A Little Illumination Goes A Long Way

Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder sang about “Ebony and Ivory.” What a great song! The concept was that at the most basic level, black and white, we really wanted both in our world.?We need the interplay of contrast for our world to be interesting and attractive. It seems like an obvious bridge from paper and ink, white keys and black keys to people. But as obvious as that bridge is, some people can’t seem to cross it, even today. What a shame.

A few years earlier Tommy James and The Shondells released the song “Crimson and Clover.” I saw a movie preview recently for which that song was the theme. It’s a sweet love song that, without saying it, makes you think of a really shy guy struggling with love at first site. In this case the two colors symbolizing a contrast between desire and fear. Love could grow, but emotional safety has to be sacrificed.

Aaah, the ability of an artist to use a small quantity of color to evoke such meaning in our minds!

This is nothing new.?Our earliest forms of writing were pictographs.?Even when we had character-based writing (like on this page) we found a need for the old pictographs – like the letter “C” below.?We refer to this kind of publication as an “Illuminated Manuscript.”

While illumination took up some of the precious space on our costly paper, we found it answered a basic need – the need to connect the visual part of our brain with the abstract part.?The little pictographs increased our interest in the content, and helped us remember the information on the page.?They also provided some reference points for us to find information we couldn’t recall. We remembered what the page looked like and could flip through the manuscript and find the page we remembered without having to read the contents of the pages.

I could go on but I think you see the point ??.

Somewhere along the line we strove for uniformity.?Typewriters generally had a single-color ribbon.?By chance it happened to be the same color as our carbon paper! So, every document we had was black and white.?

I once worked with a bank that declared, “There is no such thing as blue ink in this bank.” Everybody carried only black ink pens.

But they bought color televisions!

I’m happy those days are gone.?I like color printers and I doubt you will find many offices that only have black and white printers today.

But not everybody has crossed the bridge yet. Sometimes we have long meetings in which one or more people sit at the back and type furiously to capture every word they can. Then we pass these notes to leaders who edit them severely before publishing them. They are black print on white paper. They are BORING. Nobody will remember them.

But it doesn’t have to be this way! Your meeting record can be ILLUMINATING!?The recipe is tried and true: just add a little graphics.?We call this “Graphic Recording.” It is the use of clear, simple, attractive graphics, coupled with written words to capture the essential meaning of the meeting content as the meeting unfolds. It is ready instantly, accessible by all attendees, pleasant to look at, and a joy to display.

Perhaps you don’t know where to even start adding these kinds of powerful graphics to your meetings.

I would suggest two possibilities:

1. Learn how to graphically record a meeting. Really great training is available in your area if you search the web.
2. Engage a graphic recorder from outside your organization to start building awareness and interest. Again, a web search is likely to lead to graphic recorders in your area.