![]() ![]() The second reason I don’t favor highly skillful doodlers is because one of the barriers to exploration of visual language IS this very notion that one must have talent or skill. A visual display that we consider to be utterly hideous from an aesthetic angle may still have taught a learner something significant about organic chemistry. The first is that the perceived skill level from the point of view of an audience may have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the learning experience for the doodler. Obviously, anybody can doodle, but are their points given for the quality of doodles (i.e., scratches versus rendering)?I give no points for the aesthetic quality of a doodle for two specific reasons. It strengthens a mental muscle that is currently drastically underused. The value of adding doodling to our repertoire is that having access to both modes ultimately elevates the capacity of the person to think, feel and experience in more diverse and substantive ways. Each mode routes us through their own neurological networks, so they consequently take us on different learning journeys. We can view these alternating modes of thinking-visual and verbal-as distinct doorways into the knowledge-driven mind and into consciousness. But the same can be said for visual language, and doodling is as instinctive to humans as is the acquisition of speech. Written and verbal languages are obviously powerful forms of expression and exploration and it helps us immensely to master them to the best of our abilities. Milton Glaser has said that “drawing is thinking.” What does the doodle allow you to do that writing alone does not?For many millions of people, writing is the dominant form of thinking and learning and it is the preferred mode through which they explore their worlds-internal and external. That was probably around 2010? I’m terrible with dates. He was teasing (I think) but I figured it would behoove me to differentiate, so I one-upped it by using a term I was advocating openly and often in public anyway: Infodoodler. When did you ascend to Doodler-in-Chief?My title is officially “Infodoodler-in-Chief.” I’m friends with Google’s Chief Doodler, Ryan Germick, and he threatened to sue me if I stole his title. It was after I started my own creativity consultancy in 2008 that I started to refer to applied visual language as “doodling.” I noticed that doodling was a universal expression of visual-thinking behavior (I was doing consulting and workshops all over the world) and I also noticed that it was seriously misunderstood and needed to be seen as what it really was-an act of cognition. It was there that I was re/introduced to simple, applied visual language as a form of thought. That absence of integration of visual language changed for me entirely when I started working at a consultancy called The Grove, in San Francisco. None of the scholastic environments in which I was educated supported-or even considered supporting-visual literacy and, at that time, my interest was in moving through the systems using whatever dominant thinking mode they espoused and getting the hell out of there. I wasn’t a student known for being “the resident doodler” and my doodles showed up only on occasion, mostly in the margins of my notebooks. ![]() How long have you been a doodler?Until I turned 27, my relationship with doodling had ebbed and flowed unremarkably over the years. You’ve obviously created quite a sophisticated system. ![]() ![]() Brown to comment for a story I wrote for the Atlantic. I got to thinking that drawing is the next big esperanto (although its been with us for eons). She advocates the concept that drawing is the key to the thinking mind. Sunni Brown’s latest book, The Doodle Revolution (Portfolio Penguin), is an every-person art. ![]()
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