In this episode, Deb Aoki reflects on a childhood immersed in manga and anime and how this experience, combined with her journalism background, amplifies her visual storytelling skills.

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Running Order

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

## Links Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

Tips

Think of drawing as a form of alphabet and writing system versus an artistic system.
You don't need to learn how to draw everything in the world. Just the stuff in your world.
Be visual with fun, low-stakes things.

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 Deb Aoki. Deb, it's so good to have you on the show.

Deb Aoki: Oh, thank you, Mike. It's good to see you.

MR: You too. Deb and I have been kind of bouncing into each other on the interwebs for a while, and eventually, we met each other in Paris of all places. Good place to meet somebody. At the International Sketch Note camp in Paris in 2019, which I was thinking about that, today. That's pre-pandemic. So that was like—

DA: Yes.

MR: - the world before. The before times. So really different.

DA: That's true.

MR: - mindset and everything a little bit. But anyway, so Deb is just a multi-talented person, and we're gonna talk with her about who she is and her journey and sort of get some lessons from her as well and chitchat about all kinds of stuff, I'm sure. So let's start out, Deb, tell us who you are, what you do, and then how did you get here. What's your origin story from when you were a little girl to this moment?

DA: Oh, gosh. That's interesting. Well, I think the best place to start is I'm originally from Hawaii. I grew up—I'm a third-generation Japanese-American, so I was surrounded by Japanese culture, but I kind of don't speak Japanese fluently. I can read and speak some.

MR: Okay.

DA: But, you know, the nice thing about it, about growing up in Hawaii, I was surrounded by things like manga and anime much earlier than a lot of other people. And so, the nice part about that is that as a young girl, I got to read a lot of comics for girls from Japan.

MR: Oh.

DA: And in all those comics, it would kind of give you this sense of, "Oh, this is the comic artist you love, and here's how to draw like her, or you can be a comic artist too." So I got a lot of great tips from that. And, you know, like, it fueled this dream of becoming an illustrator or comic artist from a young age. And when I've compared notes with other peers at the same time for American comics, comics for girls were going away or almost faded out.

So I was really lucky in that, you know, my love of comics came that way and was sustained that way. So I've always loved to draw, but, you know, comics part is the part where you know, sometimes you draw for yourself, but with comics, I found out early on you're telling stories and you share those stories with your friends and they're like, "Oh, I wanna see more. I wanna see more."

MR: Mm-hmm. So you keep making more.

DA: Yeah. So it's kind of fun. It's a good way for people who normally don't, you know, to talk about themselves be able to kind of put themselves out there.

MR: So I wanna break in for a minute and assume maybe there's somebody who's never heard of Manga or anime. Maybe they've heard them, they're not exactly sure. Like, what are they and are they the same thing? Are they different? And give us sort of a baseline to that.

And then probably, I guess the last thing is obviously comic culture, manga, anime culture in Japan is very different than any kind of culture in the U.S. In a lot of ways in the U.S., comics are seen for little kids, and they're dismissed. Where I think in Japan, they're revered and it's kind of an art form, right? So talk a little bit about that too.

DA: Oh, well, the simplest way to put it is manga is the comics, like, you know, the paper page, you know, panels and word balloons. And anime is the animated version, like the cartoons.

MR: Got it. Okay. That's easy to remember.

DA: Yeah. And so, you know, a lot of times a lot of the anime is based on the original manga stories, but there's also anime that is original, like the Miyazaki works are all original stories created just for that.

MR: I see.

DA: So there's no manga that came before it with pretty—yeah. In general. So, but I guess the way to think about it is one of my agent friends in Japan explained that the movie industry, the entertainment industry in Japan is not as big and well-funded as it is in, you know, the U.S. So their best storytelling talent goes into manga.

MR: Really.

DA: The editors the writers, the artists. And manga artists compared to, say American comic creators like a lot of who work for the big companies. And the big companies here, they work for hire. Meaning if you draw Superman's story, you get paid per page. And that's kind of it.

MR: I see.

DA: You know, that's someone else's character. You get to play in that playground, but you didn't create that playground and you don't own that playground.

MR: Yeah, I know, for sure.

DA: Whereas in manga, what they encourage is every creator comes up with their own characters and story and world, and they just run with it. From beginning to end, volume one to volume, hundreds, whatever it is their characters, their story, their vision, and usually they are. So they own it, you know, from beginning to end. One of the other key differences is that manga artists—well, not all of them are super successful. Some of them are, you know, top tax bracket people in Japan.

MR: Wow.

DA: So the scale of the business is so different. And that manga is for everybody. There's manga for kids, manga for, you know, business people, manga for housewives, manga that explains how to, you know, manage your money or run a business, manga about dealing with parents or Alzheimer's, you know, silly manga, funny, you know, serious stuff, historical manga. I tell people, it's like manga is like movies. It's just a way to tell stories and what kind of stories can be almost anything.

MR: Hmm. That's really fascinating. And I love that it's so diverse.

DA: And it's fun.

MR: You know, it's almost like a whole publishing. It's like we think about paperback books or nonfiction all wrapped up. It's the same thing except as visualized and the creator own it. Yeah, in some sense.

DA: Actually, I went to internet too 'cause one of the things that I found is that—I teach classes in drawing for business people. And I've done this in U.S., India, and Japan. And the thing that I found fascinating is the people I taught in Japan were so visually literate from the get-go. I almost didn't have to teach them much at all. The Indian one, anywhere may be second, but the people I teach in North America seem to be maybe the least comfortable.

MR: Yeah. Interesting sort of resistance in a way, right? Yeah. Resistance to that visualization, which is, I guess sketchnoting opportunity sort of brings that to them. But it's more of an opportunity in some ways. Huh. Well, I've sort of derailed you with that, but I thought it might be helpful for someone who maybe is not into that to know, like, they've heard those words, but what do they mean? And it's kind of nice to have some context into—

DA: Oh, sure.

MR: - how you grew up and now you understand that culture, that very visual culture that Deb sort of grew up in. Let's continue with your story. So you're a little girl, you're surrounded by this manga and anime, and then how did that influence you? And like, were there big moments where you had to make choices where you kind of went with the flow and you ended up in a place like, "Hey, look where I ended up?"

DA: Yeah. I guess that's kinda weird. 'Cause I started drawing comics—I used to just draw comics for myself and for my friends. Then I moved from Hawaii, then I moved to New York, went to art school for a little bit. And I would write home letters to my mom and I would have little drawings of the things that I would see, like the things that people would say to me like, "Oh, you're from Hawaii." You know.

Or things I would run into like, "Oh my God, I can't find, you know, Japanese rice at the supermarket, or why spam is so expensive here." You know, all these things that I'd write letters and draw pictures from my mom. And then when I came back to Hawaii to finish my college education, I realized that, you know, it's, you know, taking a passive approach to my education. Like just going to a lecture, do the homework, come home.

I realized, oh, actually there's all kinds of other opportunities. It's college that I could take advantage of. So I went to the school newspaper and I said, "Hey, I'd like to draw a comic strip." And they said, sure. So that was good in that I got, you know an experience having to draw three times a week, something, right? And then getting people's feedback. People saying, "Oh, I love this, or I didn't get that joke. "So that was a change.

And then I met all these people who were in the journalism department. So I went to school for art. I mean, I went, did printmaking and whatever. One of the extracurricular activities I did was run the campus art gallery. So I had to learn how to write press releases.

MR: Oh, wow. Okay. So writing, yeah.

DA: Doing promotions, making posters, and you know, writing up paperwork to get people to be in the show and ascribe the show. So all of that led to after I graduated college, to me doing PR for art galleries, for my friends art galleries.

MR: Interesting.

DA: Which then led to me writing for the newspaper art reviews, music reviews. I did a comic strip. Like I said, it was—and a lot of people who recommended me were people I went to school within the journalism department at University of Hawaii. So everything was kind of like, I would make it public what I did, or what I was interested in and then people would connect the dots.

They would say, "Oh, Deb, you like to write, how about this? Oh, Deb, you know, you draw a cartoon, would you like to draw your cartoon here?" So it was all kind of making it visible to others. So I would run it to people, other artists and other cartoonists who would kind of—you know, I mean, this is your 20s, right? You're competitive.

MR: Yeah. Yeah.

DA: And they're like, "How come you get all these opportunities?"

MR: Ah.

DA: And it's like, oh, that's because I put my sign out by the side of the road that said, "Hi, I do this." And people saw it and would say, "Oh, I have this opportunity. Why don't you?" But if you're just sitting in your room drawing your comics and waiting for someone to knock on your door—

MR: To discover you.

DA: - it won't happen.

MR: Yeah. It can't happen.

DA: And this is before the internet, right, where you could put stuff on Instagram and whatever. So that was one of the key lessons. And then having a journalism background, you know, learning about how to write a new story and do good interviews, ask questions, and be curious. So when I did finally move to New York to the mainland, I got work doing writing. You know, more like I was like an admin assistant at a game company.

MR: Okay.

DA: Where I was a temp at an ad agency. Then it kind of led to—I moved to Seattle, and this was at the time—it was like I'd say late '90s.

MR: Right. At the grunge music period just started to happen, right?

DA: Yeah. So then I got a job at Microsoft working at MSN, where a lot of other former journalists where working. So I wrote headlines for the news, for the homepage, all kinds of stuff like that. I did you know, case studies for SQL server.

MR: Wow.

DA: A lot of writing. So that's when my path diverged a little bit, right. Where most of the camp career was in writing. Content writing, UX writing. And then my drawing was was kind of, you know, something fun I did on the side. And then where it all converged later was when I worked at eBay and I would be in these meetings, you know, having to write, you know copy for different apps or different features. And then they would explain stuff from a technical point of view or from a business goal point of view, and I was like, "I have to write for what the user's gonna do, what the user's gonna see."

MR: Right. Gotta translate.

DA: So then I would just at a certain point go, "I'm not understanding, or you're not giving me the information I need." So I would grab a pen and just go up to the whiteboard and go, okay, so user comes here, clicks this, comes here, does this, sends an email, da dah, dah. Like all this stuff. And then what happens here? Or then what happens when there's an error or they fill out something wrong, or?

MR: Yeah, magic goes here.

DA: And then sometimes I would say, "Do they do this?" Then sometimes the product manager go like, "Yes, exactly. That's how that works." And then an engineering from the back who normally wouldn't speak would say, "No, actually that won't work out. And actually, no that's impossible." And would to the product manager and goes, "No, the database won't do this, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What are you talking about?"

MR: Yeah. You're making assumptions. Yeah.

DA: So I kind of got into this, I don't know, some kind of small degree of notoriety for that.

MR: So you'd facilitate these discussions, right?

DA: Yeah. Like you go, "Oh, you know, Deb draws."

MR: Ah, yeah. That came out

DA: Then what led to is I had a colleague in the user research department who was saying, "Your skills are perfect for what we need." So she would bring me into workshops where they were trying to come up with new features, and they would say, "Oh, can you draw storyboards that show how people are using this or might use this? Can you draw personas? You know, who the customer is?" So from that, the magical thing is I started getting invited to meetings earlier in the design process.

MR: Yeah, because they wanted you to help them to guide them, right?

DA: Yeah. And I got involved with business strategy earlier. I got involved with, you know, coming along on user research type projects where I'd get to know who the users were by listening to them and, you know, observing them. For content people, content strategists in UX design, if designers complain about not having a seat at the table or not getting respect. Content designers are even lower than that. You know what I mean?

MR: Right. Because nobody thinks the content till the thing's about to launch. That was always my experience.

DA: All the alarm ipsums, right?

MR: Yeah.

DA: And then it would just be a blank placeholder copy or, "Oh, we'll fill that in later." And then it would come to me and like—

MR: Later it would come. Yeah.

DA: And I'd go, "Ah, wait, why do you have this step before this step? And do we need this extra page and all that stuff?" And I bring up these things and people would say, "Well Deb, those are excellent points, but it's too late. We've built it already. So can you write around it?"

MR: Oh boy.

DA: So, you know, when I've given talk about my drawing to content strategists, I tell them, this is your little tool to get in the room earlier and for you to inject the point of view of the user. Because if it's like, "Oh, hi, I'm the content strategist, and this is my opinion," you tend to not get listened to as much as—

MR: Right. You do backup.

DA: - here's what users going through. And then you show these pictures, and then they imagine they go, "Oh." If they can put themselves in the space of that user and go like, "Oh, that would suck. Huh? Oh, we have to change that."

MR: It puts the burden back on them and not on you, right? It's not your opinion. It's the user having this issue. Oh, how are you gonna solve it?

DA: Right. So, I guess since then I've been discovering this intersection of visual storytelling and what the difference it makes in these types of situations. And, you know, being able to inject humanity into our product design decisions. Which tends to get lost sometimes, surprisingly.

MR: Hmm. That could be a good encouragement for people that are listening who are maybe in non—like, they like visual thinking, but they are trying to find a way to integrate it into their daily life. Being the person who draws things is a huge opportunity. Anybody can do it really in any position.

DA: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be fancy. I've had several colleagues that do very simple storyboards and seen it make huge differences in product direction or product implementation.

MR: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could be a CPA that draws, right? Who you can visualize, you know, numeric stuff in a way that people understand it better. That's a huge value.

DA: What's the guy? There's a famous economist at Berkeley. He does a lot of drawings.

MR: Was his name Larry something?

DA: Oh, I'm—

MR: Trying to think. It'll come to us as soon as we stop recording.

DA: Yeah. I'll remember. But it's interesting 'cause he does a lot of whiteboard drawing with pictures.

MR: Uh-huh.

DA: And so Fanta graphics, which is a comic publisher, they published I dunno, like 11 Rockets and Daniel Clowes comics. Published a book of his whiteboard drawings.

MR: Really?

DA: The Body Economics. They're fabulous.

MR: Wow. Well, that's pretty cool. We'll have to see if we can find the name of that book and we'll include it in the show notes so we can, I'll check it out.

DA: Hmm.

MR: So it sounds like the work that you're doing is a lot like this, but I think you mentioned that you recently have become independent. So tell us a little bit about, you know, moving from being employed in large companies or small companies and then shifting to being a contractor and a freelancer. How does that change, and how does Deb, the person who draws kind of reputation, how has that helped you in that regard?

DA: I guess, you know, it's been tricky for me. Partly because my mix of skills makes it such that there isn't ever a job for me that asks for that, right?

MR: Mm.

DA: I usually get in as a content strategist and they find that I can draw and that's a bonus.

MR: Got it. Yeah.

DA: It's kind of cracking the egg and you get two yolks kind thing.

MR: Yeah.

DA: But the stuff I was really enjoying was the drawing stuff. But there is almost no job like that. Specifically, that.

MR: Right.

DA: So what I've been since—and you know, as we were talking earlier that there's been a lot of tech layoffs lately in Silicon Valley where I live in the San Francisco Bay area. So with the last round of layoffs that I went through, it's gotten harder and harder to find the next job lately. And in the interim, I've been doing more consulting work or more like one-off things.

I teach what I call simple sketching for user experiences or storyboarding to various tech companies on a consulting basis. I do it through a company called Tangible UX. So I've done that. And then I've done things like, I did picture books for Juniper Networks to explain network computing and network security and AI. So that was fun. I get little interesting challenges. But the other thing that has happened lately that has brought me back full circle is that manga now is the number three bestselling comic book category in North America.

MR: Wow. Wow.

DA: Since the pandemic you know, people started staying home and binging anime on Netflix. That led to people buying more manga, and manga sales quadrupled in the last two years.

MR: Wow. So it's been discovered in some sense by the West in a way that it hadn't been in the past. I know it's been around, I've seen it around for a long time, but it's kind of a niche, you know, thing.

DA: Yeah. So now it's gotten super—and then there's a live-action one-piece TV series on Netflix that was super successful. So all of a sudden, people are paying attention to Manga. So over the last six months or so, I've gotten a lot of people reaching out to me wanting me to explain manga to them. Or, you know, to like—I'm working with a company to make their online manga app and website more sticky and more engaging. So that's a UX thing.

But I've also been working with—I have a podcast myself called Mangasplaining. It's basically four friends, and one of my friends, his name is Chip Zdarky, he is a comic book creator. So he writes Daredevil and Batman.

MR: Wow.

DA: And so he's a very much a Western comics guy. And during the pandemic, he said, "What's this?" Before the pandemic, we all went to Japan together, and then we all dragged him around to all these manga places. And he was like, "What is this?" And like, "Oh my God, there's so much of it." And, "Oh my God, I feel so small." You know. And so, when we came back and the pandemic started, we started this weekly book club for him where we would I introduce him to manga one book at a time.

MR: And he would go through it and give his explanations or his reflections on it, I guess.

DA: Yeah. And he would sometimes pick up on things—

MR: Ask questions.

DA: - that surprised us completely. Like, "Wait, what?" Or he would respond to things that we wouldn't expect. You know, there's a manga called Akira which almost everybody—it's a big epic sci-fi dystopian.

MR: Nikita. Yeah.

DA: But then they thought, "Oh, no brainer. He'll love this." But then he ended up liking a really slice of life stuff. Like one of his favorites was The Way of the House husband, which is about a Yakuza hitman who retires and becomes a house husband for his wife who works in marketing and all the things he goes through to, you know, cook and clean.

MR: And prep the dinner. Yeah. Yeah.

DA: And deal with his mitch and it's cats and the nosy Neighbors. It's really funny. So it's been a delight to you know, have this with him. And then we started publishing some manga. Like we published a book called Okinawa by Susumu Higa. And it's a bunch of short stories about Okinawa before, during, and after the war, but from a very human point of view. It's really interesting.

I mean, I'm half Okinawa myself. I've never been to Okinawa. So that's been really rewarding. The book came out this fall and it's been on a bunch of shortlists for books over the past couple—from, you know, like even the Washington Post and things like that.

MR: Wow.

DA: Won a couple of awards. So, you know, like, that's been really neat. And then the other thing that came up is I'm now teaching once a week at California College of Art.

MR: Okay.

DA: I'm teaching a class on manga history, context and creation for their master of fine art and comics. So, what's been interesting with that is that I have to use my facilitation and design sprint training—

MR: Everything. Yeah.

DA: - to try to come up with exercises for these students to help them, you know, understand how to think, how manga creators think about story and character and page layout. 'Cause these are all things I feel instinctively.

MR: Right. How do you describe them? Yeah.

DA: Right. Because so kinda like when you did the Sketchnote Handbook, right, there was something you were doing and you were doing and you trial by error. But then when you have to write a book, you have to explain it. You know by similar—

MR: Yeah, that was interesting.

DA: How is that for you, by the way? I mean.

MR: It's a lot like what you're talking about. It was like, well, I've been doing this for a long time, how do I—you know what's really funny is I'm always been a writer in addition to a visualizer. So I kind of wrote the whole thing first. Like, for me, its sort of worked in my head and I wrote it as a script, wrote it all out. And then once I saw—I let the words pour out, then I could say, "Oh, okay. I could see that visually would look like this, and I could use that sample here."

And I started like, bringing all the visuals in and then melding it together. So it sort of started the backbone was words, and then I added images into it to make it happen. So that seemed to work well for me. Both of books worked the similar way where I wrote the script first.

DA: Amazing. And it was so amazing 'cause I remember the book first came out and seeing how people just so resonated with it, right?

MR: Yeah.

DA: And so wanted to learn more, and it's led to so many things for you, so that's so exciting to see.

MR: Yeah. And it's in a weird place where I guess it's sort of like a manga. I mean, it's not technically manga, but I mean, sort of explaining myself in, not frames of a comic book, but it's not so far away. I mean, if you look at it, it's visualization and words. And, you know, I'm a huge comic fan from when I was a kid. Huge Daredevil fan, Spider-Man.

And so, you know, that had a huge influence on me and the way I looked at things and the way I framed things comes from that. So, you know, there's some universal stuff there, and then there's I'm sure variation between Western and Eastern comics and the way you think, which is probably part of what you're teaching, right? I suppose.

DA: A little bit. Yeah, but there's a lot of commonalities.

MR: Yeah, I think so. A lot of it's human, right? So it's human stories, which in the beginning, middle, and end. There's conflict, there's resolution. Those common things exist inside the story. Then it's maybe more the details of expression that change a little bit. So that's really fascinating.

DA: It's kind of fun for me, you know? Because when you're—because all of these worlds for me, they seem different and I meet different people within them. You know, the comic people I meet are different than the UX design people that I meet than the journalism people that I meet than the people from the Japanese culture that I meet.

But what's fun about being in all these different worlds is sometimes is seeing where the common threads and then applying things you see and observe in one world and applying it in another. Like some of the user experience, design, and innovation, you're dealing with people and products that sometimes—the world is changing around them. And they either resist or they accept and they evolve. So for example, you know, like the Kodak example, right?

MR: Mm-hmm.

DA: The film company. The film developing company. And they had a digital option to make a digital camera at some point, and then they refused because they didn't wanna kill their film business.

MR: Yeah.

DA: Right. So I see that happening with comics now. The pamphlet comics is an old style of reading and consuming comics that started with Newsstands, but now they're only specialty comic shops, so you can find them. But manga has been succeeding because manga is in a little book format, can be sold at any bookstore.

MR: I see.

DA: So I see manga at Target, I see manga at bars and Noble. So that's part of why it's, you know, kind of overtaking it.

MR: The friction is sort of not the same.

DA: Not the same. And then it's cheaper. You can buy a whole volume of manga of 200-something pages for like $10. And then you'll get, you'll get a 30-page full-color comic for $6. So like all these—and then I see like what's happening with scrolling comics now, where it's designed for scrolling.

MR: A screen. Yeah.

DA: And even two-page comics don't work well. So there's all kinds of—I guess, being an observer in this industry and seeing the struggles they're going through, the transitions that's happening, and some of it's relating to customers. Or their reading habits, the devices they're reading on, the stories they wanna read, making easy entry points.

If you wanna start with Spider-Man, where do you start and why is Spider-Man look so different now than he did in the movies? Doesn't align. But like with one piece, it's just a big pirate comic. It's like a hundred-something volume now. If you wanna get started, read Volume One, keep going into Volume 108. And it is the same as in the TV, as in anime. So, you know, it's the kind of thing where I look at it go, "Oh, it's a usability problem."

MR: Yeah, it is.

DA: And most people in the American comics business are—forgive me, I love them, but some of them who are kind of in that Kodak film moment.

MR: Yeah. They're kind of trapped in some ways. Trapped in amber in a way.

DA: They're a little frightened by what's to come.

MR: Yeah.

DA Yeah. So it's fun. It's interesting to observe and see it through that lens.

MR: Hmm. I would think that American, and I guess Western comic makers, now that we're really off on a tangent. They must really be seeing the success of manga, they must know the stats and why it's working. Are they just writing it off? "Oh, that's just a Japanese culture thing. That's why it's popular."

But I think what we're seeing is it's coming to the West and it's popular and there are probably user experience reasons why, like, you sort of cited some. Like, it's a pocketbook that I could carry. It's about the size of a paperback. It doesn't look outta place. It's not, you know, a newsprint thing that's bigger and it's hard for me to fit it any place or, you know, the value is better.

DA: It's fragile.

MR: Yeah.

DA: Yes.

MR: Or maybe I can look it on my—I have an iPad so I can read on my manga there, right? And I think that's where maybe they're similar, right? I would guess. Western comics have adapted to, you know, going on digital devices. But yeah, I would guess that eventually they will be forced to look at manga because It's successful.

DA: They're looking at it. Oh, they already are.

MR: Yeah.

DA: I mean actually some of the—and also kids comics too, right? A lot of the comics, superhero comics has evolved to the point where it's only really targeting you know, men 30 to 50.

MR: Right. Yeah.

DA: And then there's a whole universe of comics for kids where they don't care about Spider-Man or Batman. They like DogMan or they like Reyna Tel stories, so they're not interested in the superhero stuff the way that their uncles and fathers, and grandfathers were.

Like you see, comics is really dear to me, and I think visual literacy is so important, you know, not just for entertainment. I see how it makes me a better communicator. You know, I tell people that when I draw visual diagrams, I get people's attention 'cause people love watching people draw.

MR: Yeah. Yeah.

DA: You know, it's like seeing magic appear on a screen. And then the other part is that it brings a mood of lightness into the room and fun, which most meetings don't have. But also too, it's kind of—I think the things that move with creativity and collaborative—one of the things I tell when I give them my talk on how to draw for business, I'll show them like, here's my pretty examples, here's the finished storyboards, here's all this stuff, and then I show them but here's how it usually starts.

And I show my super messy, fast whiteboard drawings that I'm drawing when I'm getting in a room and people are shouting out things at me like, "Oh, and they do this, and oh, they do this." And I just have to draw fast. And I said, "Oh, the messy is good. 'Cause the messy says you can participate too."

MR: Yes.

DA: Or nothing here is final, right?

MR: Yeah.

DA: I've actually had people actually step up, grab the eraser, wipe away what I drew and draw what they want.

MR: Which is great. That's like what you want. That's like the ideal, right?

DA: Exactly. And I thought if I drew it pretty and nice, one, it would take me too long. So I wouldn't capture the conversation. But the other part is that then people go like, "Oh, Deb works so hard on that, I can't mess with it. It's art."

MR: It becomes rigid.

DA: Yeah. And it's like, "I don't have the right to touch this or mess with it." So the messy invites levels of playing field and says, "I'm not attached to this emotionally. This is a tool for us to collaborate and communicate."

MR: Yeah. That's pretty cool. And I think in some ways, the messy stuff, I've been finding, I dunno if it's 'cause I'm getting older or whatever, but like the messy stuff, I'm way more attracted to than the fancy.

I mean, not that I don't appreciate the pretty stuff or enjoy it, but there's something about—like, I can see in the way somebody's thinking by the rough sketching they're doing, and it's a little bit loose and it just feels more alive in some ways, right?

As you do versioning of it and make it more tight and more perfect, it sort of becomes rigid and fixed. And that's what's in people's heads too, right? So if you can capture that loose, you know, sketchy nature, there's something attractive about that actually.

You know, it's gotta be at least recognizable. I mean, if it's so messy that you don't know what it is, I mean, that's maybe at the other end of the spectrum, but like somewhere in the middle is a nice balance to strike if you can.

DA: And it's human, right?

MR: Mm-hmm.

DA: It's human and it has life in it, and you can't help but, you know, find that fascinating.

MR: Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Well, that's really cool. It's so fun to hear how you've sort of—I think all the guests that I have when I look, they sort of collect all these experiences and knowledge and, you know, bring them together. And a lot of times later in their careers as they become to their peak of their career, suddenly they're drawing from all those things.

Learning how to write, visualization, how do you communicate, how do you convince people? How do you observe? Like all those things are coming into one activity, and that you're bringing your whole self to that situation or that problem.

DA: Mm-hmm.

MR: And people trust you. Like, oh, this person's gonna help you solve it because they're bringing everything they have. So that's kind of cool to see that, you know, if you're in the beginning of your career, the goal is to kind of gather these experiences and don't think about like your love of like manga as a side thing that you can't bring into your work experience. You can, that's gonna influence. And there could be a valuable place if you are creative about how you think about it, which is kind of what Deb is doing.

DA: Yeah. I've given this talk to university students over the past couple of years. Like Christina Wodke, she's also a well-known visual thinker. She teaches HCI, human-computer interaction.

MR: Right. She was on the show years ago. I should probably have her back on.

DA: You should. She's doing great stuff. They're teaching a game design class over there.

MR: Nice.

DA: She invites me over once a semester to teach one of her classes that gets into storyboarding.

MR: Nice.

DA: And what's really fun about that is when I talk with my students, the ones that really come up to me afterward or pepper me questions tend to be people who come to me like, "I draw too. You mean I can bring this into my work?"

MR: Yeah. Yes, definitely.

DA: Or like, "Wow, you mean that's valuable?" And I go, "Yes."

MR: Oh yeah. That's cool. That's really cool. So I wanna shift a little bit in our discussion towards your favorite tools. I'm gonna start with analog first 'cause there's so many analog tools that exist. And you being into manga and anime, you probably have some really great Japanese influence tools that you probably like for your work, which maybe people can explore. So why don't you just unleash us all the cool tools that you like?

DA: Well, some of my favorites are some that are not as easy to find in U.S., but they are findable.

MR: Okay.

DA: One is a mild-liner highlighter pen. These are pastel light-colored highlighter pens. They come in a wide range of colors like soft pink, soft aqua, two shades of gray, a dark gray, and a light gray.

MR: That would be really useful for sure.

DA: Yeah. And they're water-based pens, they don't smell. And because they're highlight pens, they're light enough that you can see words underneath it.

MR: I got it.

DA: Like a lot of American highlighter pens are like this fluorescent yellow.

MR: Bold. Yeah.

DA: Too heavy.

MR: In case you're blind or something, right?

DA: It's hard to use for storyboarding. When I teach the storyboarding class, I say you need to have at least a gray pen or a lighter color pen. So I'll say if you can't find the gray pen, use those light blue or lavender. And that's a good substitute for the gray.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DA: But the mild liner pens have a whole spectrum of light colors that you can use for sketchnoting. So you can get those from—there are Japanese companies like Maido, M-A-I-D-O. They're in Kinonuniya stores. If you're near one of those Japanese bookstores, Maido is their stationary section. And they have a Maido-in-a-box thing where you can get a stationary subscription box.

MR: They send you things, huh?

DA: And they'll send you a new mix of interesting stationary items from Japan every month.

MR: Interesting.

DA: The other one is jet pens.

MR: Right. They're one of my favorites. Jet pens are great.

DA: They're a terrific source of these things. So they have that. And then my other one is Frixion pens.

MR: Oh yes. Erasable. Yeah.

DA: Erasable. And they have both ballpoint and felt tip pens, different widths. They also have highlighter pens that are erasable and they're erasable by friction, which is the heat—

MR: The heat, yeah.

DA: - of the rubbing. They have this little hard rubber thing on the end of the pen, and when it erases, it's not like American erasers where it's like you rub it and then like all these little crumbs come up. It's just the rubbing creates heat that erases.

MR: The heat and it kind of evaporates or something like that.

DA: It just goes invisible.

MR: Yeah. Interesting. It disappears.

DA: So they have like a ballpoint pens too. They have gray ones too which is nice. So that's really good for you know sketchnoting, I think. So I use those with conjunction with Pigma Micron pens which are pigment black pens or I use Sharpies. Sharpies are permanent markers. Because the highlighters and the Frixion pens are water-based.

MR: And they don't interact with each other.

DA: They're microns, you know, they don't smear.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DA: That's the main things I use for sketch notes.

MR: Isn't the other challenge with Frixion is because of heat? Like, you don't wanna leave it in your hot car on a summer afternoon 'cause all your notes will evaporate.

DA: Yeah.

MR: It was also the pen that was included with the Rocketbook or still is included with Rocketbook. And I remember the very early ones, you would like put it in the microwave and you could erase all your notes and then start over again with a blank book.

DA: That's right. Yeah. You gotta watch out with that. And actually, I've had the Frixion pens, some of the color, felt ones for a while, and it does die out. Like the pigment somehow dies out.

MR: It dry dries up or something, or it fades.

DA: Then when I write with it, all I get is clear. I'm not sure why. But again, this is like a case where I've had these Frixion pins maybe for four years and not used them regularly, so.

MR: It just broke down over time probably.

DA: Yeah. I don't know whether I have to—'cause you know the whiteboard marker trick, right? Where you put a string at the end of the whiteboard marker and you whip it over your head.

MR: It moves all the pigment to the tip, right?

DA: Correct.

MR: It's centripetal force, I think.

DA: Yeah. Yeah. That's a neat little trick. So I've been trying that with that.

MR: Hmm.

DA: Oh, the other one is I love the Neuland pens.

MR: Oh, they're great. Yeah.

DA: Yeah. The water-based pens. 'cause you can refill them.

MR: Yep. They're permanent as well. Many of the inks are permanent. Especially the—well these guys here, I'm showing the orange ones—

DA: Yeah. The black pens are permanent.

MR: -the outliners. Yeah. These are great.

DA: And then you can also mix your own colors 'cause they have the colors—

MR: Little bulbs, you can kind of mix 'em. And they have blank pens that have no pigment in them. And you can make your own thing. Just, you know—

DA: And it's really fun.

MR: - measure in grams the amount of ink you use 'cause you might have to refill that thing if you need a match.

DA: Yeah.

MR: What about paper and notebooks and stuff like that?

DA: Oh, I've been using your sketchnote notebooks by the way, on tracks.

MR: Oh really? Okay.

DA: They're really lovely. Otherwise, I use Moleskins. The thin ones 'cause I don't like necessarily carrying a big book everywhere I go.

MR: Right.

DA: The other thing I'll do sometimes is—other—oh, Muji.

MR: Muji. Yeah. That's a great store. They're in some big cities. Yeah. New York City is the one I've been to too. Yeah.

DA: One of my favorites is they have these notebooks with plain brown paper cardboard cover. With a little elastic around it.

**MR: Oh, okay.

DA: To keep the book shut.

MR: Yeah. Okay.

DA: But the brown paper cover is so nice 'cause when you—I travel to Japan quite frequently and at a lot of the museums that you go to or the tourist attractions, they'll have a little stamp pad.

MR: Oh. And you can stamp it.

DA: A little commemorative stamp where, "I went to this place." So when I had my little travel journey from Japan, I just pick up all those books and then every place that has little stamp pad, I stamp it

MR: Like an art passport.

DA: Yeah. They also have Travelers Notebooks. Have you heard of those?

MR: Yes. I know about the Travelers Notebooks. Yeah. Those are great.

DA: The Traveler's Notebooks are really from Japan.

MR: Yes.

DA: So they have Traveler Notebooks stores just for them.

MR: If you don't know what these are, it's typically the traditional one is a piece of leather that was cut and folded. So it's like a cover. And then there's a string inside of it. And then you get these notebooks and they're staple bound, and you slide the notebook into the string and that's what holds it into the leather cover.

So you can kind of swap 'em in. You can stack up more than one and you can kind of make it whatever you like. They have all kinds of inserts too, right? Like plastic things with zips. You can slide in and like all kinds of crazy stuff that you can add and make the notebook what you like.

DA: Calendar insert, calendar, mini booklets, grids, dots. So you can make your own customized notebook so that you can slip things in and out.

MR: Yeah.

DA: It's a really nice system. And it's basically about the size of a—looks like about the size of an—a little bit bigger than an airline ticket.

MR: Yeah, that's true. That's the big one. I know that they have a passport-size one too. It's a little bit shorter.

DA: Uh-huh.

MR: So if you need a pocketable thing, you could go in that direction as well.

DA: It's really nice system. It's because it's from Japan and imported, it's not the cheapest.

MR: Right.

DA: I think which is cheaper, but on the bright side for all of the people who like Japanese stationary, the yen to dollar exchange rate is the lowest it's ever been in about 20 years.

MR: Maybe I need to go to JetPens this week.

DA: Yes. It's at like 150 yen to the dollar now. Typically, before last year even, it was like closer to 100, 110 yen to a dollar. When you go to Japan, it's like you're getting a 30, 40 percent discount on everything.

MR: This is the time to book your tickets to Japan, everybody.

DA: You should go to Japan. Oh, and if you do go to Japan, make sure you go to Shinjuku Sanchome area 'cause that's where they have the Sekaido. Sekaido is a five-story art supply store.

MR: Oh boy. You'd never leave that place.

DA: It is the best. And then otherwise, there's also Tokyo Hands, which has a mix of art supplies and stationery and office stuff, and home craft things, like all kinds of craft kits. And then there LOFT, which also has a great stationary and gift selection. So it is a stationary lover's dream.

MR: I bet.

DA: Please go to Japan.

MR: Yeah. Spend some money there. You definitely will in those stores.

DA: Absolutely.

MR: Wow. That's really cool. You're reminding me—I can see my Travelers Notebook right over here. I haven't used it for a while. Kind of encouraging me to maybe get some—so what's nice about those is not only can you buy books that fit there, but you can make your own, right? If you have paper you like, you can cut it to the right size and fold it and just slide it right in and you've got a notebook, so. It's pretty cool.

DA: Absolutely. It's really nice. And the leather makes it like, you know, an object you keep and get attached to over time.

MR: Right.

DA: But the inserts make it infinitely reusable.

MR: Yeah. It's got the lasting part and then the transient part.

DA: Yeah. It's nice.

MR: Right. Hmm. Interesting. Well, that's really cool. And I was gonna go back and you use the thin Moleskin, I'm assuming you mean the staple-bound ones?

DA: Yeah. Not the hard-bound ones.

MR: Not the hardbound ones. Got it. 'Cause they can slip in a pocket or a purse or bag or something. Not so bulky.

DA: Yeah. 'Cause when I'm travelling, you know weight matters, right?

MR: Yeah. Oh yeah.

DA: And so you just wanna be able to have something on the fly.

MR: Yep. Cool. Well, that's really great. I'll follow up and make sure we get as many as we can in the show notes for people, the places, and the tools so you can go check 'em out and spend some money. Sorry.

DA: You won't regret it.

MR: Yeah. People that listen to this podcast, probably I spend a lot of their money. Sorry about that. So I would love to hear some tips from you. We like to make some part of the podcast practical. I frame it with, let's assume there's a visual thinker, whatever they are, comic book artist, sketchnoter, or graphic record, it could be just someone kind of curious, and they're starting to do this, but they feel maybe they he hit a plateau or they just need a little encouragement. What would be three things you would tell that person to give them a little encouragement?

DA: I guess, you know, 'cause I come from writing background and I tend to see people who get really—when I teach my class, I get people who are very tight about their drawing, right? Or very feeling like they're not an artist, and so therefore they can't draw. So I end up breaking it down into you're writing letters and then you're learning how to write words, and you're learning how to write sentences. And from the sentences you get stories.

And if you think about it in building blocks, right? Like your letters are the straight, the curves, the circles, the shapes, right? And then you put that together to make people, places things. That's the words. And then you add conjunctions and connectors or adjectives, right? Like, and that would be like arrows and boxes to group things.

Or, you know, little line radiating license show something is new or swirly lines, you know, to show like a different mood or using different sizes of type. So that's your connector to make sentences. And then when you have all of these things together, then it becomes a story. So if you think about it like as a form of alphabet and writing system versus thinking of it as an artistic system, then it just feels more approachable.

MR: Yeah. I think so. Yeah. Lowers the bar a lot. Yeah.

DA: Yeah. And I guess the other thing I'll tell people, you know, we're all stuck in boring meetings a lot.

MR: Yeah. Yeah.

DA: So sometimes, i find that I'll practice my sketch notes in boring meetings. And I'll—

MR: You know, not much to lose.

DA: Yeah. It's sometimes then it's you know, like the key thing, right? You write the words and then you leave space for images. And then you know, it's just kind of even practice. Sometimes I'll draw the people in the meeting to practice drawing different facial expressions or I'll challenge myself to draw tricky visual concepts. Like lately I've had to—I had to recently do a storyboard to illustrate large language models for AI.

MR: Oh yeah.

DA: That was tricky. Bitcoin was tricky. It was the other one before, I think—or how would I draw AR and VR experiences? And so, what I did with that was I would draw the person with the VR glasses in green. The rest of the body was, you know, black and white. And then I would make a pointed, a word balloon, but I would make it a square word balloon pointing at the glass outline in green. So what that would indicate is that this is what they're seeing through the glasses. And then anything they were seeing the glasses I would draw in green as well.

MR: I see.

DA: So then in the context of like the—

MR: Separate those. Mm-hmm.

DA: So it's kind of like there's—especially if you work in tech or anything that's abstract, like finance or healthcare, somethings you're dealing with sometimes a lot of abstract concepts. And these will be like your greatest hits, right? These are things that's gonna come up for you over and over again. So like figure out your icon or symbol for it.

When I teach my class and I teach it to different types of—I teach to healthcare companies, tech companies, some that are more enterprise or more cloud-focused, some are more retail or e-commerce focused, I teach 'em a basic curriculum and then I customize it the second half for their industry. Saying like, I'm not here to—you know, like Duolingo, right? Duolingo will teach me stuff like, "My sister teaches geology at the university." And it's like, I never use that in a sentence when I go to Japan, right?

MR: Yeah.

DA: I'd like to order this, but could I get it with the kimchi on the side instead of this? Or how much is this? Or where's the bathroom?

MR: Practical things. Yeah.

DA: Practical, right? So when I teach my drawing class, I go like, here's the basics, and here's your greatest hits for your industry. You know, here's how to draw a shopping cart. You're an e-commerce, here's how to draw your company logo really fast. Things like that, right?

MR: Things you're gonna use a lot. Yeah.

DA: So I'm always really focused, like when I teach, think of it as language learning. I try to think of it as, what's the stuff you need? 'Cause you don't need to learn how to draw everything in the world. Just the stuff in your world.

MR: That's a great second tip. So first one is think of it as language. The second is to build the greatest hits of the things you're gonna use often using that language.

DA: I think the third one is just be visual with fun low-stakes things.

MR: Yeah. Good point.

DA: Sometimes people get really bent like, "Oh my God, if I'm gonna do scratching on at a conference, everyone's gonna look at it and it has to be perfect, right?

MR: Right.

DA: Or if I'm gonna scratch work, you know, everyone's gonna see it and it has to be good. Then when I say, "Well, how about sketch notes for fun, low-stakes things?" Like a favorite recipe or you know, like a travel journal or like even sketching your favorite TV show. Like, what happens?

MR: Yeah. That's a good one.

DA: So think of fun way—or I think another one is, draw with young people. Yeah. If you have your kids or nieces or nephews or any young people you come in contact with, draw with them. Have fun with them and draw together and you'll find that—I mean, that's how I got started. My mom draw me when I was young. Right.

So one, it invites you to enjoy it as fun. It invites you to you know, play together in a spirit of experimentation and low stakes-ness, but also kind of when you're with kids, you just kind of learn, "Oh, I don't need to worry about a lot of these things."

MR: Yeah. Don't put too much burden on yourself.

DA: Yeah. Or treat yourself as kindly as you would a kid who's just learning how to draw.

MR: Yeah. That's a good idea.

DA: I think so much of it gets blocked because as adults we judge ourselves too harshly.

MR: Yeah. We too much burden on ourselves. Yeah.

DA: For even a very beginner efforts, right. So, you know, there's always a time and a place to be better, but you'll never get better if you never at least go through a lot of routes of being not so good at it. And it doesn't matter that that's not so good. You're at least doing it.

MR: Right. Learning every time.

DA: Because we were talking about people who use AI for these kind of things. It's like, you are missing the point. The true joy of the sketching is the motor memory, the activity, the connection between your muscles and the thing, and your visual, and then that ends up being reinforcing something in your brain. So, yeah, the drawing—I've taught my drawing classes through Zoom, but I find it's so much more fun if it's in person.

MR: Yeah. Yeah.

DA: That's a tough one though.

MR: Well, those are three great tips. Thanks for sharing those. And thank you for all that you're doing in the visual thinking community. I know attending the International Sketchnote Camp and doing the teaching that you're doing, thank you for doing that and just helping people move beyond not doing anything. That's really helpful. And I'm glad that you're doing it. So thank you for that work.

DA: Oh, thank you. I'd love to go to next year's Sketchnote. I have such fond memories of that one, but is so sad I missed the last few.

MR: Yeah. Well, it's gonna be in Texas. It's been announced from the 2nd through the 4th of August and San Antonio, Texas. So it's gonna be right in the neighborhood for people in the United States. So Michael Clayton is running the show and I'm helping with a few other people. So as we record this, it's early February, so pretty soon there should be more information. And of course, you probably have seen on the website announcements for it by the time this show comes out. But yeah, it's gonna be San Antonio.

DA: Excited to mark my calendar.

MR: Yeah. Tacos and barbecue and sketch notes—

DA: Nice.

MR: - you can't go wrong.

DA: Absolutely. Yeah. One thing I love about—I wanna tell it to you, Mike, that there are a lot of people who create creative communities and the creative community you've created has such a nice feeling, just a nice warm vibe of collaboration and, you know, shared growth. And so, thank you for that.

MR: Oh, thank you.

DA: It has a great impact.

MR: I'm just one piece of that puzzle. There's a lot of people that invest in that, so I'm glad to hear that. And they will as well when they hear this podcast, so. Yeah, for sure. Well, Deb, what's the best place to find you? Do you have a website we can go to and see your work and reach out to you? Are you on certain social media where you hang out these days?

DA: Well I'm on BlueSky, @debaoki. My Twitter account is having problems nowadays but I am on Twitter with @mangasplanning. And then if you go to mangasplanning.com, that's where all our podcasts are at. I'm embarrassed to say that my website is down right now for renovations.

MR: Oh, okay.

DA: But eventually debaoki.com will be back.

MR: Okay. Maybe by the time the show comes out in March or whatever,

DA: That would be a good deadline, wouldn't it?

MR: Yeah. There you go. I'll give you a deadline.

DA: Okay. Sounds good.

MR: Even if it's just, you know, "Coming soon" and it's you with a hard hat on shoveling, that would be, you know, a throwback to the '90s.

DA: Indeed.

MR: When websites weren't ready yet, they'd have like a little construction worker digging.

DA: That's true.

MR: They should do Deb digging and animate it, and that would be your website until you get it up.

DA: Good idea.

MR: And then they'd stop every once in a while, "See you soon.” That'd be funny. Cool. Well, we'll definitely send people there. We'll get the show notes from you and find them on our own as well. So if you're curious about anything here, just go to show notes and you'll find a link to it. And Deb, thanks for being on the show. It's been great to have you. Thanks for sharing your experience and your wisdom.

DA: Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's so delightful to talk with you.

MR: Yeah, you're so welcome. And for anybody who's listening or watching, it's another episode of the podcast. Until the next episode, talk to you soon.

Armin Meiwes: The German Wiener Eater