Transition from Academic to Freelance Graphic Recording

In this episode, Julian Kücklich shares his journey—from childhood, where drawing was an innate talent, to academic pursuits and his discovery of design. Julian discusses how creativity and innovation provide visual solutions that blend storytelling, graphic recording, and visual strategy effortlessly.

Sponsored by Concepts

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Running Order

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

Links

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Julian's Website
• Julian on LinkedIn
• Julian on Instagram

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Neuland markers
• Black Foamboard
• Black Cardboard
• POSCA Acrylic Markers
• MOLOTOW Acylic Markers
• Pentel Brush Pens
• Amsterdam Notebooks
• iPad Pro
• Apple Pencil
• Procreate
• Concepts

Tips

1. Work with shapes, mix them up, and find new ways of combining them.
2. Shift from noun to verb. If you find it hard to draw something, it's often easier to draw a verb that goes with it.
3. Always carry a pen and some thread. If you need to draw a large circle, that's the easiest way to make that happen.

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 Julian Kücklich. Julian, it's so good to have you on the show.

Julian Kücklich: Great to be here, Mike.

MR: Yeah, I've seen your work so much. Again, to guests I've talked to, LinkedIn seems like the place I'm finding really fascinating people posting things. And I've asked people, and I can ask you too, is there something going on in LinkedIn or is it just that I've trained the algorithm to give me what I wanna see? Do you have a sense of what's going on there?

JK: Well, I think, you know, LinkedIn has become much more popular in Europe in recent years. When I joined LinkedIn, which was 10 years ago, I was just reminded that it was my LinkedIn anniversary maybe three, four weeks ago, it was hardly used. People in Germany especially used a platform called Xing.

MR: Yes, I remember Xing. Yeah.

JK: Yeah. And so, that seems to have dropped off the radar and people are doing much more on LinkedIn. So that might be one of the reasons that you see more content from creators in Europe at least on LinkedIn now.

MR: Hmm. Interesting. I'm sure the algorithm must have something to do with it, but anyway, if you are listening and you're not on LinkedIn or you haven't really paid attention there, go check it out. It seems like there's lots more graphics. I think in a way, it's got a nice blend of visual capability. So like visuals attract people, but it crosses over with business. So, people who are looking for either some kind of impact or I guess getting work from it, it's a natural place to be if you're a graphic recorder professionally.

In my case, I just like to share what's going on, and I do some teaching so that it opens the opportunity for people to find out about classes I might be teaching. But it definitely seems to be more visual. Anyway, that aside, Julian, tell us who you are and what you do, and then let's jump right into your origin story right after that. All the way from when you were a little boy till now, tell us like, what were the key moments, what were the things you did as a kid? All those kinds of things.

JK: All right. That's gonna be a long story.

MR: Good.

JK: Just to get us started, I've been working as a graphic recorder for about 10 years now. Well, actually it's a bit longer, but I went full-time freelance in 2014, so it's almost exactly 10 years ago. Well, you know graphic recording is becoming less and less important in my business. I do a lot of strategy mapping or strategic illustration as I like to call it. So I work with clients on visual representations of their strategy or their goals or their values.

And those often have a basis in graphic recording. I often like to kick off these processes with workshops where I do graphic recording, but then I take the results of that back into my studio, and then I work on the illustration and fill up the details, and then make changes. So it's a longer and more involved process than the pure live graphic recording that I did for the first, you know, six or seven years of my career almost exclusively.

MR: Hmm. Interesting. A question that sort of pops into my mind as you talk about this. So do you find, so typically graphic recording, at least traditionally is a large board, foam board, paper, something, and it's in a room, so people are kind of immersed in it in a sense? So when you go back and do the strategy work, do you find it's important to reframe it in a more consumable size?

This is a very specific question. So in other words, do you come back with a report that's A4 printable or, you know, something like that? Or does it come back as a large board again, but maybe more like, you know, you boiled the stew and then now it's a really tasty kind of a thing?

JK: I must say I find it really hard to produce something that's printable on an A4 paper because there's usually so much detail that—you know, a lot of that gets lost when it gets printed in such a small size. So I try to encourage my clients when they share it, either view it on a big screen or print it in a large format so detail is really there and they can, you know, focus on specific areas of what they're interested in at that moment.

I think size is really an important and often undervalued aspect or quality of, you know a graphic or an illustration. It really adds to the quality if it is large and if the viewer can actually immerse themselves into the graphic.

MR: Right. Yeah. It seemed to me like that would be a curious, with this opportunity to compress, there might also be a desire to reduce size, but it sounds like that's not the case. Maybe it's slightly smaller, but still, quite a large scale because I suspect in that strategy work and the amount of information you're taking in, it would be difficult to fit it in a small size. You need the space to really represent all the components and the interactions and interrelationships, I suppose.

JK: Absolutely.

MR: Yeah. Interesting. Anyway, so that's just a curiosity as we—I guess in this episode, it seems like I'm interrupting you to kind of ask for more details, which I guess is okay, but continue.

JK: Perfectly. I guess the next question is how did I get there?

MR: Yeah.

JK: And that's really a very long and complicated story because I didn't start out as an illustrator or a graphic artist like a lot of other graphic recorders do. In my experience, you know, they either come from a visual background or from a coaching background, and I have neither. I started out studying German and American literature in university. And then I kind of switched over to media studies and I did a lot of research on video games.

MR: Hmm. Interesting.

JK: Actually published a lot of papers on video games and gave a lot of conference presentations on video games, and actually did a PhD about global production networks—

MR: Wow.

JK: - in relation to computer games. So, you know, that was a big part of my life up until my mid-30s. And then I had a teaching job in Berlin actually teaching game design. And then I decided that you know, academia wasn't really my thing. I mean, I liked the teaching, but I didn't like the bureaucracy. I didn't like the hierarchy. I didn't like the way, you know, you had to ask a thousand people before you could do something.

MR: Yeah, yeah.

JK: So I then started to look for different work. And what I found was a job in an NGO which was doing training for journalists in mostly the Middle East. But then when I joined in 2012, they were just creating a platform for North Africa, for Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. So the Arab Spring countries as they were known at the time.

MR: Yeah. Yeah.

JK: And so, I was able to join that team that built up that platform and work as a kind of technical editor. And I think the roots of my visual practice really are in the process that we then followed in creating a magazine. It was an online platform, a journalism platform, but we wanted to have something printed. So we started making a magazine called Correspondence, bilingual English and Arabic.

And the process of actually conceptualizing that magazine is where I started taking visual notes. And you know, pulling all these ideas together and seeing how they would interact and what would be visually appealing. It was just a way for me, well, first of all, to make those meetings more interesting for me. But also, I noticed when I shared those visual notes with my colleagues they really liked them.

And they really thought that the process of putting this magazine together became much more engaging in a way than just, you know, having minutes of those meetings. And then coming to the next meeting and working on the same stuff. So, you know, I mean, for me, it was really the first time that I saw that you know, my doodling would make a difference.

And I did always draw. When I was a child, I used to draw in my notebooks. In school, I used to draw in my school books although I wasn't actually allowed to, but, you know, it was really what I like doing to embellish and change the pictures and find new ways of contextualizing them. So that was something that I also carried over into my academic, research practice. I always found it really useful to visualize ideas or to organize my ideas using visual tools.

So in a way, visual thinking was always part of my life and of my different professional roles. But I think at that time, at MICT, when we were putting together that magazine, it was the first time that I saw that it could actually add something valuable, not only to my own process but to other people's processes as well. So that was an important moment, and it was encouraged by the organization.

So I think that was also important that it was not, you know, seen as something that was beside the point, or that was really only a way of passing the time. But they saw the value in it. And the expression of that was that they also asked me to do graphic recording at their conferences. The first conference that I actually did a graphic recording for was in South Sudan because that was one of the countries that the organization was working in.

It was a very new country at the time. It only became independent in 2011. And so, you know, it was exciting to go there and see what it was like after a brutal civil war and lots of very unfortunate events in the history of those two countries, South Sudan and Sudan. And we asked journalists from both those countries to come to Juba, to the capital of South Sudan and, you know, try to find ways to build up the media landscape in South Sudan. And I was asked to do the graphic recording for that conference, which was a challenge.

I mean, it was, you know, politically very charged. And it was an uneasy situation because I think nobody was really sure that the peace would last. And as we've seen, it didn't last, but at the time when we were there at the end of 2012, it was that brief period where it was actually peaceful. But you could feel the tension in the air and it was also in the conference rooms and, you know, there was a lot of distrust between the different parties attending the conference. So it definitely wasn't an easy first graphic recording job that I did there.

MR: Trial by fire, it sounds like.

JK: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. But the interesting thing that I remembered when you asked me to come on your podcast was that one of the journalists from Kenya who attended the conference, he saw what I was doing and he said, "Hey, do you know this guy Mike Rohde? Do you know the Sketchnote Handbook?" And I said, "No, I've never heard of it." And so, when I came back to Berlin after the conference, I went onto Amazon and tried to find the book, and there it was, and I ordered it. And so that was the first time I actually saw your work.

MR: Oh, interesting.

JK: And it's interesting that you know, it came to me in South Sudan from a Kenyan journalist.

MR: That's crazy. That's crazy.

JK: It only speaks to your worldwide fame, I guess.

MR: I guess so. Wow. That's interesting. And I'm kind of curious like you were asked by this organization to do this graphic recording. Obviously, you felt comfortable enough to do it, probably because you had knowledge of the area, you had knowledge with the organization, but had you done graphic recording ever before? It sounds like no. And also, were you like, aware of it being like a thing, like a profession or a practice before you did that work to kinda look and say, "Oh, okay, this is the way you do it. Okay, I'll copy all the things that I see and then replicate it." How did all that part of it work?

JK: Yeah, I think I wasn't really aware that it was a thing. I had seen it once before, at a, well a lecture, you know, in Berlin at a cultural event. And someone did a graphic recording on a blackboard with chalk, which is kind of unusual. But, you know, I watched it and I was fascinated that somebody, you know, was able to draw what was being talked about in real-time.

MR: Yeah.

JK: And, you know, I saw the potential in it because it was so interesting. I tried to take pictures, but it was very dark and the pictures didn't really come out very well. And that must have been, oh, I don't know, maybe 2008, 2009. So it was a few years before I actually started working as a graphic recorder. But yeah, I mean, I felt confident, I guess, because the organization, MICT trusted me to do it and to do it well.

And, you know, I started this process in preparation for the publication of the magazine. And so, I thought, okay, I have kind of like a visual vocabulary for this because a lot of the themes that came up during the conference were the same themes that had come up right when we were conceptualizing that magazine. So I thought, okay, I have a couple of icons or images that I can use and that I can, you know, change and re-contextualize to find a way to represent this conference. And I guess that for me at the time, that was enough. And I also wanted to go to South Sudan and see what it was like.

MR: Yeah, of course.

JK: Yeah.

MR: You had sort of lived it, it sounded like by making the magazine you'd sort of lived in the space, not only the content part of it, like what you're talking about and understanding and how to represent, but also the practice of doing it probably helped you to feel like, "Okay. We just—" I would assume the notes you were taking were not large scale for the planning, or maybe they're medium scale.

JK: No, they were actually quite small. They were in an A5 notebook.

MR: Okay. Quite small then.

JK: Yeah. Yeah. Only later I moved on to larger formats.

MR: Yeah. I know that's always a challenge. I know it's been a challenge for me in some cases because I do so much in a small scale, A5, A4, U.S. letter. You know, jumping to a large board, that proportional shift you have to make can be a challenge. I found that it was just a matter of acclimating myself to the size. Like you sort of have to almost scale in your mind everything up a little bit.

And then once you get into the rhythm, you're okay. But the first transition is the toughest part, I guess until you get sort of in the flow of that size. Once you establish your icon size, you then, "Okay, this is now my new orientation. Now let's continue from there."

JK: Yeah, I mean that was a challenge for me as well. And I think for me it was also a matter of experimenting with different markers and different techniques. I mean, also just in terms of the medium I was drawing on. I remember the second time MICT asked me to do graphic recording, we were in a peasant hut. A Polish peasant's hut that has been transported to Berlin and its main use is to tell fairytales to children. It's called Fairytale Hut.

And the walls were made of rough wood as you would expect from a Polish peasant's hut from the 19th or 18th century. I don't know how old they are, but they are traditional huts, small houses made from wood. And I thought, "Okay, I mean, I can't use paper on these walls." So I got some cardboard, but it was the corrugated kind of cardboard.

MR: Oh, texture, yeah.

JK: Yeah. Textured cardboard. So whenever I put the marker on it, it created little ripples in the lines. I mean, it was an interesting visual effect, but it wasn't what I had expected so I was really struggling with it. At that time when I was just starting out, I didn't know anything about materials or markers or how to, you know, make something work in a space like that because that's something that comes up a lot in graphic recording. You know, you never know if you have smooth walls or if there are—

MR: Can you tack on the walls, right? They might—

JK: Yeah, Exactly. Can you put tape on the walls? And you have to try to find out, but there's always surprises. So you have to kind of work around that.

MR: Yeah. You have to be pretty adaptable, I would guess.

JK: Absolutely. Yeah.

MR: Really, and it sounds like you like these trials by fire. Your first event is in another country and you've never done it before. The second one is in a Polish hut and you're using corrugated cardboard. It sort of speaks to me the varied nature of your history, like kind of the different places you've been. Also speaks to your adaptability I think as well. So that's to be commended, I think. The fact that you were willing to kind of proceed anyway and figure it out sort of says that maybe it was a good move and a destiny to kind go in that direction, maybe. I dunno.

JK: Oh, I think so. And I think, you know, I mean, that's a quality that has served me well over the years, this adaptability and, you know, the willingness to just try things and see what works. Because yeah, as I said, you know, for all those years that I did mainly live graphic recording on paper or on phone board, so many things can go wrong. And you always have to be able to adapt to that and find a way to make it work. And, you know, I always did find a way and I think it's also part of the challenge and part of the fun of doing it.

MR: Right. Yeah.

JK: You know, it's a live situation, all eyes are on you, so you kind of have to find a way to do it and to make it look good, make it look cool and easy.

MR: Yeah. Yeah. It makes me think of the old TV show MacGyver, which as I understand is quite popular around the world. You know, where he is, you know, making things out of bubble gum and, you know, shoe leather or something like that to make things happen. So it's MacGyver's moment, I guess. But I find it fascinating that you came from, you know, very academic background, right? German and American literature. And then you jump in the game design, but from an academic perspective. So you've got this academic structure and rigor and discipline, and yet you're a very adaptable person.

So I could see where at some point that structural stuff that you talked about would be frustrating because I'm sure you adapted around it as much as you could, but at some point you're like, "Okay, maybe I'm just done. Maybe I don't want to adapt anymore. Maybe I just want to do something new where I don't have to adapt so much, or I can adapt in different ways." That's kind of interesting. It seems like the where the way your life sort of unfolded in some ways. Is that a fair sort of characterization?

JK: Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, academia was never really the perfect match for me. I mean, I really liked doing critical theory in university. And I really, you know, needed something to get my teeth into, you know, these hefty tomes of theory. And really try to extract meaning from it. I mean, that was also a challenge that I enjoyed, to try to read philosophy and critical theory and try to understand what it was actually about and how it would apply to my life or the life of the people around me.

But I found the practice of being an academic quite frustrating because I felt like I was—I ended up almost plagiarizing myself. You know, I would write paper after paper after paper, and it felt like, you know, each paper was less innovative and less interesting than the previous ones. And so, yeah, I mean, that was the one part that I found frustrating.

As I said before, working in the bureaucratic and hierarchical structure of a university wasn't really my thing either. So I think, yeah, going freelance and being my own boss was really one of the best decisions that I've made in my life. And yeah, I'm really happy that I was able to experience that life and to make decisions for myself and build up this business, which is also, you know, a source of pride for me.

MR: Yeah. For sure.

JK: So I don't think I would've been happy had I stayed in academia.

MR: Yeah, I would guess so too. So we've got, as far as your first two graphic recordings. Talk about that shift from the company you were working with that was doing this training of journalists and traveling to countries and doing graphic recording inside Polish huts to going independent. Where did that shift happen?

JK: It happened kind of gradually. The organization I was working for, MICT, they had obviously lots of partner organizations that they worked with, and they saw what I was doing and they said, "Okay, that's cool. We want that too." And so I, you know, started working for these partner organizations and oh, I was gradually growing my network of clients while I was still employed.

And then at some time in 2014, it became clear to me that, you know, it wasn't really possible to develop that further while I was still employed. So I decided to go freelance and go for a full-time graphic recording career. And the network that I had built up made that possible. But what also made it possible was the network of other graphic recorders, other people that I met in Berlin at the time, who were incredibly generous and friendly and really, you know, embraced everyone joining the field.

I really so immensely grateful that I was given this environment that really helped me flourish because, you know, they made sure I could go onto jobs with them, they made sure that I found new clients, they made sure that, you know, if I had a question, they would answer it. And so that was an incredible boon, an incredible boost to my career at that time.

MR: Sounds more like a community than an industry in some senses, right? That when you start moving into that kind of space, those kinds of care concerns.

JK: Very much a community. You know, I mean, I still think the German graphic recording community is quite friendly and tight-knit and a lot of people know each other and also are friends with each other. It's definitely become more competitive over the years.

MR: Sure.

JK: But at that time 2014, '15, I didn't feel any sense of competition. It was more like, there's so much work, we need more people to join this field.

MR: Yeah. Yeah.

JK: That was the spirit at the time. Yeah.

MR: I would think the other thing too is that at that time, maybe now there's organizations that have multiple graphic recorders and facilitators and coaches and stuff where they can come into a company and have options. But I suspect in 2014, it's mostly individuals. And if you're an individual and you have two jobs, you know, you can take one job, but if it's the same day, you can't take the other job. You want to present a good reference to this client for the future, right? That they will continue to buy the services.

So it makes sense that you direct that to someone you know and trust that can do the work because it keeps the flow going. You know, if you start thinking longer term, you're kind of convincing people not only to hire you, but in general that graphic recording is a valuable service that makes our meetings better, which means they'll come back to you and keep hiring you for their events, right? It sounds like that was sort of a thing maybe happening in that community as well.

JK: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that was part of the spirit of community and the spirit of collaboration. That, exactly what you said. If I had a client call me and I couldn't do the job, then I would try to find somebody to fill in for me because it was important to me to be seen as a professional and to be seen as someone who would try to help their clients because that would in some way come back to me and it would also elevate the entire field of graphic recording, which was still, you know, quite young in Germany at that time.

So it was important to me and everyone else working in the field to make sure that the clients perceived it as a professional service that would make their meetings better and more interesting and more memorable.

MR: Right. I would think that one of the goals that you wanna try and do is when you look at the budget for the event, you don't want the graphic recording at the bottom because that's the first thing to cut, right? You wanna move it up the chain. Maybe it's like, you know the punch bowl is the thing at the bottom of the list. The punch bowl will be cut, but we'll keep the graphic recording because it's so valuable, right? So with some of that as well.

I'm kind of curious then, since we're talking specifically about the German, maybe even Berlin, I suppose those are one in the same in some sense, but what is the community like now? You'd mentioned that it's a little bit more competitive, I would imagine there's some firms that have started to form as well as individuals. Is there still more work than you can handle? Is it sort of settled into a pretty good rhythm? What's it like now 10 years later?

JK: Oh, those are a lot of questions all rolled into one.

MR: Yeah, that's true.

JK: I'll start with the situation as you know, I saw it when I entered the field in 2014. It was really mainly individual freelancers, and there weren't really a lot of us so, you know, it was easy to collaborate. And I learned a lot from these collaborations. So that was also important at that time. It was very Berlin-focused. You know, I knew a few people in Hamburg and there were people in Cologne. Maybe in Munich, but just one or two. And so, that also meant that I traveled a lot.

At the beginning of my graphic recording career, I was always traveling going to different places. And that has changed a lot because now, of course, there's graphic recorders in most major cities and also in some smaller cities. So, you know, there's not as much need to travel as there was10 years ago. And as you said, yeah, I mean, there are now companies that employ graphic recorders or, you know, form a network of graphic recorders and who can react to clients' needs differently than a freelancer because they can basically guarantee that they will have somebody at a given date.

And that has changed the landscape to a certain extent, but I wouldn't say that it has changed dramatically. What has changed is that graphic recording is much more diverse in terms of the clients, in terms of the styles, in terms of the approaches of different people. You know, when I started out, me and the people I worked with in Berlin, we had a fairly clear idea of what graphic recording was and what it would look like. And we kind of tried to also establish that, the Berlin graphic recording style.

MR: Right.

JK: I mean, it was never very clearly defined, but for us it was very important to, you know, have clear lines, clear shapes, crisp colors. For example, you know, most of people I work with agreed that we would never use chalks like Pestel chalks. We were like, "No, no, that's, that's not for us ."But of course, you know, I mean, there are hundreds of different styles of graphic recording and, you know every single one of them has its use. And I'm sure that, you know, many people saw our approach as quite arrogant at the time.

MR: Or at least maybe rigid, right? Like you sort of developed a standard.

JK: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

MR: Which I guess, you think about the context of that situation. If you're all sort of in the same community and you might swap, someone might say, "Oh, I can't do it, John, can you do it?" You'd know that their style's gonna be consistent to the standard and the client wouldn't be surprised, which at that time is important, right? Maybe now with variety of people and perspectives, you almost maybe come to someone because of their style and you wanna try something different, I guess. I would imagine. Hmm. Interesting.

JK: Yeah. And the other thing I think that has changed is that the client base is very different. When I was starting out, I was working mainly for corporations. I mean, you know, in Germany we have the DAX kind of like the NASDAQ, and those big companies like Mercedes-Benz, and BMW, Bayer, BASF they would hire us to record their conferences, their meetings, their workshops. And it was very rare that we would work for smaller companies.

That's something that has completely changed. And the client base is now much, much broader. And it's sometimes very small companies that need our services. And yeah, I'm kind of fascinated that, you know it's really become something that is much more well-known in the German market compared to what it was like 10 years ago. But at the same time, I still meet a lot of people who have no idea. Never what graphic recording is and have never seen it. Yeah.

MR: Yeah. Yeah. I would suspect, at least some portion, maybe not all of it, when you talk about small companies hiring, would suggest that the value is apparent that even a small company's willing or wanting to make that part of the experience. I mean, some part of it might be, oh, it's trendy, right? Like, Adidas shoes are really trendy, so I wear them. There's gotta be some aspect of that, but like, if there's no value in it, it wouldn't be sustainable. Eventually, the trend would go away.

So I think it seems to suggest there is a value component that's being seen and achieved. So that's encouraging actually, really, that it's moving down to small companies and not only in the hands of large corporations who could, as we said before, say, "Ah, item number 77, graphic recording, he's off." Right. And suddenly you don't have a job anymore, you know, and you gotta scramble for a new project. So that seems to suggest health in the opportunities available to the community. That's the way I would read it anyway, but hopefully.

JK: I think there's a lot of opportunity and I mean, there's still opportunity for graphic recording to grow. At the same time, I find it really hard to talk about the value of graphic recording because I mean, obviously, I see it, but I feel like often especially new clients who don't have much experience with graphic recording don't actually see the value. They might see it as something trendy, as you said. They've seen it somewhere else and they kind of want to incorporate into their events or their processes as well. But then I have to explain to them what the value is.

And this is a conversation that I've been having for more than 10 years now. And it doesn't really change. I mean, a lot of times I have to explain to them that, you know, whatever they talk about will be embedded in the minds of the participants to a much larger degree than if they only have written minutes. I have to explain to them that they can use this as a tool for communication. That they can, you know, use this to spread new ideas through their organization.

I have to explain to them that, you know, they can use graphic recording on social media or that they can even put it in their videos. There's so many ways of extracting the value of graphic recording. And I think, you know, it's actually a value that lasts for a long time. I've had clients who came back to me two or three years later and they said, you know, "We've taken a look at this and the content is still relevant and we're still working with these images."

And I think that is fantastic feedback to receive. But as I said, for new clients, it's often very difficult to grasp that value. And yeah, I find myself sometimes a bit frustrated that I still have to explain it and that I still have to explain what the quality is in a graphic recording and what the value is.

MR: I would guess that you probably should probably get ready to do that for the rest of your career. I don't see that changing.

JK: No, probably not.

MR: And I suspect maybe there's something that the community could even do. I don't know. But taking all these, like you mentioned, there was a company that came back, two or three—that could be an example for a young company that doesn't understand. So you could actually have your previous clients give you statements as to what the value is. So it moves from you just explaining the value to your clients that you've worked with who are willing to be named saying this was valuable and here's why.

And that would be, in some ways, maybe even more effectual for someone who's like, I don't know, with spending a lot of money on this thing. Like, is it really valuable? Well, BASF said it was really valuable, or this company said it was really valuable. That's the social proof kind of angle that gives you the additional, I guess, gravitas beyond just you saying that it's valuable. Like the proof that someone else verifies it as maybe useful.

So anyway, that's really fascinating. Apparently, this is my tangent episode and I've really enjoyed every minute of it. I hope our listeners have too. I think, you know, our listeners are really into this space and it's an interesting discussion because we're really just talking about what's the current and the future. Like, where are we going with this and where could we go with it?

That probably could be a whole discussion of its own, which we're not really getting into. But it helps you think like, you know, what is the value that I'm bringing? Like to really think about it and then defend it and promote it, right? To be proactive about it is a valuable thing to know because you're gonna eventually be called to answer that question by somebody sooner or later. So it's good to have an answer ready, and some examples ready, so you can, you know, be ready for that.

All right. Well, let's see if I can hold my tangents to a minimum. Let's shift to tools now. So I'd love to hear what tools that you like to use. We'll go analog first and digital second, and that includes pencils, pens, paper, boards, corrugated cardboard, paint, I dunno. Any kind of those things that you might use. What kind of things are in your standard tool set?

JK: Well, for analog recordings, I still use mainly Neuland markers on either paper or foam board. I noticed that now that I've been in this field for a while. Sometimes clients come back to me and they say on foam board, the markers fade over time. So that's a bit of a headache. I try to find ways to make them last longer, but for that reason, I actually prefer paper over foam board. Well, in recent years, I've done more kind of experimental work especially on black cardboard or black foam board. I like to use acrylic markers, and I use a range, POSCA, MOLOTOW.

MR: Two good brands.

JK: Yeah. And, you know, I really enjoy working with them because they have really beautiful, vibrant colors. When you put them on black cardboard, they really—

MR: Pop. Yeah.

JK: Yeah. So I think that's a wonderful way to work. Although of course, it's much slower than working with the regular marker, so, you know, depending on the context, you can do that. But if it's a fast-paced discussion panel that you're recording, you don't want to use acrylic markers.

MR: Yeah. Probably not a good idea. Yeah.

JK: Yeah. You probably want to use something water-based that flows fast.

MR: Interesting. What about personally? So you said when you began this, you know, the notes you're taking for the magazine, were A5. Do you carry a notebook around? Are there notebooks you like and pens that you use in that small scale?

JK: Yeah. When it comes to notebooks, I don't really have a preferred brand. I kind of use everything. For personal drawing, I do ink drawing. Japanese brush pen drawings. And for those I like to use Amsterdam notebooks because it's nice smooth paper and it's great to work on with ink. But that's really the only thing that I can mention that I really like using for that specific purpose.

MR: What kind of brush pen is your preference when you do that kinda work?

JK: The Pentel.

MR: Oh, yeah.

JK: I've bought one and I've never gone back.

MR: Same.

JK: It is really great. It's a wonderful tool, fantastically versatile, and the ink cartridges are easy to use. The ink is wonderful. The color, the black is just so deep.

MR: Intense. Yeah.

JK: Yeah. It's really a great tool.

MR: Yeah. I carry one in my pocket with a gel pen everywhere I go, so I can second the motion there.

JK: Yeah.

MR: You mentioned digital. I assume you must be using an iPad. What kind of tools do you like to use? And maybe the along with this is, is there a call from your clients to go digital in some cases? Or do you present them with like, "Hey, we should do this digitally because of X, Y, and Z?" How does that work?

JK: Well, I mean, I usually give my clients a choice unless, you know, there's really pressing reasons to go digital or analog. And I explained the pros and cons of both methods. I think, you know, both of them have their drawbacks and their advantages.

MR: Sure.

JK: So, you know, I mean, a lot of my clients choose digital over analog just because it's easier to handle. You just get a JPEG or a PDF at the end of the session and then you can send that out. There's no conversion needed et cetera. I understand that it's easier to handle for the clients. So I do a lot of digital work, especially, you know, since the pandemic, a lot of things obviously went online and there was a lot of pressure to do digital work. So that was really the moment where I changed over from doing mostly analog work to doing mostly digital work.

And yeah, I'm really boring when it comes to tools. I use an iPad Pro and a Apple pencil. I draw in Procreate mostly. When I do vector, I usually do it in Concepts. Which I think is also a wonderful tool. It has a few little bugs that I struggle with sometimes, but for drawing in a vector format, it's really a great little app. I've been using it for, I think, yeah, close to 10 years now as well.

MR: Yeah. It's definitely had some—just like Procreate, it's had improvements over time for sure.

JK: Yeah, absolutely.

MR: But solid tools.

JK: Both of those are really up there. And I don't think there's a lot of other tools for the iPad that can compete with them.

MR: Yeah. I think that's two sides of the same coin in some sense. That's pretty interesting. Well, let's shift into practical. I always ask guests to give three tips to listeners who are typically a visual thinker. Otherwise, why would you be here? Or maybe you're curious about visual thinking. What would be three things you would tell someone who maybe feels like they're in a rut, or maybe they just need a little inspiration, can be practical, it can be theoretical, whichever you'd like for those to kind of encourage them.

JK: Let me think about that for a minute.

MR: Sure.

JK: I think for me, one of the greatest inspirations is to work with shapes. And to change the shapes of things because I feel that it often has a huge impact. So if you always draw round heads, then, you know, if you start drawing triangular heads or square heads, then that makes a huge difference. And obviously, you can also stack shapes and combine them, and that doesn't only go for people, but also other things, you know.

What I find interesting is that the shapes also communicate a certain quality. So triangular is often a bit more aggressive, and square is more stable, and round is very harmonious and kind of centered. And, you know, to play with that I think is just a wonderful way of experimenting whatever you're drawing.

MR: I like that.

JK: So I can only encourage everyone to, you know, work with shapes and mix them up and find new ways of combining them.

MR: That sounds good.

JK: So that was my first tip. The other one is kind of a standard that, you know, I probably mention whenever I talk to people about how visual thinking works. It's about shifting from noun to verb. So when you're trying to draw something and you find it for some reason hard to draw, it's often easier to draw a verb that goes with it. Like, for example, if you were going to say you hold a meeting. Of course, you can draw a meeting. You can just draw a bunch of people sitting around a table. But it's not a very interesting image. And it's also a lot of work to draw, especially if you put a lot of detail into the people.

MR: Yeah.

JK: Instead you could just focus on hold and you could draw a hand that holds either the table or just the word meeting. And so, by shifting, I find it's a trick that I use in graphic recording often. And, you know, also when I'm trying to come up with new ideas, it's often such an easy way of shifting your mind into just a slightly different track. But it makes a huge difference. So I really like doing that and can only encourage people to do it.

MR: Great. What about your third tip?

JK: Well, my third tip is always to carry a pen and some thread. Because if you need to draw a really large circle and you want it to be a round circle, that's the easiest way to actually make that happen. You just attach a pencil or even a marker to the thread, to the string, and the other end to the pin, and you push it into your bomb board or your paper or the wall, and then you go around, and voila, you have a big circle. And I think it's wonderful that it's so easy, yet, you know, many people struggle with drawing big circles.

MR: It's pretty adjustable too, right? Because you just wind it around the pen and get a smaller circle on. And so, you could do a target pretty easily. You just keep the pin in the same place and keep winding it up and get your radiuses down until you get it just right.

JK: It's super versatile and you know, it's easy to just put in your bag with your markers. It won't add much weight. It's super useful.

MR: Hmm. That's a great tip. I hadn't thought about that, but yeah, that's a wonderful one. Very practical.

JK: Yeah. I like practical tips.

MR: Me too. Well, Julian, this has been great to have you. Can you tell us what's the best place to find you? Websites, social media, what places do you hang out in?

JK: Well, the best place to find me is my website, playability.de. And I'm also quite active on LinkedIn. If you google my name or if you just put in LinkedIn slash graphic recorder, it's a very easy URL, you will find me as well. I'm not so much on Instagram anymore, but if you want to find me on Instagram, my handle is playability_de. And those are the main places that you'll find me. My name luckily is quite unique. So if you just put my name into a search engine, you'll also find me.

MR: Yeah. I suppose. Yeah, you might be the only one doing this work. So, interesting. Well, thank you so much for spending time with us, sharing your insights and wisdom and your story. Thank you for the work you're doing and being part of the Berlin community. I know several people in that community, including Nadine Rossa, and you know, others as well, who I'm sure you know well.

And thank you for the work that you're doing in representing the visual thinking community as a whole in the world. It's good to have people like you doing that representation. I think it's important. And you make our lives, everyone else's lives better because of the great work that you do. So thank you.

JK: Thank you, Mike. It's been great fun talking to you.

MR: Yeah.

JK: And, yeah, it's been really nice to be on your show.

MR: Well, I'm glad to have you, and I'm glad we could share our discussion with everyone. And for those that are listening or watching, it's another episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast. So, until the next episode, we will talk to you soon.