is what builds our best strengths and differentiates us from
everybody else.
Alfredo Carlo • In Front of the Wall
Practice: Then and now
I mention this story because I see a very strong connection between what my practice was then, and what it is today.
It was a time when I saw a lot of talented people around me and was inspired by them. I was challenged to find my own style, my own way, and often I hit my head against the “white page,” trying to really understand what I was doing and why, and to explain it to almost all of the people around me.
It was a time of exploration, in unknown and fascinating territories, filled with exciting moments of trying new colors and new spray cans.
It was a time for testing my capacity—what I was able to do and not do, prompting me to learn and expand what I was wanting to discover.
It’s the same today in my practice as a visual designer, where I embrace challenges, exploration, testing, and trying.
Shift to scribing
When I transitioned to scribing, I had already given up graffiti; it was too dangerous and time-consuming at a point when I was investing in a new professional life and looking for new opportunities.
Scribing captured my attention for two main reasons: the real-time factor, and the freedom of expression. While drawing a conversation or visualizing a process, I would exercise my approach to graffiti: listening and paying attention, capturing what the creative side of my brain could process, and using the space at my disposal to map out content and ideas. The connection between the two practices, which I was only able to rationalize after a few years, is today so immediate and makes complete sense.
Another thing, slightly more subtle, is the relationship with the audience. In graffiti you do what you do to express yourself, but the ultimate goal is for the work to be seen and appreciated by as many people as possible. This has a strong connection with what I do today and why I do it; I enjoy creating “stuff” for others to make their lives easier and better. Visualization and, I believe, well-done graffiti both accomplish that.
Challenge:
Accept and embrace
the new and different
Exploration:
See what is out there, what I don’t yet know
Testing:
See the reaction (my own and others’) to
what I do
Trying:
Do, fail,
fail better
I find that the wall—meant as any surface we work on vertically—is a great link between my first love (graffiti) and my recent one (graphic facilitation). We learn to draw and write on a horizontal surface, and therefore we think every surface should be like that. The moment of going from a horizontal orientation to a vertical one is often the hardest transition for people. It is, in fact, unusual for our normal habits.
For me, the verticality is the part I most enjoy. Having a nice, big, flat, upright surface on which to write gives freedom and flexibility; I can play with the space in a three-dimensional way, take a real step back to look at the big picture, and use my entire body in relationship with the board or wall.
Making graffiti helped me develop a multitasking skill that became very useful when I started scribing. While painting on a train, a person needs to pay close attention to three specific components:
Execution: How is the drawing reflecting the idea in mind, and how is that coming out on the wall/train?
Aesthetics: How stylish is the image? Is there an overall beauty to the piece, in addition to the work on the letters and colors?
Attention: Are the cops coming?! Who is speaking and watching, and how will they relate to the images?
Without even knowing it, I had been developing the very skillset I believe is needed for scribing in front of a wall: listening carefully for what is said and what is unsaid, improvising based on daily practice, keeping an eye on the beauty of the composition, and making sure to capture key meaning. It actually makes sense… and I risk so much less today!
During this transition from making graffiti to scribing, working a collaborative event, I was introduced to a “knowledge wall,” a big surface used to gather inputs and outcomes of long workshop sessions. At first, I didn’t know how to approach this large surface. But then, realizing I could play with it just like I had played with spray cans, letters, and colors, I found some comfort (but only some!).
I started with what I was really good at: crafting the letters. I think starting from where we are comfortable is always key. We need to establish a safe zone, a place we can return to when in crisis or stressful situations, and from which we can move into new and unknown territories. Having a bag full of tricks and habits that come out easily and quickly is, for me, key. I do love to try new things and, when challenged, know where to go: back to the basics.
Alfredo Carlo • In Front of the Wall
Every wall, a canvas
Making graffiti taught me to look at the city with a different eye, recognizing each wall and surface as a potential canvas for creation. Everything from magazines to album covers, from advertisements to clothing designs, influences my perspective. I find the possibility of mixing styles fascinating: I think there’s no such a thing as “a” style that represents us, especially if we are not able to change it. “Style” is doing the right thing at the right moment, with the right attitude and reasons. Mixing what we see, hear, learn, and read—that’s an art itself, not to be underestimated.
These days, each piece I produce aims to be a different piece influenced by genres and arts, a reflection of my personal research through the content somebody else has provided, a patchwork of thoughts made visual.
Recently, while working with Internazionale at the annual festival in Ferrara, Italy, our team went to visually document some of the sessions without constraint (besides visualizing, the main reason to be there was to freely experiment). We came up with different challenges. We scribed some of the sessions as a team, where each of us would draw only one level—words, drawings, or colors. We would each draw on a different piece of paper and then swap them to see what would happen. Or we would cut our canvases into shapes and use a color that would match the theme of the speech; in the picture above, for example, the theme was oil. In the closing plenary, there were ten of us scribing little bits on each other’s pre-printed templates, to see how our different styles and ears would mix and integrate with each other. It was quite a messy experiment, but fun!
I love challenges. I think we learn so much more from being challenged than from being in a state of comfort. I love (and hate) the feeling of being a step away from failing because I know that’s when I give my best.
Sometimes I scribe on a wall trying to start from the opposite side I am used to, contradicting my assumptions about direction. Sometimes I do the same with markers and colors, using those that are not in my usual range. I often practice with different tools and sizes and constraints: If I draw the same thing with a pencil on a big poster and then with a huge sharpie on a Post-It, what happens? How do we interact with the surfaces we face in the moment? How do we sustain a certain value, while experimenting with the same message in different situations?
I believe we enter into a relationship with the surface, and our body becomes one with it through the tools we have in our hands. That’s why the tool we are using is not that essential.
What is essential is to initiate that relationship and have fun. Having fun is another key component of work and life; I personally try to have fun with anything I do and, the moment the fun stops, I look for something else where I can again find it. I think fun helps creativity, and creativity can solve anything!
Again, it doesn’t matter what tool we are using (in fact, we use a lot of different ones). What’s most important is the idea that t
he tool should always create a little bit of discomfort; that’s how we find the best solutions—by adapting to the change for which we didn’t plan.
For the Business School of Lausanne we re-designed the look and feel of their shared spaces and classrooms, all done using particular paints and simple designs, but all with brushes (and, yes, a little bit of spray can here and there). We went from painting the stairs with quotes and characters to using magnetic paint to allow students to hang up their notes and announcements. We added shapes in the classroom with chalkboard paint that would allow them to use those areas to write, share, and eventually draw. Each classroom has a different color related to the topics and a keyword to name it. The school (a business school!) is now full of colors and inspiration.
Take a notebook and fill it in 10 minutes.
Draw a face made only out
of letters.
Draw something with your right arm, then draw the same thing with your left arm, and then with your
eyes closed.
Keep a journal of your
practices.
Alfredo Carlo • In Front of the Wall
I guess my point is that we are what we do, and we need to try and experiment to be able to find who we are and what we are really good at.
At the time I was running along the train rails to make a piece of graffiti, I didn’t know that I was planting the seeds of my best professional future. Now that I am a graphic facilitator, I know for sure it is just a transition into something else, different but equally stimulating.
Pay attention to everything you have around you and listen to your senses to notice when the next right thing is getting close, and catch it.
ALFREDO CARLO is a graphic facilitator and a designer of collaborative processes. He bases his work on the power of collaboration, committing himself to each project in a creative and active way. He’s a founding partner of Housatonic, a partner of Matter Group, and a member of The Value Web, a network of international facilitators and designers working with large and medium organizations across the world to find solutions for systemic issues.
Alfredo has a deep knowledge of silkscreen and printing techniques, as well as of scenography and environmental decoration, areas in which he has materialized his passion for t-shirts and writing. His works have been published on several books of brand design, street art and graphic design. Alfredo grew up in Rome and studied art history at university in Bologna, where he currently lives with his wife and two children.
Visual Improvisation
How improvising influences my sketchnoting
Eva-Lotta Lamm
I am a sketchnoter. I create visual notes of talks and discussions in real time. Mostly in a small format, sometimes on a large wall-sized chart. I try to capture the main points, to distill key topics in words and images to make the content accessible and memorable beyond the event itself.
Sketchnoting combines several very different skills in one intense, real-time activity. The first skill is drawing or sketching itself. This is quite a technical skill, involving motor dexterity and hand-eye coordination; making clear marks on paper that are recognizable as specific objects, people, or words. The second type of skill is more structural: breaking down information, synthesizing the important points, and establishing hierarchy and relationship between the points. The third skill involves the imagination: choosing and developing strong visual metaphors for abstract concepts.
I am also an improviser.
Discovering improvisation
I discovered improvisation by chance shortly after I moved to London about seven years ago. I had signed up for a free workshop about improving presentation skills that was offered through a network for women in digital design. I didn’t know many people in town and presentation skills are always worth improving, so I signed up with little expectations.
It turned out that the woman teaching the workshop had prepared a day of different improvisation exercises, most of them drawn from a form of improvisation called Action Theater1.
Sketchnotes from Smashing Conference New York, 2014
Eva-Lotta Lamm • Visual Improvisation
Action Theater improvisation is deeply grounded in the physical experience. The body and the awareness of its physicality are the basis for developing all material. The three basic ingredients that can be used in improvisation are movement, sound, and language. Any combination of the ingredients is possible—movement only, moving and sound, being still and speaking, transforming sound into language, etc. The process is very open and playful. Meaning can emerge; images can arise, become denser and more concrete in parts, and then dissolve again into more abstract expressions.
I didn’t know all that back then. I just loved the exercises we did all day. We moved in different ways, played with rhythm, timing and pauses. We played with language and what words sound like when you explore every single sound in them, when you roll them around on your tongue and turn language into music. I felt like I was five years old, just having fun and freely playing around with my expressions. I had been doing this kind of stuff all my life, on my own, when nobody was looking or listening. Discovering that this was actually “a thing”—something with a name, something that people did in a structured way—was a huge surprise and a feeling like coming home at the same time.
A few weeks after this chance encounter, I began practicing Action Theater with a wonderful teacher, Kate Hilder2. Little by little, I discovered the full depth and structural richness of this form and began to see parallels with the visual work I had been doing.
Exploring the overlaps between improvisation and visual work
Being present
The first and most immediate parallel between improvising and sketchnoting is that both are happening in real-time. In improvisation we develop material on the fly. We don’t know beforehand what we are going to create. We trust the skills we have practiced and the instincts we have developed as an improviser to respond to the material as it arises and shape it into a meaningful experience for the audience.
One of the key things we practice in improvisation is “being present.” But what does this mean? For me, it all comes down to become extremely good at noticing. Noticing what is going on around you, noticing what is going on inside of you, noticing what you are doing, how you are doing it and which effect it has. Being present is the basis for being able to truly listen in a holistic sense.
In Action Theater, most practice starts with breaking things down into very small aspects and using simple exercises to focus on one specific aspect at a time to train the senses and the awareness. Little by little, we combine several aspects into bigger scores until we are able to use the practiced skills and sharpened awareness as a tool in an open improvisation.
We try to sharpen our awareness of aspects of movement like:
Quality
Which body part is moving?
Is the movement hard or soft?
Is it tense or relaxed?
How big is the movement?
Is it a fluid movement?
Spatiality
Where am I in the space?
Am I close to the wall or in the middle of the room?
Eva-Lotta Lamm • Visual Improvisation
How much of the space am I using?
Which direction am I facing?
Rhythm
Is the movement regular or random?
Is it continuous or do I use stillness and pauses in between?
Am I creating a specific rhythm?
Temporality
How fast or slow am I moving?
How much time do I use for each movement?
Relationship
Am I responding to a previous movement?
Is it the same as, the opposite of, or a variation on what I did before?
Is my focus directed inward or towards the audience or other improvisers?
Just as a sharp awareness is the basis for truly listening and immersing myself in a talk I am sketching, a lot of these aspects of movement directly translate into sketchnoting as well. When I draw, I deal with the quality of my lines, the placement of objects on the page, the rhythm of the piece, balancing areas of density and areas of openness, and of course with the relationship between the different elements, in terms of both style and content. In my personal sketchnoting and in the coaching and workshops I do for others, I use the same principle of breaking-down as I do in my improvisation, separating exercises into tiny focus points in order to single out very specific aspects and practice them one at a time.
In sketchnoting, these basic exercises include sketching different qualities of lines, experimenting with spacing, size, and proportions, and playing with different speeds of drawing—always observing the difference in quality and expression that results from each change. The focused practice helps to internalize basic drawing and composition skills, so the mind is freed up for the listening, synthesizing, and metaphor-development part during sketchnoting. It fine-tunes our awareness of shapes, space, rhythms, patterns, balance, and textures so that we develop the necessary intuition to take all the underlying micro-decisions that need to be taken when sketching live.
Responding
Drawn Together Through Visual Practice Page 4
