Thanks to Daniel McGinn, The Harvard Business Review published an article detailing some of the benefits of graphic recording. While the article shared one illustration by Stephanie Crowley, it did fall short in practice, there was little visually represented! Huge missed opportunity.

Easy fix: show the historical information as a graphic!

Thankfully there are quotes from graphic recording practitioners and researchers about the craft.

“I want somebody who hasn’t been in the conversation to be able to look at something I’ve done and quickly digest the key points,” says San Francisco artist Bree Sanchez.”

“Professor Martin Eppler of the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland has studied how well visual representations boost recall. He found that graphic recording trumps PowerPoint slides, particularly if people feel invested in the drawings. “You remember best what you’ve created yourself,” Eppler says. With PowerPoint, presenters make the slides in advance; it’s not interactive or participatory. With graphic recording, all participants actively contribute ideas to the image, so they feel that their hands are in it.”

Jason Dirks, Kraft’s director of training, says graphic recording keeps people interested and engaged on two levels. “You have this initial ‘wow’ factor while watching this person draw the image,” Dirks says, and afterward people can study the depiction more closely. “The artists are able to capture a lot of depth.”

Graphic recorder Stephanie Crowley depicts the central themes of the classic 1960 HBR article by Ted Levitt.

For the complete article click here: https://hbr.org/2010/09/vision-statement-tired-of-powerpoint-try-this-instead

A version of this article also appeared in the September 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review.