MindMap Travel Journal with Eva-Lotta Lamm

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Don't use pencils.

I always say, use a black fineliner or ball pen, something that stays, because it gets you in the habit of creating and continuing to create instead of starting the editing process while you're still creating.

It's like with brainstorming.

You want to get everything out, and then you can edit later and kick things out and group them and rearrange things.

Jono Hey:
I really like mind mapping, because compared to making a list or something, I can just sort of go anywhere.

It's super free, so I still use mind maps all the time to get ideas out.

Tom Pellereau:
I was insanely lucky.

I think I learned about mind mapping from about age eight, nine, that kind of thing at school, and that helped me enormously throughout my life.

Rob Bell:
I just remembered, this is my journal.

Ugly.

It's just pages and pages of words.

Hello, and welcome to Sketchplanations, The Podcast, the fortnightly audio feast for those curious of mind who enjoy poking and prodding into life's mysteries and wonders, all drawn from the collection of sketches at sketchplanations.com.

I'm engineer and broadcaster Rob Bell, and with me as always is the father of Sketchplanations, Jono Hey, and established entrepreneur and past winner of The Apprentice, it's Tom Pellereau.

And I'm delighted to say that for this episode on MindMap Travel Journals, we have an expert guest joining us, a master of design, visual thinking and sketch slash sketch-noting.

For well over a decade, Eva-Lotta Lamm worked for companies like Google, Yahoo and Skype as a digital user experience and product designer, and more recently, she consults with her varied clients, helping them to make complex problems visual so they can be seen from a fresh perspective in order to solve them more efficiently.

Her work as a sketch-noter and illustrator has been published in a number of books, including a travel diary in sketch-note and mind-map form from her own epic 14-month odyssey around the globe, making her the perfect and perfectly welcome guest on the podcast today.

Eva-Lotta, hello.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Hello.

Rob Bell:
Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for coming on.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Thank you for having me.

It's a pleasure.

Rob Bell:
Eva-Lotta and Jono, you guys work in a similar sphere, I guess, with the activities that you do.

Jono Hey:
We have similar paths in some ways.

I've worked a long time as a UX designer and strategy in general, and I've done a lot of visualization along the way, which is obviously what kicked off Sketchplanations.

But Eva-Lotta, I feel like you've done so many more and so many different things before and since.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Yeah, it's been an odyssey in itself, my career.

I don't know.

For a long time, as you said, I worked as a UX designer with changing titles.

Some was information architecture related, then I was called Interaction Designer, Interface Designer.

I mean, the titles changed as we know in this world.

But actually, this world trip that you were talking about where I did the sketch-noting or the sketch journaling, was actually also a change in my career.

I took these 14 months off.

Actually, it was not only taking time off, it was we quit our jobs, left our flat, sold a lot of our belongings, and had a little bit in storage, and then went off with a 40-liter backpack and two outfits to change depending on the weather and what is not dirty at the time.

So you don't have to take very many decisions clothing-wise, which is great, which I loved.

It actually also was a change in my job because when we came back from the world trip, I was thinking, do I want to work again as a UX designer in this field, or do I want to make sketching and visual thinking actually the center of my activity?

I had been doing that by the side and during my personal leave time for five years, like speaking at conferences and teaching workshops and doing stuff like that, up to the point that it almost took all my holidays.

So the travel was mostly like to conference locations, maybe having a few days or sometimes a week, depending on the location, to take some free time.

But it took up a lot of my annual leave as an employee.

And so when we came back, I was thinking, well, maybe I should try to make the visual thinking thing the main focus of what I do and see if it works.

And if it doesn't work, I can always find another job.

So I've been doing that for eight years now.

I'm self-employed and I work with my own clients and I teach people how to think visually themselves.

Rob Bell:
So then in this episode, we're talking MindMap Travel Journals, the act of recording the ins and outs of your travel experiences through a visually engaging mind map diagram rather than or perhaps in addition to a fully blown written journal or just taking loads of photos on your phone.

We'll be discussing why MindMap Travel Journals are so great.

We have a couple of exceptional examples to share with you and we'll talk about how to get started on your own along with hints and tips for making them as good as they can be.

Now you should be able to see Jono's sketch for this up on your screens as the artwork for this episode now.

And if you want to take a closer look or see more related sketches then head to sketchplanations.com And if there's anything we talk about that prompts you to share your own travel journaling tales or questions, thoughts and theories on mind maps and the like, then please send your emails to hello at sketchplanations.com Or you can head to the podcast website podcast.sketchplanations.com and leave us a voice note.

Right then, Eva-Lotta, as a kid were you into drawing?

And is this a skill and a passion that you've had all your life or is it something that you developed later on that you enjoyed doodling and then that turned into something else and got a bit more serious?

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
I always like to draw and actually I studied design out of the very naive conception that, well, I like to draw so maybe I should study design.

And at the time when I took this decision, the internet wasn't really much around yet.

I lived in a small town in the south of Germany.

There were no designers in this town.

And I didn't really know what design meant.

It's like, yeah, I always liked fonts and type, kind of different shapes and a bit of drawing.

And I thought, okay, well, then I become a designer.

And the cool thing is that by accident, I chose the right thing to study.

Because when I then actually discovered what design entails and what possibilities you have, and then the internet also came around and brought even more possibilities doing interactive stuff, then I was like, wow, this is so much cooler than just drawing shit.

And actually, this stuff was so cool, especially the interactive stuff for a while, that after graduating, there were several years when I was hardly drawing anything.

I went straight to the computer just doing whatever you do as a designer, but drawing had completely left my practice, I would say, until I started going to conferences.

The first conference I went to was one in London, I think in 2007.

And because I have a horrible memory and I can't remember anything after three days, I can tell you, yeah, there were lots of great talks with great stuff, but I forgot what they were about and the details on top.

So I took notes and because I was used to taking notes in a visual way from keeping a sketchbook during my design studies, you know, and also basically that's the mode you basically think in and keep your thoughts and make your notes when somebody tells you something or there's some form of lecture or something you take in.

So it was a natural way for me just to mix images and words, especially at a design conference, they show stuff and so you make a little scribble of what they show.

And that was just something I did and I took photos and put them on Flickr, which existed back at the time.

I think it still exists.

And I uploaded it and also around that time, I saw on Flickr photos from Mike Rohde's first Sketch Note that he did at South by Southwest.

I think that was 2006 or 2007 as well.

And I saw that picture and I'm like, oh, there's somebody else doing something like this.

And he gave it a name because he had the hashtag Sketch Notes in it.

And I'm like, oh, well, Sketch Notes, that's a good hashtag for that.

That's a good name for that.

Maybe it's a thing.

So I tagged Mind Sketch Notes as well.

And for a very long time, for several years, it was like a growing number of people.

Like at the beginning, it was a handful of people.

Really, you could count them.

There were three or four people doing that as well and calling it Sketch Notes.

And then it was slowly growing.

And I mean, now it's kind of there are books and courses and everybody is doing that, which is great.

So Mike did a great job of spreading the technique or spreading the term for the technique as well, because probably some way of visual note-taking has been around forever.

Rob Bell:
But once you give it a name, it can then take off, right?

And other people can label themselves as Sketch Noters as well.

I love this story, Eva-Lotta, because I mean, as someone who didn't really know what they wanted to do until I kind of stumbled on it by accident at 36.

And in fact, as a trio, we probably haven't followed what you might call traditional career roots.

I'm so motivated to hear other stories who have integrated their passions and what they're good at and what they enjoy doing in their spare time into their profession.

I think it's wonderful and I think it's really inspiring.

I'd encourage so many people to at least consider it.

I love that story.

It's great.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Yeah.

When I started doing this, I mean, coming back to giving something a name, because I think that's an important point as well.

But I think by seeing that somebody gave this kind of thing a name, it also became more of a thing in my head and I became more interested in how I do this thing.

So what actually makes this a sketch note as opposed to just notes in general with a little scribble in between.

So this actually also prompted me to look at the way I take notes in a visual way, in a more conscious way, I would say, to observe my technique or what choices I make.

So that's really powerful to give something a name in many ways.

Rob Bell:
It really is.

I was wondering if Jono and Tommy, have you ever used the services of a sketch note or a sketch note facilitator to enable you all to visualize better, maybe the problems or the challenges that you're trying to overcome as a group?

I certainly have.

When I worked in an office, I remember doing it.

I had a group of people with some tension and we brought in a sketch note facilitator and it really helped communicate clearly the things we need to overcome.

Jono Hey:
When I worked at Jump Associates, which is a designer strategy firm or growth strategy firm in California, we regularly, we would facilitate our own client meetings and we typically bring in somebody from another team quite often to help record the meetings when you have somebody with a client, particularly like the early ones where you're talking around a problem and there's lots of different potential viewpoints and we could do some brilliant things.

I mean, so many people there were so much better than I was and I picked up a lot.

But I remember it was really powerful.

It's powerful after the fact.

Like if you publish this afterwards and people look back on a conference or something and they can remember all the talks and that's lovely and it's a really nice record.

During the sessions as well, having your conversation and the key points up on the board as you spoke, shaped the conversation and people would come back to some other thing and then collectively you'd make better sense of it.

It was really cool and I learned a lot there from a lot of people which influenced all my style of drawing today and perhaps why I ended up doing a MindMap Travel Journal.

But Tom, you probably taught me MindMap a long time ago and I think that influenced because very often Sketch-noting is lots of different ways of Sketch-noting, but MindMap is one of the ways that you can capture a conference or something like that.

Tom Pellereau:
I was insanely lucky and I think I learned about MindMapping in the mid late 80s when I was very young.

So from about age 8, 9, 10, that kind of thing at school, it was just coming out.

We had, ironically, it was the geography teacher who decided to start doing a course called Study Skills, which was probably the most useful of any subject I've ever done, almost in my entire life.

And basically, he got the Tony Buzan set of videos and we just watched Tony Buzan go to work and MindMapping.

And that helped me enormously throughout my life.

Rob Bell:
Can I just clarify who Tony helped me with the surname?

Tom Pellereau:
Buzan?

Jono Hey:
I'd say Tony Buzan.

Rob Bell:
Is he like the Godfather of MindMapping then?

Yes.

That's a big nod from Eva-Lotta, yes.

Have you seen his books?

Jono Hey:
I mean, they're a long time ago, Eva-Lotta.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
I have looked at some of his, was it a book, was it a video, was it a talk of him, some way, shape or form where he explains his thinking.

I think the technique is great.

I find his approach very prescriptive.

He's very precise on what goes on the lines and what goes on the nodes.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Only one word, I think, was only a little.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
I'm a little bit more of a freestyle person.

So I'm an improviser at heart.

Like I also do theater improvisation.

And I feel like the design process and the sketching process, and especially the sketch-noting process, is an improvisation process because you don't know in the beginning what you're going to get at the end.

And you make decisions informed by what just happened or what is happening right now.

So it's great to have as a technique, but it was too prescriptive for me to stick to the T just to the mind mapping.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, I get it.

I'm glad you brought up the improvisation, Eva-Lotta, because I wanted to ask you about that briefly.

And it may come up in conversation later on when we're talking about it.

But what's an example of that?

Is it where, in my mind, as you were talking there, I was thinking maybe you've decided on a metaphor or an analogy, maybe, to describe a conversation in a slightly different way.

So maybe it's clearer.

I don't know.

Maybe you've used the example of cars, I don't know, as an analogy for something else.

But then you've sketched out your car as your analogy, and then you're like, right, okay, well, now I can take that bit further and I can do something on wheels or whatever it might be.

Is that the kind of thing you're talking about, or is it this kind of constant decision-making of where you take things next?

I'm fascinated by it.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Yeah, I think you could think about it on several levels.

So the idea that or the thought that you just gave when you say, okay, I'm making an analogy or, for example, I don't know, I decided for some weird reason somebody's talking about ideas, and in one of the pictures, I decide the idea is represented by a car.

So when you have lots of ideas, it's like a huge car park full of cars, and then there are different colored cars, and then there are more expensive cars, and some are already kind of dented and kind of had an accident, and maybe they are not so good, and then there are some really shiny ones that are attractive.

I don't know.

Rob Bell:
I like it.

Jono Hey:
I'm following you on this.

Rob Bell:
I'm with you.

This is great.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
So then maybe it's always a good idea to take something that you already did and run with it, because when you draw a series and when you have a series of pictures that are related by a common object or a common...

It could also be a common line weight or just some common element.

It just makes it so much more rewarding for the viewer to look at it, because they can see the thread going through it, the idea going through it.

So and sometimes it also forces you to actually do weird stuff, because then when you think about...

I mean, the choice of an idea being represented by a car for whatever reason is already a bit wacky for me.

But then you could think about, well, what do you do when you select ideas?

I don't know, there's this car dealership and you have to select them.

Or what does a great idea look like?

And what does a bad idea look like?

And what does a fast car represent as an idea?

I don't know, you can take this analogy and spin it and...

Rob Bell:
Just keep running with it.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Keep running with it and also come up with quite unusual and maybe sometimes a little bit weird and wacky image ideas for concepts that might be otherwise quite dry, because, let's be honest, a lot of the time when we're sketch-noting, we're sketch-noting quite conceptual things.

And there is no physical representation of big concepts, like, I don't know, sustainability or equality or growth or whatever.

We need to find physical things in this world that we can draw to kind of represent it and make metaphors and analogies.

Rob Bell:
And in doing so, hopefully make it clearer for people to understand and maybe make their own connections and see their own roles within it.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Yes, because the amazing thing about analogies, what I love about analogies is that we're basically tapping into knowledge that everybody has like this life experience of, I don't know, when you say our project set up is either like a garden party or like a space mission.

You can immediately think about what the different feel is and maybe how we work together.

And maybe what the project is about or how it's going to be run, how long it will take.

So we're tapping into the knowledge that people already have about the world, how certain systems work.

You know, a garden works different from a factory.

They are both systems.

They are both things that get produced.

They both have inputs.

One is seeds and you grow fruit.

And the other one, you have, I don't know, a raw material and you create a car or something.

But they have different fields and different things that could remind us of other things to explore.

So analogies are fascinating and beautiful.

And I love this topic.

Rob Bell:
I can tell.

It's wonderful.

It's brilliant hearing you speak about it.

Jono Hey:
I love the connection.

I've heard about like designers, essentially a conversation that you're putting something down on paper and then you're seeing that and you're kind of reacting to it.

And I guess I hadn't quite extended it to be like, it's an improvisation and you're constantly going, oh, what if I go this way?

I'm going to run with this because that's what I would do.

And so in improvisation, but it might just be me.

It just I'm improvising with me as opposed to with a partner or other axis.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Yeah, I mean, one of the principles of improvisation is the yes and probably everybody knows that.

So yes, and I also like to add that what if?

What if this car has had an accident?

What does it mean for the idea?

What is the oh, the idea was just axed by the CEO because they didn't like it.

So it crashed.

So by forcing yourself to making these forced fits to what you already chose, it can actually trigger quite a lot of interesting thoughts that you would otherwise probably not have had so you can surprise yourself.

Rob Bell:
Well, at the risk of overextending the analogy any further, I'm going to park that conversation there.

Thank you very much.

I'm really pleased with myself.

So let's get on to MindMap Travel Journals.

Now, I know that 75% of us on this podcast have and have published MindMap Journals of their own travels, or maybe 50% Jono and Eva-Lotta have.

And I've seen them, and I can tell you they are spectacular.

And I will highlight at the very top of this episode description notes the links for listeners to bring them up in front of them now on their screens if they want to, or you can take a peek later at them.

It's well worth it, I promise you, to have a look at Jono and Eva-Lotta's MindMap Travel Journals.

Tom Pellereau:
You don't really want to look at mine.

Mine aren't going to have to be shared or looked at.

Rob Bell:
Well, you know, we can publish them later, Tommy.

Before we come on to the journaling section, and we talked about it a little bit already, but Jono, can you give us a kind of crisp explanation of what a MindMap is?

Just for anybody who maybe doesn't know what it is or use them.

Jono Hey:
In a way, I credit Tom with introducing this to me.

I'm actually not so bad at thinking sort of linearly and dealing with text and speech and stuff, and Tom is able to make all sorts of connections in all sorts of ways.

MindMap was introduced to me as this brilliant, our minds can take in information non-linearly, and so we can look at a scene and pick out all these different bits at the same time.

We don't have to read one word after another.

And so a MindMap is I'm going to put what it is this is about in the center of my piece of paper, and then I'm just going to connect.

And so I think, oh, I thought about this topic, and this was the first thing that came to mind.

Then when I think of that, these other things come to mind, and I just attach these as their own nodes one by one until I've built this sort of map or network.

And I really like MindMapping because compared to making a list or something, I can just sort of go anywhere.

It's super free.

So I still use MindMaps all the time to just get ideas out.

But they're also lovely to come back to look at as a finished thing.

And you can also take it in on it.

And you can go over here and go over there and go over there.

Instead of reading your way through it, you might a journal.

So for me, a MindMap is start in the middle with a concept and you're just connecting thoughts to that as you radiate outwards from the center.

It's about connecting ideas and getting them down on paper in the simplest way.

Rob Bell:
And so the topic of this episode, the MindMap Travel Journal is applying that to going off on your travels, right?

And for an example, I know you took a location, and I imagine you're there for a while.

And then that was in the center, out goes the MindMap from there.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

So we were in this town for a bit and hey, we did this factory tour, and there were some fun things in the factory tour, and we tried all these foods or whatever.

Oh, and we also went to the beach, and we did these things at the beach.

And you're just connecting across this, and you can add pictures and use colors, and just have a bit of fun with it as you go.

Rob Bell:
And so then, Eva-Lotta, on your MindMap Travel Journal, this is 14 months of travel.

Did you set out with the intention of creating this collection of MindMaps with the locations you went to?

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Yes, I set out with the intention of Sketch-noting the trip, because I hate taking photos.

I like to be in the moment and experience whatever's going on and look at things, and I don't like taking photos.

And so I thought it's a good opportunity to do kind of a sketch journal.

And I had a little think beforehand, and I'm also not a good journaler in terms of linear journaling and telling a story.

I'm a horrible storyteller.

I'm very good at setting up scenes and describing a scene, but then making something happen, I'm just...

Rob Bell:
With a flowing narrative and peaks and drops.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
I'm good at snapshots, I think.

That's what I'm good at.

And so I was thinking, how can I structure this journal so that I don't have to write stories, because I can't.

And I thought about the things that I would like to remember or that I usually enjoy during my travels.

So I created actually an empty sketchbook with some printed prompts in it.

So I had them printed.

And I had a spread, like a double page, for every day was the plan.

Sometimes I summarized a couple or three days together, when I don't know, when we went 20 hours on a bus or something, you can't draw on a bus, not much happens.

Sometimes a lot happens in a bus, depending on where you are.

But that's a different story.

So one spread per day.

And I chose a few prompts for myself to do every day.

Rob Bell:
Like what?

What might some of those prompts?

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
I have one spread here in front of me.

So something I had to eat or drink today, because eating and drinking in foreign countries is always exciting.

Someone I saw or talked to today, because people in different countries are super interesting, either to talk to or just to observe.

Something that made me smile today, because that's always a good thing.

Something I learned today, or maybe something interesting I saw today, because there's always strange things that you might not quite understand, or that are different from your home country and you notice them.

They can be really small.

Then an idea or thought I had today, because I also wanted to make it a little bit internal, to kind of capture what's going on in my mind.

Rob Bell:
Okay.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
And then the best thing that happened today, which I often change to just a very good thing or something that happened today, because it's so hard to pick the best thing.

It's putting too much pressure.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

You don't want to put the pressure on.

Yeah, exactly.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
And then the last one was a fact about me, just a random fact about me, because I was also thinking I want to put something from me in there and see what the travels, what kind of memories or random things that I want to say about me would inspire, like different surroundings give you different thoughts about yourself or maybe things that you remember that you had forgotten.

So I don't know.

That was the choice I made in the beginning.

Rob Bell:
Different thoughts and different feelings perhaps as well, because I was going to ask you how you would go about capturing emotions or any kind of spiritual type of experiences.

But it feels that what you've set out there within that quasi template, if you like, that was very intentional, absolutely, that you would capture that.

Anything that was significant in that you sense, so your emotions and how you were feeling, it seems that you would have captured that.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Yeah, I would say so.

I mean, it mixes itself in.

I mean, just by choosing the moments that you put in there for that day, it already shows what interests you and what resonates with you.

Then of course, when you're telling a little story about, I don't know, something that made me smile today, then why did it make me smile or it made me happy, or some other incident about somebody I talked to, how did I feel when I talked to them, or I was curious about them, or they told an amazing story, or they were really weird, or I don't know.

So yeah, that already is in my relationship with the thing that I choose to put down.

Rob Bell:
Jono, and Tommy, what Eva-Lotta has described there with her planning and intentional sketch-noting of the travel experiences, does that resonate with you guys in what you guys did?

Tom Pellereau:
Rob, remember we went to Canada together, and I've just found that I used the, this was using a bit of software at the time, the MindMap that I made from the first week, and I've discovered I made one of these every week.

Rob Bell:
Did you really?

Tom Pellereau:
I did what we did, yeah, for the, well certainly for six weeks, and I would sort of would do it by day, and then also go into a bit of the details.

The food is always when you're traveling, the people, because you meet, I'd like to say crazy people, but you meet fascinating people, don't you?

There's always, like, I just went away for the weekend in the Cotswolds, and I went into a pub to get a drink for the kids, and there was this really crazy man at the bar, but we had such an interesting chat, like, he literally had one tooth left, you know, and a really intelligent guy as well, he was telling me all fascinating things, but when you're traveling and you're in Vietnam, whatever, the people you meet are incredible.

But my drawings and my skills are nowhere near the other two that we have on this screen.

Rob Bell:
That's what clip art's for.

Tom Pellereau:
A question I would love to hear the answer from, from both of these two, is when you are doing these things, on the page, do you almost already see what you're going to draw?

Or is it a very, you just put the pen down or the pencil down or the stylist onto the page and then it just comes?

Eva-Lotta was shaking her head saying that.

So how is your sort of process?

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Well, one of the things that I discovered is a concept called Aphantasia, which is basically the possibility or impossibility to bring things up visually in your mind's eye.

So when you close your eyes and I say, imagine a red apple with a green spot and it's on a blue table.

And do you, can you see that?

And to which degree can you see that?

And different people have different capabilities.

Some see that like, like it was a picture really like as a really detailed scene.

And some see nothing.

The same as we also have an inner narrator in our ear.

If we hear our thoughts as a voice, some people do.

And some people don't hear their thoughts as a voice.

So when you think about somebody who sketches, I think you would probably think, oh, they have a brilliant mind's eye and they see everything crisp and they just spit it out onto the paper as they imagined in their head.

Rob Bell:
I would assume that, yeah.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Absolute no for me.

I'm on the Aphantasia skill, a scale.

I see hardly anything.

I find it so hard.

I get black, blurry, and then it's gone again.

Rob Bell:
So you have to get it down.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
I have to draw to know what I draw next, because I need to make a stroke to see what it looks like, to inform the next stroke.

And the same with my sketches.

I need to make them in order to know what the next step is.

That's also very close to improvisation, because you're always going off what just happened before.

Rob Bell:
That's cool.

Jono Hey:
I think I'm a bit more the other side on the Aphantasia.

I can shut my eyes and visualize things, I think, fairly well.

I just think I just have to be a little bit ahead of myself to go, if I keep going this way, it's going to roughly look like that.

And so I'm going to need to make it smaller.

But I don't need to do that a little bit in advance of getting to the edge of the page so that I've not messed it up.

But I'm able to do that.

But it's so interesting because with improvisation, and I did some really fun improvisation classes with Dan Klein at Stanford, and a few of them.

And I remember one of the things I was guilty of in improvisation, we would play these games, which we always do in improv, like throwing balls around a thing and making a sound.

And I would do what's called stockpiling, which is where you're thinking ahead.

OK.

Like somebody's about to throw the ball at me, so I need a new sound.

And if two balls come at me quickly, I'm going to need two sounds.

And I was quite good at thinking ahead of that.

And of course, that's completely not the point of improv.

And so again, what you do is you make it harder and harder, so that there's so many things coming at you that you can't possibly stockpile and you just have to actually improvise.

And I think, yeah, so I've never associated it with drawings, in a way, but in a way, it's much freer just to go, I'm not going to think ahead too far on this page here, and I'm going to draw to see what I draw next.

Whereas maybe I'm a bit guilty of, like, thinking ahead all the time, and that probably constrains what I do, I would think.

Rob Bell:
I've seen your travel journal mind map, Jono, and it just all works.

And I was going to ask if you'd kind of planned it all out, win pencil or something, before you inked it all in, and allowed and figured out all the interconnections and where things were going to go, or just go for it.

And it sounds like you perhaps do more of that, and Eva-Lotta gets it down and works from it.

Jono Hey:
I think that's true, except that I would also say, and the reason why I go with MindMaps, for example, but it doesn't have to be MindMaps, it's just putting information on paper, not in a linear way, is that you put, like I said, if I go to the thing, oh, we went to the beach and we had some fun cocktails.

And then later on, you remember that, oh, we met that really fun couple who showed us that cool game on the beach, and you can just squeeze that in later.

And that just happens, and that's fine.

And so if you look at it, yeah, it kind of all fits, but that's just because you're using whatever space is available.

The beauty of it is you can't possibly, there's no way that you could sit and look, because some of these pages, yours as well, are completely full from bottom corner to the top corner.

There's no way you could sit and have that in your mind at the beginning.

So of course, you're like making it up as you go.

Rob Bell:
Being able to do it digitally, how does that change that?

Because you can move stuff around a bit, or would you see that as cheating?

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Well, my take on it is when I teach a lot of people how to draw and how to draw for visual thinking.

So it's for sketch-noting or your own thoughts or travel journaling or whatever you want to do with it.

But sketching in a simple way that is kind of also accessible to people who think they don't have artistic skills.

And one, how I teach it, I always teach it analog with pen and paper because this is the basis.

You're not distracted by technology and by being able to handle the app and handle the tool.

And also, I don't use pencils.

I always say use a black fineliner or ball pen or whatever, something that stays because it gets you in the habit of creating and continuing to create instead of starting the editing process while you're still creating.

It's like with brainstorming.

You want to get everything out and then you can add it later and kick things out and group them and rearrange things.

And for me, the spontaneous form of sketching and of sketch-noting, like doing it in the moment at the speed of the talk or at the speed of your own thoughts or at the speed of the group's ideas is more of a collection.

And it's all about getting it on, getting something material onto the paper.

It doesn't have to be perfect.

It doesn't have to be exactly in the right spot.

If you really need that material and you want to do something with it, you can always regroup it later and edit it and find a better picture.

Like what I often do when I do like real summaries.

I do a sketch-noted collection of things and then I do a second take where I reorder things, put in some subheadings so that it's actually also consumable by people who are not in the room that has a little bit more structure and a little bit more like a better arrangement for understanding.

And of course, this is great doing it digitally because you can just do your collection digitally and do the...

And then afterwards, you can sit down and think about, ah, what are the things you can regroup?

You can fill in a picture that's missing.

You can fill in some heading or some detail that's missing.

And that's just with digital, it's much easier to actually repurpose your live drawings and turn them into something that you might want to use longer term.

Jono Hey:
Lovely.

Just saying that, particularly when it comes to travel journals, I really like the pen and paper and a book because it's so much easier to, like, at the end of the day, you're in a cafe or a bar, you can get your book out, put it on the table and start drawing in it, and you don't have to worry about carrying tech around and you don't get distracted by anything else.

It's just a lovely exercise to do, to be drawing in a book at the end of the day.

Or you can be waiting for a bus or something like that and you're like, oh, filling a few pages and you're not worried about somebody running off with it or anything like that.

It's just a lovely thing that you can hand it to the person you're with for them to add some stuff to it.

Yeah, definitely would vote for pen and paper when it comes to the Travel Journal for sure.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
I also would feel, I don't know, I would feel really weird sitting somewhere with my iPad and drawing.

I don't know why it feels weird, except for in a co-working space or in a cafe and I'm working.

But it would feel weird and especially on the travels, the places I travel to, I wouldn't have pulled my iPad out in a lot of places where I drew on paper.

Rob Bell:
Do you get joy from looking back and reading back through your travel journals, be they in MindMap or Sketch Note formats?

Tom Pellereau:
I get joy looking at some of other people's.

Jono and Eva-Lotta are just such beautiful works of art in themselves that it's just incredible looking at and looking at them.

I get a little bit of joy from looking at mine, but mainly I get a I should practice drawing more feeling.

Jono Hey:
If I look back at them now, they make me happy because they remind me instantly on the things.

I'm looking at a page from South Africa here, and it's got the 10 courses we had at this beach meal, and there's a picture of each of them, and I'd forgotten a load of them, and I can look at them and remember them all with these little pictures.

It's brilliant.

Yeah.

Love it.

Rob Bell:
I feel like there are two levels to looking at a page of both of your guys' work.

There's the kind of macro looking at it as one.

Wow, look at all that in the day or in that location, and then you can really zoom in on one aspect of it as well, and get loads and loads of detail.

So there's two bites, I find, two bites at the cherry that I've enjoyed looking at both of those pieces of work.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Because it doesn't force you to look at it from beginning to end, because there is no really a beginning to end.

It allows you to just let your eye wonder, and let it be caught by something that catches your interest, and then maybe read what's written around it, and then like, okay, that's what that is.

So it doesn't force the reader to treat it in a specific way as a normal linear written book does.

Rob Bell:
You're right, there's a lovely freedom at that.

I just remembered mine was on the shelf here.

This is my journal.

Jono Hey:
Lovely.

Rob Bell:
Ugly, full of words.

It's just pages and pages of words from the same trip as Tommy was talking about earlier, Canada.

I will probably never read that back because it's not that interesting.

I'm glad I did it.

Would you recommend people try it, even if they're not good at drawing or sketching, or if they say they're not good at drawing and sketching, would you recommend if people were off on their holidays or off on some epic travels that they gave it a go?

Travel journaling through sketching and mind mapping?

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Well, I would definitely recommend people to capture their experience in some way, shape or form, because some people love taking photos and they take photos of little details and they do the same thing that I do with my pen with their camera.

Or some people write linearly, you know, they write as a narrative or they make lists of things or whatever it is.

I mean, you don't have to draw.

If you really don't like drawing or don't feel it, then you don't have to do it.

But one thing also, what I noticed about having this project on my journey and having the little prompts that I made before or having it gives you a different way of looking at the world because, you know, you might want to ask the things that you see, some questions, or you want to find interesting things to see.

It happened to me at some points when I had been eating the same thing for three days and I like, damn, I have to try something local new because it's getting really boring to draw, I don't know, pancakes.

Rob Bell:
Getting really good at drawing noodles.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
So, or something I learned today.

I felt like I walked around with different eyes, like somebody who collects little moments or like joyful moments or interesting moments or observing the people that I see that I could describe them later for the day.

So, I feel this act of capturing or wanting to capture might also influence your experience in the moment because you might be more wide-eyed, open-eyed during the day when you see things.

Jono Hey:
To build on that, I started to do my own sketch notes for conferences probably around the same time, I don't know if it was 2004 or 2005 or something, but they were just mine and I tended to just do a mind map.

But I got into the habit and I did a sketch of this a long time ago, which was start three mini mind maps at conferences and workshops.

I just put a big central thing for each.

One was questions, I put a question mark.

One was people, draw a little person, and one was ideas, like a little cloud or something.

And I found if I would sit down at a conference and put these things in the corner, a little big question mark, people and ideas, that during the day, I'm always sort of on the lookout for like, oh, I should go speak with that person.

They're really interesting.

Or I wonder what I could do with that person's idea from the talk and I'll add that to the ideas.

Or like, oh, it's interesting how this, when I start adding questions or I'll be like, oh, I don't have any questions yet, but that's silly.

I must have some questions.

And I start filling it in.

And so having the mind maps or the idea that I was going to fill these out changed my experience of being there because I was always on the lookout for them in a way, in a similar way that having those lovely prompts for your day, like, oh, what do I eat today?

You know, it's going to make you pay attention to what's out there that you're going to eat.

Rob Bell:
That's really nice.

Those prompts, that's something that I'm going to take away from this episode, yeah.

Those intentional prompts of what you think you might want to get out of it and finding a way to remind yourself of it.

Before we round this off, is there anything else anyone would like to ask Eva-Lotta about her work in sketch and sketch noting and conferences, all of her travel journals?

Jono Hey:
Eva-Lotta, you've worked with so many people to help them with visual thinking.

What do you find people need most when it comes to getting started with visuals and drawing and visual thinking?

What do people need the most help with?

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
The biggest perceived blocker for people is the, I can't draw because they think drawing is an artistic activity because that's how it's portrayed to us through society and school system and things like that.

For me, drawing is more like writing.

It's a cultural technique that allows you to express yourself.

So the way, and everybody can learn how to draw, how everybody can learn how to write.

For some people, it's a little bit steeper.

You need a little bit of practice and you need to understand the system.

And that's what I'm trying to do for people.

I show them that it's actually a quite modular activity of putting together shapes and putting them together in different proportions and different ways.

And then you can build anything like out of Lego.

And you need some practice to practice the choreographies and get the routine into your hand.

But anybody can learn that as you can learn how to write.

And then you have another way of expressing you, not to replace the words, but to complement the words.

So that's the biggest perceived blocker for people that they think they can't draw.

But I think once you overcame this thing, actually the more interesting things come up about how do you create structure and visual hierarchy and how do you actually choose what you put on the page and how do you group it, which has much more to do with things an information architect would do, maybe.

What is the big topic?

What are subtopics?

What things are related?

And then there's this third area of what do I actually draw when people are speaking about abstract concepts, which is more about the metaphors and analogies and maybe having imagination and doing these forced fits like with the cars and the ideas and coming up with images to represent the experience of what that is contained in this concept, like in this box that we made out of the word as a concept.

Actually, there's a whole world in there, you know, like every concept can be unpacked.

What does it mean for you?

What does it mean for me?

It can be completely different.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
So these are the topics that are actually get really exciting once you get the drawing fear out of the way, where actually the fun starts, right?

Where it's like you learn how to write and then the fun starts doing your own poetry or writing a really concise report or writing a theatre play.

You know, it's like you can write anything once you learned how to write and the same is true with drawing.

Rob Bell:
So do you have one tip or one piece of advice to help people get over that?

I don't know how to draw.

I can't draw.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Basically just doing it and accepting.

Like I always like to talk about the s***y first draft, which I learned from Anne Lammert, like who used that for writing.

And the same is true with drawing.

Not everything you produce looks amazing.

And it's okay if it just looks average in the beginning.

And sometimes when it looks s***y or weird, actually I find it funny, you know?

It's kind of endearing.

Like animals that look slightly weird, you know, that have this weird beak or the eyes too close together.

And my drawings are like that as well.

Like when I look back at the people that I drew in the beginning, they are super wonky and, but they are kind of, I have soft feelings for them because they are just a little bit weird.

So getting rid of the idea that the things that you draw need to look good.

First of all, they need to communicate.

And as long as you can see what it is, that's a good basis to build on.

Rob Bell:
Weird is good.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Weird is good in any situation in life.

Rob Bell:
I agree.

Tom Pellereau:
I totally agree.

Rob Bell:
It's a bit like that manchino dance like nobody's watching.

Draw like no one will ever see it.

Jono Hey:
I love that thing about everyone can learn how to draw.

You can learn how to write.

I think one of the things that throws people off quite a lot is people.

One of the places where I go, who makes drawing people look so simple and like an alphabet, as you said, and that's you, Eva-Lotta.

I think of all these beautiful ones about, I think really interesting challenges are like explaining yoga moves, which are so animated, right?

You're moving, and then you watch the sequence of people, and the people are so simple.

You're like, of course, I could do that.

I think that's so inspiring about your work, that they're so super clear, that they feel really approachable, that anybody can go look at that and go, hang on, I can have a go at that.

Of course, you'll find it's hard to do it as good as you do it, but you do it so simple and so clear, that I think it's a great way for people to get over that, like, oh, I can't do this.

Rob Bell:
They are amazing and I will link to your sketch yoga.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Is that it?

No, the book is called Yoga Notes.

Rob Bell:
Yoga Notes.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
That's because I did my own yoga teacher training in India, and I took notes, obviously, which I actually also made a book of all the notes of the sketch notes of my yoga teacher training, so all the stuff I learnt there.

Tom Pellereau:
I also hugely encourage people to look at the little people basics.

The way you have shown how to draw people, and I don't know if it was your idea, but to basically lose the neck, so all the bit and it just makes, therefore, the drawing of the people so much easier and going with a kind of consistent shape head, so therefore it can be at any angle, the eye, the nose, and with the pages which show about how to use eyebrows for certain expressions and looking in certain directions and that is just such a clever and simple way for someone to learn how to write in the form of drawing people.

It's the best guide I've ever seen in any sketchbook.

Thank you so much.

Rob Bell:
Eva-Lotta, I will also thank you for coming on and sharing your time and expertise with us on the podcast.

And we've got quite a creative audience and I'm sure what we've talked about in this episode will be a huge interest, as well as really inspiring and hopefully helpful as well through the tips and advice and insights you've given.

Thank you so, so much.

Tom Pellereau:
And I'm sure the irony won't be lost in the fact that we're doing a podcast in voice about sketches.

Rob Bell:
That's why we have episode notes.

Tom Pellereau:
I'm wondering Rob, how you're going to do it?

Like the whole podcast is going to be loads of, you know, images going through the podcast.

Rob Bell:
I encourage our listeners to click on the links on this episode especially.

And Eva-Lotta, where's best for us to follow your work and your teachings on sketching?

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Well, I do have a website where actually sell my products and my courses that I teach.

And that is called Eva-Lotta.shop because it's a shop where you can buy things.

Rob Bell:
I will link to it in the podcast show notes.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
And I also have an Instagram at Eva-Lotchen because in Germany, when you want to make something small, you add a C-H-E-N, which is pronounced K-en, so it basically means little Eva-Lotta.

Rob Bell:
Lovely.

So Eva-Lotchen on Instagram, go and check that out.

I checked it out and it also linked me to Eva-Lotchen on Skate, which is a whole other story, but it was very, very fun as well.

I'll let our listeners explore that and discover that.

Are there any exciting projects or anything new that you've got going on that's big for you at the moment that you can share with us?

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Well, right now, actually, I'm experimenting with a little new format.

I've been teaching online courses to teach people how to draw.

Basically, learning how to write, it's called Pragmatic Sketching Masterclass, and I run it once a year in autumn, in English.

But this is more instructional with some live feedback sessions.

I wanted to experiment with something where we practice together, because learning is one thing, but keeping it up is another thing.

Actually, on Monday, we had the first Pragmatic Practice Session.

20 people came on live, and we sketched together and shared our sketches with each other.

And this is running for another five weeks.

So I'm still experimenting with the format, with the help of the people who are in it.

So I will probably tweak it over the time that we are meeting.

But this is really exciting and really beautiful to think about how you can actually also keep the practice going and the playfulness and share it with other people.

Rob Bell:
Brilliant.

And so if that is something that you decide to continue to offer, I'm sure there'll be information of that up on your website.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Yeah, hopefully I will keep doing it.

This is kind of just the first run to see what works and what doesn't.

Rob Bell:
Brilliant.

Eva-Lotta, thank you so much from all of us once again.

Eva-Lotta Lamm:
Thank you for having me.

Rob Bell:
And thank you all for listening.

We'll be back next time discussing another of Jono's sketches and seeing how we can embrace its teachings to make ours and maybe your lives a little bit better, or at least fueled with a drop more curiosity.

Until then, go well, stay well.

Goodbye.

All music on this podcast series is provided by the very talented Franc Cinelli.

And you can find many more tracks at franccinelli.com.