Doodling is good for you. Keep it up!

Whether it's boredom in the classroom or a creative block in the studio, we're all guilty of doodling.

But there is a growing body of research that suggests it's a good thing and can help with information retention and creativity.

Companies like Dell, Zappos and Disney are eager for employees to doodle on the job and have even paid consultants to help them.

As designers, we are very visually driven people so we welcome any good news surrounding visual thinking!

Sunni Brown is a creative consultant who teaches "applied visual thinking" to coders, designers and journalists. Basically, she teaches them how and what to doodle. "I can’t tell you how important it is to draw," she says. And we would 100 agree!

Studies have shown that doodling can free up short and long-term memory, improve content retention and increase attention span.

So here are a few tips about how you should go about doing it effectively.

Doodle tip 1: Draw anywhere you possibly can. "Draw on the floor, on each other, on table tops" says Brown.

Doodle tip 2: Your doodles should "let you see something that you didn't see before". So keep it simple and spontaneous. Spur of the moment drawing means your brain can't worry about how exactly a rose should look.

Doodle tip 3: There are a number of exercises Brown recommends to help you make unexpected connections between things.

One is "atomisation" where you take an object and visually break it down into its smallest parts. The example given is the word "racoon," where you might draw claws, a robber's mask and a trash can. This helps you think about the animal in a way you didn't think about before.

Another is "game-storming" that involves taking two unrelated things, like a tortoise and a sailing ship, drawing them in their atomised parts and creating a drawing that randomly fuses these parts together.

The final exercise mentioned is a "process map" which can help if you are having trouble thinking through a problem. It basically involves creating a visual display that quite literally illustrates the sequence of events.

We were all in agreement that doodling was a good thing and our Moleskins will undoubtedly be filled with racoons and tortoise ships soon. However, the unity was short lived as debate soon broke out about when something stops being a 'doodle' and starts being a 'drawing'.

Designers huh? What are you gonna do!

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