From Saturday till Wednesday it’s mini drawing-week on our blog. With blogs about drawing and being creative. Today: Instead of enduring endless meetings and brainstorming sessions or laboring for hours over reports, why not say what you mean in drawings? In Issue 18 you can read seven reasons to start drawing at work. Below you can read one of them.
It gives others a glimpse into your world
Why is drawing sometimes more effective than talking? “If I ask twenty people to sketch an item of furniture, I’ll get twenty totally different variations,” Bakker says. “One chooses to do a chest of drawers; the other will go for a cabinet. If, however, I draw my own furniture first and then ask them to do the same, I’ll get twenty versions of the same idea. If you illustrate what you are thinking, you are communicating your thoughts more directly than you ever can do in words. You are literally giving others a glimpse into your world and that prevents miscommunication.
When Bakker does this kind of exercise in the workplace, it’s about concepts like ‘quality’. “Once people start sketching ‘quality’, it turns out that one person thinks it means getting satisfied customers, while another thinks it means meeting deadlines,” he says. “So all this time, people have not been understanding each other.”
- You can read the other six reasons and exercises on drawing at work in Issue 18.
Text Eva Loesberg Photography ©Lumina/Stocksy United, ©Kkgas/Stocksy United
