glad that you find a relationship in a similar way to the digital and analog. It's important, no matter how easy it is to go fully digital to keep a little analog in your life. Imagine how hard it would be to doodle on a computer or smartphone.

Thanks, as always, for your comments. Good to see you here mister.

 Hajra  Very cool. Yet another way to use the "work sketch" to see a way or path. It is really awesome that there are so many ways and so many people who see the value in mapping out a story or process this way. I know that technology will eventually permeate everything that we do but hanging on to the art of sketching and mapping out our thoughts will hopefully be here to stay.

Like I suggested to bdorman264 how can you actually doodle on a computer? Yeah, yeah, I know the IPad is making it exceedingly more easy but there will never be a substitute for the inflection that can be expressed by a stroke of the hand. Seeing that gives the piece feeling and feeling is something that is difficult for technology to emulate.

Thank you for your thoughts here Hajra. Always makes me think and I love that.

 ginidietrich In Washington, the state I taught in for several years, teaching cursive is now "optional." And they actually have parents questioning this part of the curriculum. "Is there really a need for teaching cursive writing? Wouldn't your time be better spent on other things?" 

I know how powerful, not just mind mapping, but writing in longhand can be. It's crazy. It shouldn't be an either/or thing. There is room for both!

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 JudyDunn That really, really pains me. 

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 ginidietrich What I was going to say that is somewhat less scientific is "From what I can see we are in big trouble!"

BTW, I relearned "writing" in post-secondary while in design school. NOBODY even attempted to use cursive writing. Printing only and stylized at that. That was great until we started using PC to do our work. Us old-school architects and design recognize each other by our writing styles. Very, very specific.....

 Lori Thanks Lori. Interesting approach to follow a presentation. Haven't thought of that one before. We have a guy in our office who has "sketched" the story of a journey we took with a client over the past year which we used to discuss the future of the work we do and discover the past successes. It worked like a charm.

There is a ton of value in this form of communication and it is fun too. Thanks for dropping in.

 JudyDunn I am interested in this mind mapping you guys are talking about. I will have to Google it but if there are some references you can pass along I would love to see that. I use this method of sketching words quite often as I too remember things much, much better if I write them down. 

Personally, I love to write in this style (changing the size and shape of words to express emphasis and add little doodles for reference). I do it quite often in my logbooks i keep for work. most of it is dry business stuff (schedule and records of conversations, etc) but the fun is in finding different ways to articulate emphasis.

Thanks for your comments and appreciate you dropping in.

 KDillabough You are most welcome. If it weren't for you, JudyDunn and ginidietrich this post may not have been born so thanks for that.

As I mentioned to Judy some reference on what you refer to as mind mapping would be awesome. I have a feeling it is used in our firm but may be called something else. We have used Mind Jet so I think I get it. If so, it's a very cool way to capture ideas but the analog version, drawing by hand, just seems so much more organic. A great tool for charettes or brainstorming sessions. I think there are even some professional facilitators out there that use their artistic skills to mind map brainstorming sessions.

Thanks for your contribution here. Much appreciated.

 rdopping  JudyDunn  ginidietrich Delighted to have provided some of the inspiration:) I'll get back to you with info on mind mapping, but this will give you a good head-start idea. Check out anything by Tony Buzan (the "father" of mindmapping). There's now an online version of his, as well as other online mindmapping tools, which might be of interest for the digital junkie.

For me, I prefer old school crayons, coloured pencils, big huge pieces of paper, hand drawn mindmapping (but I guess you'd know that right? ;)Check this out for a good little overview llitemind.com/what-is-mind-mapping/

Cheers! Kaarina

 KDillabough  JudyDunn  ginidietrich I'm on it!

 KDillabough I love my Sharpies!

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