What is doodling?
Doodling is scribbling! They could be meaningful or aimless, there’s no thin line to it. It has evolved over time and so is it’s meaning! However, being a technology-driven, design-centric person, the artist in me takes doodling a step further into information visualization, as conversational doodling!
Note: A good-watch that explains the W’s and H’s of doodling/ https://www.ted.com/talks/sunni_brown_doodlers_unite
What is conversational doodle?
Initially, doodling was all about scribbling on the empty sides of the pages or the last page of notebook, during boring lectures or in free time. Gradually, the scribbles were turning into something meaningful. As my mind subconsciously heard to the professor’s lectures (even though consciously, I found them boring), my doodles started to relate to it. For example, if the prof was explaining about FIFO vs LIFO methods, I doodle a pile of clothes arranged in those orders. I draw a confused-me when one of them performed worse than the other and a happy-me when it performed better than the other.
I then realized keeping everything art-ful isn’t helping me out because I ran out of words during exams when I had to explain it thoroughly! Then I had a mix of words + art to make the doodled notes easier to understand as well as comprehend.
My notes were interesting to some, overwhelming to a few, and weird to many. Of course, at those times, when students preferred all mugged up, point to point notes, something that could be read and copied in exams — mine was certainly not that.
Why is it conversational doodle?
That’s just a fancy name I gave it. I found information art, data/information visualization too geeky, and simply calling it doodle wasn’t exactly justifying it.
Then why conversational doodle, you ask? A picture is really worth a thousand words when it is able to explain so much in so less.
Lecture notes doodling was one side to it. The other is more artistic. I tried to observe people and capture them in doodle. Confused? Let’s say, I find that you like binge-watching Netflix and listening to songs of different languages on Spotify, that your favourite food is ramen, and you love watching Anime. Your birthday is next week, I gift you a doodle card that captures these intricate and small details. And tadaa, you love it!
And then, I expanded the doodle universe to tech conferences and events that I attended and received tremendous response, often surprising but more of delight.
Bridging the tech gap with art!
Conferences and events with large audience often have diverse crowd — even experience wise. Although, much of the content is curated according to the target audience, some often pass through the thin line of either being too easy or too difficult to understand. There could be many reasons why it might get hard to comprehend too much information and data…
And that’s when images speak louder than words or a picture is worth a thousand words.
That’s all folks! Hope you find the below conversational doodles, umm, quite conversing!
Connect: Instagram/alter ego — https://www.instagram.com/ruminativeminds/
