Practical Tips for Visual Communication

In this episode, Jimi Holstebro discusses identifying gaps, pursuing education to fill them, and seamlessly integrating acquired skills into his work, all while enjoying the process.

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Running Order

• Intro
• Welcome
• Who is Jimi Holstebro
• Origin Story
• Jimi's current work
• Sponsor: Concepts
• Tips
• Tools
• Where to find Jimi
• Outro

Links

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Jimi's Website for Art
• Jimi's Website for Work
• Jimi on Instagram
• Jimi on LinkedIn
• Jimi on Facebook

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Thick paper
• Neuland brush tip markers
• Acrylics Pens
• Notebook
• iPad
• iMac
• Wacom Cintiq
• Clips Studio Paint
• Procreate

Tips

1. Don't limit yourself to gadgets.
2. Just do it.
3. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.
4. It's not about being good at drawing. It's about conveying ideas.

Credits

• Producer: Alec Pulianas
• Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro
• Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer

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Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike, and I'm here with Jimi Holstebro. Jimi, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you.

Jimi Holstebro: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

MR: It's an interesting name that you have, and I think you gave me a hint as to your name. Why don't you reveal to the listeners how you ended up with Jimi when you live in Denmark?

JH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mostly because my father was a huge Jimi Hendrix fan, so they chose to call their firstborn son, Jimi. Actually, will be calling me Jimi today, but then it's Jimi with, you know, like a soft J and it's pretty darn hard both for Dens and for everybody else to understand the "Yimi," so we go with Jimi.

MR: Interesting. Yeah. Cool. Well, and so, tell us a little bit about where you live and what you do.

JH: I'm living actually smack in the middle of Denmark, in the part of Denmark that's called Jutland. Which is the mainland. You know, there's a lot of island seals. Funen and then we have Jutland. And in the middle of Jutland, there's this city called Viborg. It's a small city with 40,000 people living there. It's a beautiful old city with the—what's it called? One of those very old churches we have in Europe, which have been, you know, a trade city, an important city where the court is. Also, the old court from that part of Denmark.

So beautiful, beautiful city with some lyrics and it has a good football team. It has some handballs, it has stuff. Actually, I ended up here because I moved here with my children's mother back in the day when she started in school as a nurse. They have a nursing school here. Originally, I come from the top of Denmark, the top of Jutland at a city by the sea called Frederikshavn. So, actually, my childhood was in a small fisherman's town called Frederikshavn.

MR: Wow.

JH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Back there I was like, you know, a little in toward kid—ah, that's not really true, but in toward in the way that when I came home, I sat down and then took out all my pencils and my markers and start drawing, listening to music, and just sat drawing all afternoon and reading comic books. I think maybe you heard that kind of story before about people interested in drawing. They have like, you know, hours and hours of reading comics and then trying to draw it themselves.

MR: Yeah, I had that history myself, you know, living our best lives as kids, right?

JH: Yeah, exactly. So that's kind of it. You know, normal school we have in Denmark. We also have, you know, like we have just a primary school, and then we go to some sort of high school. And after high school, I went to—actually, I started to read to become a teacher.

MR: Mm.

JH: Yeah. But when I was doing that, I applied to get into to the art academy. Actually, I got in. It's not something you just do. There's a lot of a lot of people trying to get in, and just few getting in there. Actually, I got in there and got my master's degree in fine arts.

MR: Really?

JH: Yeah. Back in the start of—middle of 2000-something. Yeah, '05, '06 or something like that.

MR: Did you have a specialty in the fine arts? Was there an area that you focused on?

JH: Yeah. Yeah. Actually, it was mostly drawing and graphics. You know, like old-school graphics. What is it called in English? I don't really know. But when we have paper, you put on rolls.

MR: Oh, yeah. Printing. Yeah, lithographs.

JH: Printing. Yeah, printing of course. Yeah, yeah. Stuff like that. I did that a lot. So always been very, very interested in the line, in the black and whites, working a lot. Also, you just show me you have one of the books I made for Neuland, which is also, you know, just a line. Very, very simple. I'm a huge fan of that, so just drawing, just black and white. And I love it.

MR: Interesting. Interesting.

JH: Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of it. Then just started my artistic career from there.

MR: Interesting. And so, tell us a little bit about what you do now?

JH: Yeah, actually, the last decade I've been independent, let's call it graphic facilitator because that's the word people understand. Actually, I'm not very fond of it anymore, and I'm referring more and more to myself as just being [unintelligible 05:14] but I draw because that's what I do.

MR: And I think everybody understands it too, right?

JH: Yeah, yeah. They do now because when I think graphic facilitation popped up in Denmark like 12, 15 years ago or something like that, and some people started doing it, and I actually quite fast got a grip of it and heard of it and tried it. And got a lot of jobs all of a sudden because it was also in the time when the social media, especially Facebook started rolling, everybody had an account, and everything that went on there was interesting.

So when people saw it, they kind of just called me or wrote me, "Can you come and help us?" But before I got there, I kind of stopped with art school in the middle of the 2000s. I didn't live from doing art, but it's kind of difficult. I think it's the same story in United States because when you're an artist, you are pretty much dependent on people liking your stuff.

MR: Right.

JH: And even though I have a master's degree, you know, it's not like being an engineer who's coming to tell you, "When we build this bridge, we need these materials." Everything has to be mathematically calculated to fit so the bridge won't fall. And when I come with my theoretical ideas about art and tell people it has to be like this because my reference is compared to other artists, blah, blah, blah. You know, people just say, "But I don't like it. I don't care. I don't like it."

MR: Yeah.

JH: And the internet wasn't—you know, there were no social media. So when I tried to sell art, you know, I had to drive around showing people my stuff and try to get into galleries or art shows and stuff like that. It was kind of difficult actually. So actually, I went back to teaching. Started teaching again and actually quite, quite fast got into managing. I started at a small school and they asked if I would like to manage the school. So actually, I ended up doing management for 10 years.

MR: Wow.

JH: Yeah. And in the area of special needs.

MR: Oh, okay.

JH: Get kids and youth with special needs. And, you know, that was interesting because they didn't learn like, you know—

MR: In a traditional way, right?

JH: Traditional way. And actually, I used the comics very much and the understanding of that, you know, the way it's sequenced. The sequential build of a strip was much easier for them to understand when they had to read text or understand connections with things.

So that kind of opened up something for me in terms of, you know, "Okay, this is interesting in many ways. What if we do it in other terms and also did it with the people I managed." In some ways started to, you know, using all of this. And then graphic facilitation kind of you know, popped up and then it started to make a whole lot more sense to work with stuff in this way.

And, meanwhile working as a manager, I think maybe I have a little, I dunno, may maybe I have a little HDHD—ADH—ADHD, something like this because I've always been, you know, very, very busy especially while working always taking some kind of—still keeping on educating myself. Because actually, I have a degree in management, I have a degree in facilitating, and I also have a master's degree in communication.

MR: Wow. Wow.

JH: I read a lot. You know, I read a lot and kind of built on. It became obvious for me because it's nice to have a master of fine arts, but then you're an artist and people, you know, they kind of expect you to be, you know, like a heavy camper with brushes and paint on your clothing. It is not always serious. So I had to somehow put some aspects to my CV that kind of made me have some weight when I talked about communication.

That became obvious for me in the last decade or something. So built on with my education, meanwhile working both with management and then the switch to working with the graphic facilitation so that I kind of, you know, had some weight when I told people about why visual communication was actually working and how it worked and stuff like that. Yeah.

MR: Interesting. So you sort of built that in.

JH: I'm sorry. Yeah. And I build that in. Yeah, yeah. Sorry.

MR: No, yeah. I was just gonna say, it's interesting the way you've sort of build in the things that you saw were missing as a, you know, something you're interested in, but it also provided—what's the word? Gravitas, or like the credibility or something, right?

JH: Exactly.

MR: So when you would go to a business to say, "Well, I've done all these studies." I guess you probably wouldn't say that, but it would be in your history. So they would see that pretty quickly.

JH: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So the last, a little more than a decade now, I've been an independent graphic facilitator or doing drawings for people in all kinds of ways. You know, traditional graphic recordings or scribing or whatever we call them, where I've of course started out with markers on papers, you know, in big style huge papers, wallpapers.

And then I've been doing, of course, I would like to say a lot of teaching using markers or the way of drawing as a means to communicate for others in their way of communication or teaching or stuff like that. I've been doing hundreds of small—what's it called? Animated videos. You know, the ones where you see the hand draw something and stuff like that. They also have a lot of different names. I just call them drawn videos.

MR: Like white whiteboard animation. Yeah. It's common. Yeah.

JH: Yeah. Something, yeah. They have all kinds of words. And then I also do like, I call it the strategic drawings. You know, where people want to somehow to unfold their strategies, their visions. You know, they have like 40 pages hidden on a H-drive somewhere in the business that nobody ever looks at. But to make it live in the company.

It actually helps to put it on a poster or make it hang in the walls, in the canteen, or something like that so that all the employees actually see what's going on, and they can see themselves in that process. And so, I do loads of that as well.

So mainly I've been doing that the last 10 years and been very, very happy about it. It has taken me all around the world, but mainly in Denmark, of course. But I've been traveling also different other countries to do drawings for companies. And it's been amazing. It's been amazing.

MR: Wow. And I kind of love the way that you sort of built this combination. So you began as a teacher. You know, you practically were a teacher and then a manager. But you've had this art background when you were a kid, you were drawing and looking at comics, it like, sort of this, I dunno, collection of all these components that now you're applying, right?

So you have to manage people and yourself, you have to teach them. And you know, those processes, you know, you know how to draw, but you're also then teaching that to other people, and then using it, of course, as a way to communicate. So your communication skills. So you've really made use of all the backgrounds that you put into yourself and you're applying them all, which is really cool.

JH: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It kind of makes—you know, it's very holistic the way I've you know both my history with drawing and management, you know, organizations and then the tools I acquired and putting it all together, it's very holistic. Actually, I'm getting up every day and I'm not getting to work, I'm just doing my thing.

MR: Having fun. Yeah, yeah.

JH: Exactly.

MR: That's kind of the ideal place where you wanna be, right? If you can.

JH: Yeah. It kind of is. Of course, you know, you making drawings for other people on their demands is not the same as the artistic me, of course, because I still do a lot of art, which is mostly the place, you know, where I do my own thing.

MR: Yeah.

JH: And that's a different language than the one I apply when I do business with people, you know because it is another game. But it smells like art in a very, very satisfying way, you know?

MR: Yeah.

JH: I own my skills in drawing and communication all the time with the work, and I really love it. The long-term idea for me is of course to, you know settle down in the mountain somewhere. I don't know, it's in France in a little cabin walking around half naked, just, you know, like wine in the one hand and brushing the other hand and living from my own house something like that.

MR: Well, it's still a possibility.

JH: That's a good thing about it.

MR: Yeah. That's really fascinating. I'm kind of curious to give me a sampling of a project. You sort of given generalities about the kinds of projects. Is there a project that you could tell us about? Of course, sometimes NDAs apply, of course. But a project that you can tell us about that you're excited about that would give us a sense of the kind of work you mostly do for a client.

JH: Yeah. Yeah. I can do that. Right now, I'm almost putting last bricks together with a strategic drawing for a company in Denmark. They reached out—and that's kind of very normal process for me. Client reaches out, say they need me to come and draw, summarize, live draw, you know, something at a meeting. And then the last handful of years that has never been satisfying enough for me.

So I ask the client, "Okay, why do you want me to do that? What do you need the output to do?" And it always baffles the clients because they have seen, heard something about live drawing and they want a really nice poster of what has been going on. And even though I am pretty good at drawing, and I'm also pretty fast at drawing, it is also very much to ask of me to come in a couple of hours and summarize a whole lot of strategic processes, boiled down to, you know, like a couple of hours.

And my question to the client always is, "But I can do that. I can do that, and I will listen to what you say, but are you sure you want that to be the output you are putting to life when I leave?" Because that will be my very subjective—what is it called? Boiling down what you're telling me in that specific timeframe. I can do that, and you can pay for that, but wouldn't it be greater if you kind of introduced me a whole lot more to all the strategic reasoning behind what you're doing, and then we make it into a small process where I then try to sketch what I see and hear from that.

And then, you know, we have some back-and-forth ping pong about what, and at the end out which, you know me inking it up, making it look nice and coloring, and then you have like a poster where you really, really have ownership of what's going on instead of me just subjectively drawing all kinds of things I here in a small timeframe.

And then also, the businessman in me also makes it much clearer for people to understand that from here on, you also have almost the manuscript for if you want to make a small animated movie out of it afterwards. And I can deliver you packages with all the drawings on each own. So you can use them in PowerPoint, you can do all that. Because you get like a digital package.

MR: Yeah.

JH: And people always go with that because it makes sense.

MR: Yeah.

JH: So that's kind of a typical way I do these projects. And then again, if it's an animated video, they start out reaching out for, I also kind of make them buy, you know, posters and stuff like that in the other end, because it makes sense to have all these components put together so you can, as a company, use it in a way.

I think it makes sense for you as a designer as well, you know, to have things, they have a red line through all the things I do for them. So have like a pack again, unfolding on different platforms afterwards. And of course, it makes sense, you know.

MR: That's more of a sweet—

JH: So that would be kind of a—yeah, yeah. Something like that. And that would be a typical process or project for me to be involved in. I know it's pretty selfish, but it is because I'm also a little—you know, when I started out, I just did everything the customers ask me. Two, I did this and that. But I also, you know, become a little lazy and a little more self-centered. I wanna deliver something that I'm very proud of when I deliver it.

MR: Yeah.

JH: Back when I started, I just wanted as much as possible, I wanted to draw, draw, draw, come out, visit everybody, go everywhere, do everything. But now I've grown a little older and I'm a whole lot more interested in just sitting down really nerding, deep diving into the drawings, and have my own party and fun with doing the drawings and making them look, you know, awesome. So, it's kind of funny, but it works and it makes sense for the customers as well. So everybody's happy. It's a win-win.

MR: Well, I would think that if you're gonna put that much energy into it, you might as well get exactly what the customer wants and also what you want, right?

JH: Exactly.

MR: Than just to, you know, 80 percent of the way do it, you know? I dunno, so.

JH: Yeah.

MR: Anyway. I'm kind of curious, how do you convince the customer? This might be helpful for someone listening. How do you move them from, "Well, we just want you to come in for a day and draw things," and then you end up with this subjective perspective? How do you sort of move them into the next? Are there certain things that they respond to that someone listening could integrate into their own practice to do the same thing? Like, what can our listeners learn from your approach to help do that?

JH: Yeah. I think mostly I start off by saying most clients don't really know exactly what I'm doing. You know, they know I draw, they know I draw and they heard of graphic facilitation, recording something like this, and they've seen drawings, and they instantly know how it works. When they look at a drawing, they want to look at a drawing and they get curious about it and look more at it and read some of the stuff. They don't do that with the 40 pages and the D-drive, right?

MR: Mm-hmm.

JH: So, instinctively they have, you know, an understanding of this kind of works. So, when I unfold and I question them more and more about, but which kind of output do you really want? I think they kind of understand where I'm coming from and what it is I actually do. So they have like this kind of revelation as, "Ah, oh, can we really do this? So can this be the end product? Is that possible?"

So, I'm kinda opening their eyes to what the drawings actually what it does and what it can do and what it really is, and how it is unfolded and put into work when it's best. Which is something that I'm very, very interested in. You know, all the things around it, you know, because also I've been studying it and I think it's very interesting and I want to study even more about how is it, it works, and functions the way it does for us, you know?

I don't know if I'm pretty good at per persuading people or something, but I don't think it really is this, I think it makes sense for people to hear that I can come draw for you live and then I leave, and then you are left there maybe with a piece of paper, maybe digitally whatever, and then what? And then they, you know, maybe also kind of get scared because they don't know what to do from there.

MR: Yeah, yeah.

JH: They don't have the skillset, you know, to—but maybe even if they have a digital drawing, you know, they will put it into Word or other program and cut it and it won't look nice if they need some of it. So they're also happy to have me guide them and help them in all of the process. And when I tell them, but if we make a drawing here, that's pretty good, you can have that as a standout component you can use in PowerPoints or whatever, in emails and stuff like that. That also compels them to go with it, I think.

MR: Yeah. It almost seems like—

JH: And then—

MR: Oh, go ahead.

JH: Yeah. And then normally, of course, it will be a tiny bit more expensive to do the process. But not that much again, because I charge more when I'm out drawing live than when I have the opportunity to sit back at my office, you know, then I can work at different projects at the same time, and I can use my time in a better way. So, in that way that will make it a bit cheaper, but then of course it'll be a longer process. So it is normally not that much more I charge people for one or the other.

MR: Well, it's interesting. I think what I'm reading that you're saying and maybe the way we can think about it is if we get in a situation with a customer or a client is to—because we know they probably don't know how to apply it, at least effectively, but they're willing to spend this significant amount of money to have someone come in and do this.

So we need to think like, well, what would be the—we kind of know, like what would be the best application and sort of think as if I were the client, what would I want? And then you present it back to them and say, "Well, we could do components for PowerPoints and emails."

Like, you know, you could even say that, like, "I've worked with clients who had the single image, they tried to cut that corner out, and it wasn't exactly right. If you've got me on board, we can separate that and we can make that into a component that you can use even after the fact," right? Like, they might get a month into like, "Oh, Jimi, there's this one little part that we've just focused in this area now. Can you pull that out?"

JH: Exactly.

MR: And you might say, "Well, I can't pull it out, but maybe I could just redo it based on the same thing." You're now a resource to them. So you almost need to think like, what is it? You sort of have a better idea of what they could do.

JH: Exactly.

MR: The other thing that I would imagine is once you've done it once successfully, you can then show that as the proof. Like, "Hey, look, this other company, look what they did. I came in for the day, we caught some information, but then we started to collaboratively work to get it exactly right. And then we realized there were five elements that we could pull from it. And here's the five elements, and here's how they used it, and here's a quote from the person at that company and how they were so excited," or whatever. You could, like, once you do the one, then it kind of flips the next one, right? So you can think of it that way.

JH: Yeah. I also always do that, you know, in the mail correspondence, I always add, you know, like, "I did this one, you can see how I did this one. And if you want to see how this one has been turned into and explain a video, here's a link to this." So people also, they—and that's also the thing, because I am obviously very visual in my way of thinking, which most people are, but they think that they everything is written.

So they kind of need help and guiding in seeing things. So I always send materials so they can see how it is. So sometimes confidential and stuff like that, but this is for your eye only, you know, stuff like that. Then they also feel kind of included

MR: Special.

JH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.

MR: That's great feedback. I mean, we are not even to the tips yet, but these are great tips for visual thinkers who are trying to find ways to integrate this work into their daily life or their work life. So if you're either independent or even inside a company, you could do the same thing, you know, on your own time, and you'd be really surprised at how open many companies are to this.

I know, 'cause I work for companies, I integrate my visual thinking all the time, and they're really excited when I do it, and in fact, request it, right? So just because you work for a company doesn't mean this is off limits for you. This is a huge opportunity. And you might have some benefits that someone like Jimi doesn't have because he's outside. As an insider, you could have some different perspectives and maybe some built-in, you know, a reputation that you could lean on to show this stuff since you know, the inside the product so well.

JH: I kind of have a question for you, Mike.

MR: Sure.

JH: Because in Denmark, I haven't seen the first job opening as a graphic facilitator yet. It's yet to come. And I don't understand why, but that's another discussion altogether.

MR: Yeah.

JH: But do you see job openings or applications that people asking for, you know, as an employee on a regular basis, not just like freelancer or something like that? But do you know of or heard or have heard of graphic facilitators that are hired into larger businesses?

MR: The only place I've seen it has been for graphic recording companies.

JH: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

MR: So like, my friends at Sketch Effect are often looking for new people, right?

JH: Yeah, of course. Yeah.

MR: Sketch Effect, not to focus too much on them, is they do have employees, but I think they also have freelancers. So they have a variety of different modes, right? But they will hire—I dunno if you know Heather Martinez, she's amazing at hand lettering. She just took a position with a company and she's doing something around I think vision work or something. But I can guarantee you that Heather Martinez is going to do visual thinking in that role, right?

So in some ways, probably, maybe in a big company, you would see that kind of a role. But I would say if you're listening and you work for a company, it doesn't mean you can't do it, right? You can just find ways to integrate this. Again, your job even as an employee, is to communicate ideas effectively. And if visual thinking is your effective way of communication, that should be part of your suite of communication tools. But you know—

JH: It is kind of funny. I don't really understand it because now it has been, you know, like—

MR: It's been a while.

JH: Yeah, it's been a while. 15, 20 years, or something. And there's a lot of people working with it. And of course, visual thinking it's not like they—yeah, and some people, when I talk to, "Yeah, we have a graphic designer." Yeah.

MR: That's different.

JH: That's not it.

MR: Yeah.

JH: Yeah. That's not it. But I think many huge companies just think about how many meetings they have every day. If they had like, you know, a visual thinker joining those meetings to help retain information, you know, make it shareable. All those things that makes a visual communication interesting. That's amazing. This year I'm gonna do some work and asking some questions in the proper places to why that's not happening yet.

MR: Maybe it is happening and it's just so hit-and-miss that we just aren't aware of it.

JH: Denmark is so small and we are so few doing it. So, I think I would know it.

MR: I think we're like—

JH: We're like as many inhabitants in Denmark as you are in the biggest citizen in the states.

MR: Yeah, yeah. That's true. That's true. The small group. Yeah. I mean, I guess the two things I think is one, probably companies are trained to look outside and don't think about hiring it in. Maybe because they feel like they're too small. But maybe that will be a shift too.

So when you think about, oh, it's probably about maybe 8, 10 years ago, I dunno if you remember this, but lots of tech companies bought design firms. So if you think about who's providing graphic facilitation and recording and sketchnoting, there's firms that typically do it and they're trained to go to an outside firm because it's kind of a one-off thing, right?

JH: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MR: In a lot of cases, the problem too is that when the budget gets tight, you know, first thing to go is gonna be graphic recording, right? Because "Ah, we kind of, don't need that. Let's—" But at some point, there may be a place where it's—

JH: But that's the thing that I'm interested in and curious about because it's not a one-off thing.

MR: Yeah. It shouldn't be.

JH: As I just said, think of all the meetings that are being held, all the processes that are being designed every day, and they have like, loads of project employees just to manage all those kinds of projects. Why don't you have one helping you to visualize it? That's what I'm saying. Yeah.

MR: Maybe there’s…

JH: That's another discussion.

MR: Yeah. Exactly. Now we're sort of talking a little bit about that, let's shift into tools. I'm really curious to hear what tools—we talked before we began, we're both Neuland ambassadors and we use their tools 'cause they're great. So I assume there must be some favorites there, but I'd love to hear about notebooks and paper and any other analog tools, and then of course, digital tools that you like to use in your practice.

JH: Yeah. I think I might be kind of boring in the tool ways because I've never, you know, nerded into what kind of marker do I love the most. Do I have some special pen flown directly in from Japan or anything? When I draw on paper, I like the paper to be kind like for wall coloring, you know? So, it has to be thick. I like that. So it doesn't bleed through. That's number one. Of course, but I don't really have a favorite.

If we have to talk about the Neuland markers, I love the brush tip. And I love that they just made the big ones with brush tips. I absolutely love it. That's my all-time favorite. But normally I just do like—and I have, I don't know, thousands of pens and markers and, you know, just with the small felt tip, something like this black.

MR: Yeah.

JH: It works for me. Works for me, you know? And then when I do my arti fati thing, I mainly paint with the acrylics and brushes. And there also, I'm kind of a weirdo because I don't have any brand or specific brushes I just have to do or any specific canvas. I kind of just make do with the—

MR: Whatever's available

JH: - whatever I have. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. That might be a bit weird, but yeah, I don't know. I have colleagues that really, really nerd into, you know, what kind of notebook they're using, what's the paper and what's the pens like? But I never really—I'm fascinated about it, but, you know, I never really dug into it somehow.

I am, and I know you, you said that it could be a little boring talking about the digital tools because all of us have an iPad and we probably also have a Wacom or something like this. And yeah, I think maybe 80, 90 percent of all my work is done on the computer or the iPad.

Because for me, as I told you, as a process evolves when I'm working with clients, it's just easy for the client, you know, and to send files back and forth and do corrections on them and split 'em into single components and stuff like that. It's just a whole lot easier. But, you know, I have a big iMac and I have the large and new Wacom Cintiq. I really love to draw on this.

I used to draw a lot in Photoshop, Adobe's Photoshop, but a couple years ago, it was kind of like they downgraded. They nerfed the drawing part, and I had to reinstall my brushes again and again. And I kind of grew tired of it. So, now I'm mainly drawing when I'm drawing on the computer in Clips Studio. It's a program made for making comics and it kind of just have the tools depends the stuff I need and all the shortcuts are basically the same as Adobe.

So I've been working with Adobe for, I don't know, two, three decades, something like that. So it is in the fingers. So the transition to Clips Studio was painless. Just did it overnight. And then of course on the—I don't know if it's of course, but I do use Procreate a lot. I miss so much—do you know the German guy, Hulk, who made—in the early days of the iPad—

MR: That's right.

JH: He made—

MR - an app, didn't he?

JH: He made an app that when you—he designed it for live drawing because what you did, all the time when you projected your screen, it was the whole screen. But you could sit on the iPad and work, you can zoom in and out and—

MR: And they would never see that.

JH: Yeah. They would never see that. But somehow it ended up with the Apple not supporting the support of it or something like that. So, it went off again. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and really miss that one because it was kind of Procreate, but you had that single feature, and maybe it's me that haven't been smart enough to figure it out, but I haven't seen any programs having that feature yet.

So, normally now when I do live drawing on my iPad, I wait until there's a break and then I send them like a jpeg of wherever I've gotten to something like that. So that's the thing projected up on the screens and the breaks anyway, something like that. Yeah.

MR: I think I've seen features, and maybe it's not in Procreate, it might've been in—I have a note-taking app I use for slides where it gives you the option in the settings to say don't show the tools. Right. So it would hide the tools and you just see—I don't know if they hide the zooming, I can remember—

JH: But one thing is the tool, but then, assuming if you're sitting in your audience and watching the Zoom, you would be like, nauseous, you know.

MR: Getting sick. Yeah,

JH: Yeah. But if anyone is listening to this, knows a program that does it, please, please make a note about it. That'd be nice.

MR: Let Jimi know.

JH: Yeah.

MR: Do you remember, it was a company called FiftyThree, and now it's owned by WeTransfer paper, that app paper. I think in an old version, it would do what you talked about, where it would just show the screen. Now, I don't think you could hide the tools, but if you zoomed, there was a tool. I can't remember what it was. But when you zoomed, it wouldn't show the zooming. It would just show the static and they would see the changes happening.

JH: Exactly.

MR: Now you're making me curious to poke around my tools and see, is there a tool that will do that?

JH: Was it Nils Holger Pohl, or something, I think?

MR: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JH: He made that one. I can't remember the name of it. Yeah, but that would be nice to have, because this, of course, I talk people away from projecting it live because people get nausea and then we end up with, you know, a solution where it's shown in the breaks but people will just be watching in the breaks anyways.

But sometimes it would be nice to, you know, like have it projected up whilst people are talking so that they could concentrate and see ideas unfolding, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. That would be nice to have in there, within the whole scene anyway, so.

MR: Yeah. Now you're making me curious to dig around. If I find apps that do it, I'll let you know. And if somebody's listening and you know an app, then let Jimi know.

JH: Yeah. That'll be nice. Thank you. Yeah.

MR: You sound like a practical guy. Probably because you grew up as a kid in a fishing village, you know, just drawing all day and, you know, there was no special art tools when you were a kid. Like me, if I wanted something, I had to make it. If I wanted a comic book, I would take printer paper, cut something up, and make it, staple it, whatever. So you just make it happen. There's no stuff for you.

JH: Exactly.

MR: So I think that I'm like you, I like going into the corner drugstore and finding my favorite pen there in any city in the world, right? Or something close enough to it. I've always had that feeling like I also use a laptop because I've always wanted to feel like I could work independently of a place. So I want to be able to have the ability to work and not have to have, oh, I have to have this monitor, and I have to have this desk, and I have to have because that really limits your ability to do work if you become adaptable to the situation. You know, that's always been my approach. So I think that's maybe a little bit of a mindset in some ways.

JH: Yeah. Yeah. It wouldn't be the first time I've told myself I can't draw unless I have this gadget. And then I kind of, you know, go totally numb until I have that gadget. And in the end, I also always have a notebook and a couple of pens in my back everywhere I go, because I don't want to be limited. But you know, when I'm sitting in my office—I'm sitting in my living room right now, I'm not even at the office, but when I'm sitting in the office, you know, I have thousands of gadgets and I can't find half of them, and "Hey, wait, didn't I have that one?" You know.

MR: Yeah, exactly.

JH: And at some point, I couldn't live without that gadget.

MR: Yeah. That's funny. That's funny.

JH: Yeah. It's terrible.

MR: For all the guests that I have on, I'd like to make it practical. We've done some of that already, but I would love to hear three tips. You can give more if you like, but I just asked for three.

JH: Mm-hmm.

MR: Imagine someone's listening and maybe they're in a rut, or they just feel they're not so inspired and they need a little encouragement or inspiration, what would be three things that you would tell that person can be practical or it can be mindset stuff?

JH: I think maybe it's obvious because we just talked about it, but don't limit yourself. Don't limit yourself on gadgets. It does not have to be the right notebook or the right pen. That is nice to have, you don't need it. You don't need it. Just grab paper, pencil, pen, whatever you have, and start doing it. And number two would of course be exactly that. Just do it. We are so fortunate, not like when we were kids, Mike, I had to take my bike and ride, I don't know how many kilometers to go to the library if I needed any kind of inspiration other than what was in my mind, you know?

MR: Yeah.

JH: You just open your smartphone, your laptop, your iPad, whatever you have, add your hand and you can find tutorials, you can find everything. I would have been the greatest artist in the world if I had those opportunities when I was a kid, I think. Hours I have been sitting, you know, copying stuff to get better.

If I could just sit down and watch all the good guys doing all the good things and copy that and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, that would be—and of course, maybe tip number three, I always kind of say to students I work with, "Do you play any kind of instrument?"

And people say no. If they do, they do, and if they don't, they don't. And I ask them, "How do you get good at playing an instrument?" "Yeah, by rehearsing." Exactly. You know? And it's the same thing with drawing. If you wanna be good at it, you have to do it. You just have to do it.

But the funny thing with drawing is that we kind of all have at least 10 years experience of drawing and, you know, it's sitting in us, it's living in us that we kind of think that it's a thing we ought to, should have to do, could do better because we all have done a lot of drawings.

You know, what's her name? Ah, that's embarrassing. It's a Ted talk, and she's talking about—that's what I first heard it. It's not her founding, but you know, it's the only universal language we have. And it's evolving all over the, all over the globe in the same fashion. From you can get a crayon in your hands till 12 years old. It evolves in the precise same way all over the globe.

So it's a universal language we have, but then, you know, of course, our brains at sometimes understand now the things I'm drawing does not look like reality. And then most people stop drawing, you know? And also, because we are not encouraged to continue doing it in school.

MR: Right.

JH: Which in Denmark at least, getting better. People are getting better and better understanding that we have to, you know, utilize all the modalities to make greater retention, understanding and engagement and all those kinds of things, which are also very, very interesting. And so, do it. Just do it. If you want to use visual communication as a tool, it's not about being—of course, if you use it, you rehearse every day, you utilize it, you do, of course, get better. But it's not about being good at drawing.

It's not always about being good at communicating, it's being good at listening, it's being good at visualizing ideas, you know? And it's the ideas of things, and they are often and normally very, very simple, very simple icons of reality. You know? So, you're not doing lifelike portraits or anything. It's not what it's about. It's about conveying ideas.

MR: Yeah. Well, said. Well said.

JH: Thank you. Thank you. Which is of course also something I'm very, very interested in. And I don't know if that's a question of all, but now I'm just gonna tell you. You know, I told you I'm glad to be educated and actually I'm working hard on trying to see if I can build even more education on top of what I've already done because I think there's some questions that need to be answered.

And it is, why is it drawing actually works as well as it does, you know? So right now, I'm trying just as a start collecting as much evidence as there is, see who's been researching in stuff like this. And, you know, because it draws from psychology and movie studies and all kinds of things.

But that's not really doing a lot of studying in what is it exactly drawing does, and why does it do? Because we all feel it works when you look at a drawing and, you know, we have all kinds of sayings, like "Picture says more than a thousand words."

MR: Right.

JH: Why is it that it does that? That could be interesting. And maybe I don't know if it ends out with that, but I'm willing to do a PhD on that subject if it comes down to that. Because it would also be a very good selling point for people like us. But we have to draw because research tells us exactly that works in this and that way, you know.

MR: And here's why. Yeah.

JH: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's what I'm very, very occupied of as we're going into '24. And some of the things I'm trying to get laid out planned out, what's the direction for this and how do I somehow get that into motion?

MR: Sounds like a keystone project for you. Something that could be a lifetime achievement kind of thing.

JH: Mm-hmm. Hope so. Hope so.

MR: Cool.

JH: I'm very occupied with it right now, and I've been a couple of last years, and I've also—we haven't been talking about that. I've been in some other programs where we're talking about, I also made, you know one of the first, I don't know how it is in U.S., but I've been one of the founders of making visual communication, you know, as graphical visual communication education that actually gives you points as in a bachelor degree in Denmark.

MR: That'd be cool. Yeah.

JH: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

MR: Yeah. That sounds excellent.

JH: Yeah, it is. It is.

MR: Well, Jimi, this has been really wonderful to chat and sort of have these interesting discussions. Thank you for sharing.

JH: Of course.

MR: How can we find you? Do you have a website? Do you have social media that we should check out? What's the best way to connect with you?

JH: I'm everywhere. I didn't even mention, I'm also a certified social media manager.

MR: Oh, really?

JH: Yeah. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram. I was all on other platforms before, but, you know, I kind of narrowed it down. Also, I have two different websites. One for my art and my posters, which is my name Jimiholsterbro.dk, as in Denmark. And then I have, you know, the work platform, the work website for all the visualizations and movies and stuff I do, which is and it is a Danish word, it's taenkogtegn.dk. Taenk og tegn which means think and draw.

There you can see a lot of work I've done with the visualization of vision strategies, movies, teaching, and stuff like that. So courses. Yeah. Also, of course, we have contact infos and mail addresses on those on those websites. But I think the fastest way would probably be on all the social media platforms.

MR: Mm-hmm. Okay.

JH: And everybody just reach out if you wanna have a chat or wanna ask me anything, it's okay.

MR: So is your handle the same on all those social media platforms, and what is that handle?

JH: My name, Jimi Holstebro.

MR: Okay. Just Jimi Holstebro. It's pretty unique.

JH: Yeah, yeah.

MR: Cool.

JH: That's Even Stevens. That's easy.

MR: And we'll reach out to you and get links for all these things and make sure the show notes—we like to have robust show notes on the podcast.

JH: Yeah.

MR: So if you're listening and you wanna find any of these things, you can check there and go to any of those locations.

JH: Very welcome. Yeah, very welcome.

MR: Thank you, Jimi. This has been really great. I'm so thankful for the work that you do and how you're representing visual thinking and all the thinking that goes behind what you're doing, and how many people you're helping and businesses you're helping. I think it's great to have you representing the community, so thank you.

JH: Likewise. Thank you, Mike.

MR: And for everyone listening, that's another episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast. Until the next episode, this is Mike and Jimi signing off.

JH: Bye-bye.