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WHAT IS GRAPHIC RECORDING?!
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Graphic Recording is a “knowledge extraction” technique used primarily in meeting or group settings. It’s an unobtrusive, creative, unique way to capture the essence of a meeting or event as it unfolds … literally painting an emerging picture of the key points, messages, ahas, insights, breakthroughs and heavy-duty moments of a gathering of people.
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“We see the brightness of a new page where everything yet can happen”
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Graphic Recording is the base skill of all of my work. It is a visual method for capturing the thinking of a group or individual. It’s a specialized service performed mostly in meeting or group settings … useful when people gather to talk and discuss things that are important and relevant to them. As they talk, I work to distill the essence of what they are talking about into large, wall size, graphic displays. Basically creating a map or mural of their discussion, so they can “see what they mean” and easily share that thinking with others. Its live, real-time, creative, entertaining … and most of all, effective for capturing the key points and messages that would otherwise drift off into thin air.
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“Since Gutenberg and the onset of typewriters, publishing houses, and telecommunications, the job of providing cultural group memories and preserving core imagery has widened into an industry. In historical terms, we are now at a point where information itself has become such a vast frontier that charting a path across it, or reflecting that path for another, is a dizzying task. People are in great need of tools, technologies and frameworks for thinking which can hold information faithfully and facilitate its assimilation for successful applications.”
David Sibbet, A Brief History of Group Visuals, Fundamentals of Group Graphics
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When working as a graphic recorder (as opposed to a facilitator or coach), I work quietly off to the side of the group. I listen intently to what is being spoken (and to what isn’t being spoken but is being said nonetheless) and do my best to pluck out the main points and transfer them onto paper. I do this “real-time” … creating the mural on large sheets of poster paper hung on the wall. As participants speak, I use color, key words, phrases and images (little icons) to help capture the essence of the conversation, presentation or discussion. Reflecting back to people the wisdom of their words, feelings and insights.
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“Graphic Recorders are modern-day cave artists, visionaries, scribes, teachers, learners, illustrators and historians … all keepers of the precious written word and imaginings of voices and hearts. Our practice has roots in ancient traditions of paying attention, reflecting, recording and ‘remembering for the future’. We help bring ideas forward, help collaboration, help direct the ‘light’ to the individual and collective wisdom in this world.”
Leslie Salmon-Zhu (co-founder of International Forum of Visual Practitioners) as quoted in “Making the Magic Happen”, article by Mary Brake, Facilitation News, Spring ‘99
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“What constitutes a good graphic recorder is the ability not only to depict visually and instantly what is going on, but to bring a quality of listening to the process that is sensitively attuned to the emotions, feelings and dynamics going on in the room. You have to care about everything that everyone says, to really get people’s points and represent them. When people collectively put ideas up on a board the focus automatically shifts from me to we”.
Susan Kelly (graphic recording pioneer) as quoted in Commongood Magazine, Sept. ‘96
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