Speedy sketching for an animated event
“They’re so fast, yet so good, that I’m convinced that it involves some kind of sorcery.” Scott Payton, Bowen Craggs
Gestural drawings pick up movement in a way that’s handy for getting across the character of a conference where presentations are animated and listeners are active. I have to be quick because people shift position and situations move on.
That’s been particularly useful for the informal, collegiate style of the Bowen Craggs Conference, in Berlin for 2019, looking at the future of digital corporate communications. Delegates, who manage big, complex websites, can share, learn and network with their peers.
The immediacy of live sketching works well for social media. For this conference, I switched to digital drawing so that I could send sketches straight to the Bowen Craggs event team at the end of each session and archive low- and high-resolution files at the end of each day. I was Instagramming drawings in parallel with the Bowen Craggs Club posts, tagging them for sharing and conversations.
Drawing complements event photography and filming – at this event, Bowen Craggs had all three.
And there’s been added value: speakers and delegates have been interested in seeing drawings as we’ve gone along and asked for copies to share or to print.
More on the conference here.
Bowen Craggs conference photos © Mark Roe
