Visualization as a form of communication

Originaltext Deutsch: Mägi Brändle
Übersetzung: Sophie Probst

Alongside facial expressions, gestures and language, drawing is a way of communicating with our environment that predates writing. As children, almost all of us drew intuitively and often with joy. At some point, however, most of us stopped. Our pictures could no longer stand up to comparison with others, or we failed to meet our own standards. The grading of drawings at school was also not necessarily helpful.

So, we leave this communication channel unused, even though it could be applied universally – a language that everyone understands, but only few dare to speak. This is a pity and should change. 

One possible approach to this language is visualization. I like to call visualization the sister of drawing. Visualizations consist of basic forms and are reduced to the essential, they should be quick and easy to create. They are not about beauty or art, but about communication. This also includes text. The text determines what the image will convey. As visualization often involves working with symbols or icons that can have different meanings, the accompanying text is important. 

And yet, many people hesitate to pick up the pencil again. ‘I can’t draw’ is the statements I hear most often in my workshops. In my experience it helps to tell yourself: I’m not drawing now, I’m visualizing. It’s a start from scratch. Visualization is a technique that can be learnt easily. Stroke by stroke you acquire a repertoire of symbols and icons. Sure, it takes a bit of practice. But as we have all learnt to write, we already have the basic skills we need to visualize: Putting straight and curved strokes on a page, that’s all. From my point of view, any visualization is better than no visualization. Perhaps not everyone agrees with a picture or a connection remains unclear. But if we produce a visualization, we have an image to point to and the possibility to add or change things if necessary. This helps enormously with understanding things. 

In fact, visualizations can be used in almost all areas of life: in workshops and in school, for to-do lists, project planning or simply the note on the fridge, for the next birthday invitation or a diary entry. Visualizations are a great tool for making our ideas, wishes and goals visible. They allow us to clear our head, to take a closer look at something and to view it from different angles. Visualizations are also extremely helpful for developing ideas. And a nice side effect of visualizing things is that it stimulates our creativity and can therefore help us to come up with new ideas. 

Furthermore, studies have shown that most people are better at memorizing images than text. When studying, it therefore makes perfect sense to supplement summaries with visual elements and to create so-called ‘sketchnotes’. The inventor of this term, the American Mike Rohde, triggered a visualization boom with his 2014 publication ‘The Sketchnote Handbook’. As with classic text notes, to create sketchnotes, you write down the most important aspects but add suitable sketches. In contrast to text notes, sketch notes invite us to look at them a second or third time. These are of course great conditions for studying and memorizing. 

So, we can use visualization for ourselves or use it in workshops or in class. Admittedly, it takes a bit of courage to visualize in front of an audience. However, there are several ways in which you can approach ad hoc visualization. Content can be prepared, covered or added fully or in part. Because it’s worth it: Seeing how something is created by hand, stroke by stroke, captures the audience’s attention. Visualizations thus hold numerous advantages. But the very best about visualization is that it’s simply fun. There is something magical about putting pen to paper and turning a line into an image.