2018 in Review

As the President of the IFVP - International Forum of Visual Practitioners, I am responsible for writing IFVP business update articles. This is a huge task - ok, not really - in that it is about taking the time to reflect what has happened in the past year. At a recent IFVP Board meeting, when we talked about the Year in Review article, Renatta piped up, saying, "It should be visual." So I set out to create a visual Year in Review.

Tool: I used Procreate on the iPadPro and Apple Pencil. I always start with a 300DPI canvas, sized at Letter/A4. I created my own brushes by modifying existing brushes to look more like my hand with a marker and pen. There are also many great artists out there who share their Brush settings so find and follow them on Instagram!

Process: I started with a Google doc where I typed up 12 major activities from IFVP's 2018. I shared it with other board members for input and massaging messaging for each point.

Once copy was approved, I created a layer with a grid for the title space at the top, and then 12 boxes, arranged in a 3 by 4 matrix. I used a lot of layers in creating this but the final file has a total of 5 layers: background, grid, 12 events images, copy, and title.

You may have noticed, if you are an IFVP member, that there were elements from other drawings re-used in this piece. Namely, the new Board Director portraits were from a graphic announcing our new board members. Procreate is great for reusing previously drawn elements in the app. I just copied the layers from the New Director's announcement and pasted them into the Year in Review Canvas. I drew the EuEviz "To Draw or Not to Draw" logo by looking at the sticker on my notebook. I also drew the member badge while looking at it in my email signature. It felt right to draw them instead of importing the JPG images into the graphic.

My color palette comes from the IFVP Brand with four additional gradient colors, to expand the palette. I love that I can create a color palette for each project in ProCreate and save them for later. If you are an IFVP member, expect to see this color palette again from me in another IFVP drawing.

My intention was to make each piece stand alone but also to show a flow with numbers. I had originally thought I'd use arrows or lines but as I drew and it got busier, I felt adding line/arrows would overwhelm the space.

In general, since I started scribing back in 1998, I struggle with packing too much information in and not leaving a lot of space. It's just how my brain is wired, I like a lot of content and I don't get overwhelmed as I have a photographic memory, which is helpful FOR ME, not so much for others. While densely packed drawings do not bother me, I realize it throws off most people so I make an effort to really keep the design elements to a minimum.

After taking the Generative Scribing class with Kelvy and Alfredo, my mantra at the board has become, MORE WHITE SPACE, MORE SYNTHESIS, LESS ELEMENTS. I am still working on this. It's a struggle. What are your thoughts? What would you have done differently? Are there any parts of it that make you curious to know how I did it?