Behind the Scenes - Graphic Recording for Glen Dimplex
Graphic recording – summarising visually on the sideline of events
It is often hard to see the wood for the trees in high-content gatherings such as conferences and trainings. As a graphic recorder, I join the collective conversation from the sideline, distilling the essence as well as the atmosphere of the event. I take visual notes on everyone’s behalf, so that participants can relax into participating without the fear of all the information and insights ‘dissipating’ at the end. The result is a valuable memoire of the event that reinforces shared understanding and learning, while functioning as engaging, original PR material for the event organisers.
To understand what this looks like, in this article I take you behind the scenes, and step by step through the process of graphic recording at an event of one of my clients, Glen Dimplex Heating & Ventilation, as an example of a typical - and particularly enjoyable - graphic recording job.
Making contact – aligning & preparing
In late 2019 I received an email via the contact form on my website from Nuala, head of HR at Glen Dimplex Heating & Ventilation, an electronic manufacturer employing 4,000 employees worldwide and positioning themselves as sustainability leaders in the ‘hardware’ aspect of our global energy transition. After a word-of-mouth recommendation, she got in touch to seek visual support for the final session of their inaugural leadership programme, developed in partnership with the William J. Clinton Leadership Institute at Queen’s University, Belfast.
The venue: William J. Clinton Leadership Institute at Riddell Hall, Belfast
Excerpt of my strategic focus areas for 2020
The fact that a female executive got in touch about a leadership programme resonated with me, because of my own affinity with the topic through my participation in the transformational MSc. degree Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability (msls.se), and because I was just then in the annual process of drawing up my own strategic focus areas for 2020, featuring ‘empowerment of women’ and ‘leadership development’. I work with many different organisations on many different topics, but will prioritise those which align with my own values and interests (which translate into annually reviewed strategic focus areas). We scheduled a call to discuss the scope and brief for the collaboration, after which she sent me through curriculum materials of the programme, as well as an agenda for the event, to help me plan out my workflow and understand the context and shared language I would encounter on the day. As she was to co-facilitate the session herself, we met at the venue a week ahead of the event, to streamline how to best make use of my visualisation work as part of her facilitation.
The day itself – listening & translating
I always arrange with the client to arrive around an hour ahead of the event. While Nuala and the other hosts were busy setting up, I set up my own ‘visualisation station’ and took time to ‘mentally arrive’ in the space. I bring my own materials, and this time I worked on paper – though I also work on Falconboard ®, a recyclable cardboard alternative to Foamcore, or digitally on my iPad.
The participants of this event were a group of managers from across the international divisions of the company. Over several months they had been on a learning journey together about leadership in their personal and professional contexts. They had shared this experience and had developed a shared language around it. This day’s event was for them to reflect on and celebrate the end of the leadership programme.
When graphic recording, I spend most of my time on the literal sideline of the conversation, listening. I listen for a number of specific things. For ‘essence’: distilling the red threads and core themes of the conversations, disregarding tangents and white noise in communication. For ‘emotion’: poignant remarks or sudden insights that make you perk your ears. They can be moving and beautiful, or thought-provoking and tense, but all are weighty moments where a truth shines through and that mark big or small turning points in a collective process. And I listen for ‘image’: people – often unwittingly – speak in striking visual language and metaphors, and that is rich fodder for the graphic recorder. These nuggets of quotes and ideas I then translate into imagery – both small icons that describe part of the conversation, and overarching metaphors that draw the whole together. I also like to visually capture some of the atmosphere; the architecture of the venue, the body language of participants. Choosing what to capture in the visual summary for the group is the act of committing it to the collective memory of the event. It will always be incomplete and subjective, but it activates in each individual their own fuller memory of the experience.
During breaks, a few people always find their way to my visualisation station, intrigued by what’s going on in the corner in silence and colour. These will often be the curious and the visual thinkers amongst us, who are in fact the majority of us. This is where interesting conversations spark, because seeing their own process mirrored back to them in images catalyses all sorts of reactions, ideas, associations, and excitement in people.
At the end of the day, as I like to suggest to event organisers when there’s time and it’s appropriate, I was invited to share the graphic recording back to the group. I call this a visual recap, or bird’s eye view, and in the global Art of Hosting facilitators’ community it’s known as the ‘meta-harvest’. It is something I enjoy doing, because it is a moment of acknowledgement for my work, helping the graphic recording come alive in the hand-over of it to the client. It’s also a moment where the participants who have worked hard joining in with the day’s conversation can lean back and revisit their own process in a type of guided visualisation, discover that someone was there hearing and witnessing them the whole day, and this helps ‘anchor’ the day’s insights into their shared memory and identity-forming as a group.
Post-event – post-production and relationship-building
After the event, the client gets to keep the original graphic recording, but I will have taken high resolution photos of it, which I then take home for post-production. This involves digitally restituting the images, cleaning up light fall-off, fixing small mistakes and perhaps adding some missed bits of content. The final digital assets will include an overview image of the entire graphic recording, as well as detail excerpts that can be used as illustrations in print or web publications, such as articles or evaluation reports. Those are shared with client, with unrestricted use of the images for their own purposes. In the case of this project, I received an email from Nuala months after the event, sharing with me an article published in business magazine Business Eye featuring their leadership programme and an image from my graphic recording. It is wonderful, and rare, to get a glimpse of the journeys my visual work goes on after I hand it over to clients.
Nuala and I had a debriefing call to evaluate the day and our collaboration, to thank each other and keep each other in mind for future projects. When there is a click with a client, it’s a precious thing that warrants attention and nourishment. Not only for the future business it can generate, but because graphic recording, or ‘scribing’, at events like these brings me as the visual practitioner into an intimate process that deserves to be honoured. I get invited as outsider into the conversations and dynamics of established groups. Where people make themselves vulnerable in the act of learning and try to make sense together of complex issues, and where difficult or tender truths can be spoken, trust is required to have me there to witness it and do it justice in the visual memory of the day. I’m grateful for the learning and insights I receive when being invited into such collective processes, and for the new connections I get to make.
Aftermovie of the event created for Glen Dimplex Heating & Ventilation by Far From Avocados content marketing.
“The team are truly mesmerised by how Stéphanie captured and distilled the essence of our journey as it was spoken. She brings a very powerful gift to the world, yet with a gentle presence.”
A selection of other graphic recording jobs
