Verity Harrison is a graphic recorder, a visual storyteller, and an animator. Verity makes a living doodling during meetings and translating long presentations and complex concepts into simple, beautiful graphics.
In this episode we talk about:
- What is graphic recording
- How Verity got her first gigs as a graphic recorder after studying textile design and working in sales for 20 years
- Blogging from an iPod touch in Argentina and how Verity rediscovered and reignited her creativity in South America
- The benefits of solo travel with no set itinerary
- How to build your portfolio before anyone is willing to hire you
- The power of constraints – “You become more creative the more limited your resources are”
- How Verity adapted to working during the COVID-19 pandemic by teaching her skills to peers in her professional community
- How Verity got over 100 people to express interest in her Masterclass in less than 36 hours
Connect with Verity:
- Verity’s Website (https://www.thinkdoodly.com/)
- @Think_Doodly on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/think_doodly/)
- @Verity_Ink on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/verity_ink/)
Other Links / Tools Mentioned in the Episode:
- Sketch Note Army on Twitter (https://twitter.com/sketchnotearmy)
- Mosabi (https://mosabi.co/)
- Gumroad (https://gumroad.com/)
- Steve Jobs Stanford Address (“Joining Up the Dots”) (https://www.ted.com/talks/steve_jobs_how_to_live_before_you_die)
- Nine Coliving in Tenerife (https://www.ninecoliving.com/)
- Nomad City Conference (now RePeople) (https://www.repeople.co/en/conference/)
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Transcript
Neville:
Verity, welcome to Never Normal.
Verity:
Hi, thank you for having me on the show. I’m flattered.
Neville:
As I said to you, before we started recording, when we first met, when it was last November, I was like, well, it was, it was funny. Two things happened one once you told me your story and what you do, I was like, I have got to interview this woman. But I don’t know if you know this, what actually happened. I was we were both sitting in like a lecture room and I was sitting, I think, a couple of rows behind you and a few seats over. And instead of paying attention to the present or the person who was on stage, I was just looking over your shoulder at your iPad the entire time. Like, I don’t know, like a very poor cheat in a in a college class. And I was just watching, what is she doing? Like, it was just the most fascinating thing I had ever seen. I, I was, I was just in awe. So I think that’s a good place to start. Can you tell us what is graphic recording that you do?
Verity:
Yeah, sure. So I mean, effectively, what I do is I draw what people say and that can take on a number of different power to put it out. I can do it in different ways when you actually saw me, we were at nomad city and I was literally capturing the keynote speakers speech, their, their, their presentation. But I also will work at large scale on paper and I will go to conferences. Well, this is when we could still go to conferences and whatever. I’m work work on large scale graphics, like three meters by one meter. I know we’ll be there for the whole conference, and I will literally just capture the key points of what the presentations are about, or even break out groups, workshops, and whatever. And the idea is at the end of it, there is a visual memory of, of what’s going on.
Verity:
And it, what it does is replace the reams and reams of maybe PowerPoint presentations that generally people don’t look at after a conference. And at the same time, it’s, it’s when you’ve got something that’s being captured visually, it is a much easier to actually recall what was said, and I will try and do it in a, in an engaging way. I will try and use humor. I’ve pretty much listened for metaphors and whatever when I’m capturing what what people are saying. And then I also do static illustration generally for large organizations and NGOs and some animation as well. But ultimately I just, I call it visual storytelling and graphic recording is one part of that
Neville:
For anyone who’s, who’s just listening to the audio of this. We’ve got audio and video, make sure to check out the links to see some examples of, of Verity’s work because it is it’s really cool. I mean, the best way I can describe it for someone who’s just listening is it’s almost like a comic in, of like the format and the easiness of just kind of looking at it and getting the gist, but it’s actually business in the case of the conference that we were at, right. It’s a business is what’s being said, it’s big ideas. It’s like presentation, but turned into something. That’s just like, almost like a doodle, but yeah, I was just, I’d never seen anything like that before. I’d never heard of graphic recording and, and as I was just watching over your shoulder and what you’re doing on the iPad, I was just so fascinated. And I, I had to, to come down and talk to you, and then you told me that like, you know, you were attending this conference, but that normally you do this professionally. How does that work typically, like, do the, do the conference organizers pay you to come and record what’s going on? Or, or like, how do you even, like, how does someone even engage with you?
Verity:
Usually it will be the company who contacts me. And I just asked me if I’m available on certain dates, can I kind of come and do it? I’ve had event organizers as well. And I’ve been, so I’ve been doing this now for the best part of, but six, seven years. And a lot of it’s word of mouth, there is quite a big graphic recording, community graphic, facilitation community. And when I first got started I put a lot on my social media and and literally, and also I was, I, I found a group of people on Twitter who did something called today’s doodle. And I got to know these people and, and so, and we used to post things on a regular basis. And my first bits of work came through a contact on, on, through Twitter. So yeah, no, no.
Verity:
I mean, I literally have been quite lucky and I say, you know, the first bit of promotion was using social media, but then people got to know what I did. And, and very often people would say to me, like, you know, can you do this? And I’ll be like, yeah, sure. And then figure out how I was going to do whatever I was doing. And and I think also just what’s, what’s useful and what’s helped me is because, I mean, am I, my background is I have a design degree, but then I worked in a corporate environment for 20 years. So I am the stunned business speak. I understand company structure, I understand what is going to be needed and what’s going to be important. And so, you know, I’ve had repeat business from clients. And as I say, it’s quite a lot, I’ve been, been word of mouth and having been in sales for 20 years the fact that I’ve been not had to do a huge amount of selling has, is not lost on me. But then again, I do, you know, I I’ve posted and I’ve, I’ve my website is keywords and SEO to the health because I, you know, I really, really worked on it. So people find me. So so yeah, when you come up on the first page of Google, then it’s quite nice. So
Neville:
I’m interested to talk about the, kind of the jumps that you’ve made. You mentioned it already. So you’ve, you’ve been doing kind of graphic recording or visual storytelling for the last, I think you said six or seven years, but you had a different career.
Verity:
So I worked, I worked in sales when I, when I graduated from my, I’ve got a degree in textile design. And when I graduated quite a long time ago there wasn’t an awful lot of work and I had students and I had to find a job. And I like a lot of students. I found myself in sales. And I think once you get in, once you get sales on your CV, it’s really difficult to get away from that. And for a long time, you know, I enjoyed sort of the environment working for big companies. I did a stint at GE capital. I’ve worked for quite a lot of large financial institutions, but I always felt that this, this, this creative thing was, you know, just put to one side. And then when the recession came in 2009, I was completely burnt out.
Verity:
You know, I was literally wearing black to work everyday because I hadn’t got the energy to, to, to figure out what to wear. And we weren’t actually selling, we were trying to get clients to pay and whatever, and I pretty much, it wasn’t an, if I get, if I lose my job, it’s when I lose my job. And I just said, I am going to take time off. I need to recharge. I need to think. And and so I’m going to travel and I bought, and I started in February, 2009. I got the call to say, yeah, okay, your time’s up here. And two weeks later I’d bought tickets return tickets to Argentina and borrowed a friend’s backpack and said, right, I’m not making any decisions for the next six months. And I went to, to, to Argentina. And about three days before I went, I thought, I don’t want to be sending emails to everybody telling them what I’m going to do.
Verity:
I think I’ll just, I think I’ll do a blog or something. And I thought, you know, and then that’s where I discovered WordPress and I bought an iPod touch. So it wasn’t an iPhone, it was an iPod touch. I thought I need wifi, but I don’t want to be carrying around a laptop. And I remember the first blog post was to blog or not to blog. That is the question I think are not the only person who’s used that. And I’m, I set off to Argentina with a plan already, you know, for the first five or six days, I knew what I was doing. And after that, I just made it up alum as well.
Neville:
I have to, I have to jump in for just a moment just to ask. So, so 2000, cause there’s, there’s a lot of good stuff in here that I want to unpack a little bit. So 2009. So just before this happened, where were you working then?
Verity:
Or a division of GE capital? I was, I was selling of listen of submitted market in Spanish. It’s 30 trailers trailers, things that hang off the back of the lorry. That’s selling to truckers already in Spain at the time I’ve lived in, I’ve lived in Spain for 21 years now, the first 20 in Madrid and the last six months, eight months in the Canary islands.
Neville:
So you’re living in Madrid and basically the economy crumbled, as we all know, 2007 started in 2008, got really bad. And 2009, it had hit your industry and you, you was just sort of waiting for the call and you got it. I think you said, was it January or February? The call came in.
Verity:
Yeah. And so I, I, yes. So I disappeared to contain him for, for, for two months. And I started blogging
Neville:
When they told you, did you, did you get any sort of like severance or anything like that? Did they, did they give you a, did you have like a few months salary of, of like
Verity:
I had a bit of, I hadn’t been working for the company very long. It wasn’t quite two years, but there was, there was that. And and then I also had redundant like Dell money and unemployment benefit which at the time in spam was quite, quite, quite good. And I was also quite recently divorced. So I had to have a cushion,
Neville:
A lot of change happening in your life at once. It sounds like. And so you, your response to that was basically I’m leaving. Yeah. It’s time for something different. I don’t know what, but it’s time for something different.
Verity:
Yeah. I need to work my shit out and I don’t know what I’m going to do. I just knew I couldn’t continue. And so, yes. So I went to Argentina, I started blogging and I wrote 43 blog posts on an iPod touch.
Neville:
I mean, I’ve seen in my, in my tech career and just, you know, being involved in online businesses and things like that, I think I’ve seen a wide range of strategies and things we could probably, I don’t know. Anyone else who’s blogged from an iPad.
Verity:
Yeah. Yes. There was an iPod touch, 43 posts. And then I had a digital camera cause this was, you know, this was the one in internet cafes and whatever. So I would go to the internet cafe and I would go to my WordPress site, plug the digital camera in and then put my pictures from whatever I wanted into the blog posts. And and, and that’s how I learned how to use, to use WordPress. And it was at this point, it was when all of the creative, so all the creativity starts coming out. It was literally, I always say it was a bit like, you know, when you go into a house, typically a British house and you picked up peeling off wallpaper from the walls and you keep going and you keep going. And you’re like, Oh my God, that was the 1970s or whatever.
Verity:
And then you get back to bare brick. And that was what I likened it to. I was like, I was like, right. As soon as I started writing, I literally couldn’t stop. And I just had so much, I wanted to say, I mean, I didn’t care if anyone is reading this stuff, you know I get the comment and whatever, but for me it was just like, I went through the whole, you know, using as many as objective as possible in one paragraph. And, you know, I mean, and I read it by number there’s some really, really happy memories from that. So yeah, 43 posts later on an iPod touch, that was when I just said, right, okay. This, this stuff going on here. But I also started taking photos as well. So I doubled again with photography, which had left behind, basically it was the whole of the creative me started to burst out.
Verity:
And it was a bit like, you know, once you open Pandora’s box, you know, there’s no way that’s where you go that various going back in again. So I went, you know, hell bent on looking over where to like find a creative outlet to to, to, to start making a living. And I actually went in the end for photography and I tried documented photography and also sports photography. And I made lots of mistakes and, and whatever. You know, I w dedicated myself to buying lots of photography equipment and it was the whole, all the gear and nine idea kind of thing. I learned so much from that. I did, you know, I tried working remote, working for myself and I got a few gigs. I actually did do a job for the UAF. But yeah, but in the end it, it, it wasn’t working.
Verity:
So I ended up having to go back into the corporate world and I was back in the corporate world for a couple of years, between 2000. And I think it was 2012 to two, well, no, 2011 to 2013. And then I must have my job again. I’m good at getting fired. I lost my job at the end of 2013, and that was more, I was a political opponent in some kind of political game. And you know, when you increase sales by 30% in nine months and they still want to get rid of you, you kind of like, okay, there’s other stuff going on here. And, and at that point, I just sort of, I am not working for anybody ever again, and I’m going to do something which combines my creativity with my business background and friends will be like, well, well, you’re going to design websites.
Verity:
I’m like, no, it’s not designing websites or is it, I don’t know, but I’ll find it I’ll find whatever it is I’m going to do. And and it was February, 2014, I think it was, I start, I picked up my iPad and started doodling with the most basic stylists. And I had an iPod mini, I just started doodling. And then I started posting on tumbler and whatever. And then the creators of the app picked up one of my doodles. And, and that was when I suddenly started seeing that, what I did had a bit of an impact. I went viral, I had 60 likes that was viral for me. And then, and then from there I just, you know, carried on and I did my first big job for like a big pharmaceutical on an iPad mini with a really basic stylist, sponge stylists. So, so, yeah, and then from there things just carried on and then I got interested in doing the, you know, the video side of things like whiteboard animations, and and then I just didn’t look back. So, and then we met at Nomex city.
Neville:
It all, it all sounds so smooth and you described it that way, but I think from knowing you, there were, were a few bumps in the road and some interesting inflection points. So just going back to your travel, I mean, I can’t resist as a, as a fellow traveler. So you left Spain, you had these kind of two parallel journeys going on, right. Your, your professional and creative kind of side, but you also left and you, you went to Argentina and you’d planned out. I think you said the first five days of the trip, what happened after
Verity:
I was in Argentina for two months and then, yeah. And I came back and then I went to South Africa for two months. And then and then some friends invited me and I spent the end of the year in San Francisco, but Argentina, I was there for two months. And so I spent the first couple of days in Buenos Aires and then flew down to Ushuaia and then from Ushuaia to Calafate. And then I had, so I had friends who were Argentinian friends, who I knew from Madrid, who basically said, you know, the time of year you’re going, you’re better off going through the interior because on the coast, there’s no penguins, there’s no whales at this time of year. It was towards, it was, it was, it was April time. Yeah, it was, it was April I left and came back at the end of May. And so and I had always wanted to go down to Torres del Paine and I wanted to see Perito Moreno and whatever. But in the end of the things that we’re seeing in Argentina, it was sort of like, I mean, it was, it was all I remember thinking was I need space to think, and in Argentina has quite a lot of space.
Neville:
Yeah. If you could add a Patagonia, those places that you’re talking about, there’s nothing but open land and the occasional.
Verity:
Yeah. Yeah. So so, and that was it. And I mean, it’s, at the time I was kind of like, and like I said, the objectives kept flowing because you know, that the scenery, I mean, it’s just, it blows your mind. And so, but I was having this whole sort of like, I, you know, I’d got get to a hustle and a plum where I was going the next day. And in two days time. And, and so then, and, you know, I knew what I wanted to try all these Italian. I did toast up by now. I skipped over in Santiago because I had a friend there and then came back and then went up through Bariloche, Mendoza, Cordoba, Salta, Jujuy, and Iguazu and and yeah, and I just, in the end, I learned just to go with the flow and it was very much, you know, the, the less you plan stuff, the more magic happens.
Verity:
And the people who I’m, I chose pretty much to travel on my own as well. I met, met people along the way. But I very much sort of like bit my own path. And there was a guy who I met in a hostel in Bariloche, and we talked afterwards, we stayed friends and whatever he said, you know, when I met you, I had the, I had the impression you’d just had enough of people, just, I would just know I was just doing this massive voyage yourself discovery, and I had a lot of adjectives to get out and quite a lot of Malbec to try as well. So yeah, I wasn’t going on that, you know, let’s go all 20 of us, I’ll go to a pizza parlor or where’s the nearest party that wasn’t, I mean, I was still hostels because it was the cheapest way. And also, you know, you have people around you or whatever, but I wasn’t going down the whole yeah, one city to the next, I was literally sat gazing my navel and figuring stuff out.
Neville:
More people need to take trips like that. Just no plans you know, traveling by yourself and and just seeing what happens. I know not everyone has the luxury to do that. And certainly it’s not all possible right now in most places, but whenever it is possible again, like I, yeah. I mean, it’s just so much change and discovery and self discovery comes out of that kind of travel where you just see what happens as you go.
Verity:
Yeah. And it was, you mentioned the word earlier, the inflection point and Argentina for me was a massive inflection point in my life because it was where I just kind of like said, you know, the only way to be happy is to be true to yourself. And and for me it was, it was getting back to my creative boots, which had been literally, it was, you know, the layers and layers of wallpaper had been there. And I needed to, I needed to do that. And it still I’ve been very much, even if I’ve had to, you know, the, the, the, the roads haven’t necessarily gone the way I wanted to, you know, eventually I got locked onto the, onto the road I wanted to. And then, and then from there, you just look at the, you know, there’s other opportunities that can come out as well.
Neville:
Photography, you go in that, I mean, that was certainly a more creative outlet I imagine, than sales. And so you, you mean you, you made that sort of slight pivot or pivot, but didn’t find the success you were looking for there and ended up back in a job. So how did you get from back in a job to graphic recording? You mentioned, you know, starting to share some drawings and things, but like, I mean, did you have an idea at that point that that graphic recording was something that anyone could do professionally let alone yourself?
Verity:
Yeah, so I was, so one hour when I was sort of far, I started finding all of these communities on Twitter. I found something to do with graphic recording, and then I realized that I’d actually already, you know, I used to put big pieces of paper up on my wall at home whenever I needed to get ideas out, I liked working big. So I already had the paper and, and a couple of marker pens. And then I discovered this graphic recording thing. It looks really interesting. I wonder how I can get into that. And then I just thought, well, I’ll get some tech talks and I’ll just grab a Ted talk. And I, at the time, just in a notebook, because that was it, there was, I was one of the, one of the things I followed on Twitter was the Sketchnote Sketchnote army.
Verity:
So these are sketch noters who work and, and, and it’s literally note taking, but the visual note-taking. And so there’s, there’s two guys who run the sketch notes, army website, Mike Rody, and silly. And, you know, I latched onto with the today’s doodle of a sketch note thing. So I started Sketchnoting Ted talks, and then there was a company based in the UK called dinky thinking who were looking for people to, to bring on board as, as freelancers. And so I got, I did an interview session with them and and they liked what I did, and it was still working small scale. And so what I then did was just put some big paper up at home and started practicing large scale. And then I found an event plus to our, I lived in Madrid and it was all to do with I think people being entrepreneurial and stuff like that.
Verity:
And I just contacted them and sent them some pictures of the Ted talks I kept and said, would you like something like this at your event? And like, yes, but we have no budget. I’m like, that’s fine. I need, you know just stuff. So I went and went and did that, and I did a couple of those. And then from there, you know, you start building up portfolio and I started doing work for inky. And and then in parallel, I’ve, I’ve worked pretty much on my own. And I work in both languages as well. So that also helps.
Neville:
I love your strategy though. I just feel the need to kind of call that out. When you say you did this for Ted talks, you were essentially watching Ted talks that had already been recorded. You were watching them online. They weren’t, your Ted talks, no one had, had hired you to do this. Yeah.
Verity:
But, but I just, it was a practice. I would do it for practice. So I listened to a Ted talk and at home I could just be like, okay. And then think about how you capture things and how you can some, you know, a paragraph up in something very, very limited imagery sort of thing. You know, at the end of the day, we can use, we can say a whole phrase, but there’s probably two or three keywords within a phrase that are actually gonna spark the memory. So, so, yeah, so I just practiced with Ted talks and my notebook
Neville:
Shared those also, it sounds like you made that sort of part of your portfolio when you started approaching people who you could do this work for. I just think that there’s, there’s so many creative fields where you sort of get stuck in this. Like, I don’t have any experience, but I can’t get a job to gain the experience because I don’t have any experience like this, this catch 22. And what you’re describing is the, is the exact, I think, remedy for that, which is to just give yourself the job, do it as if someone was paying you to do it, create a portfolio. It doesn’t matter. Like nobody needs to know whether you’re being paid for it or not. And you don’t need to, you don’t need to be deceptive about it, but just do the work as evidence of you being able to do the work. And then you can take that and make your own little portfolio and start to get paid gigs. And it was that first one that you did was that not paid. It sounds like you just kind of told them, Hey, I want to do this for you. But what it did was
Verity:
It, it got me visibility and then I could post on Twitter and you know, it was, and it was for the town hall of alcohol vendors, which is a, is a it’s a small town that to the North of, of Madrid. And until, you know, the mayor of Alcoa thus even came over at the end. And I always say, I really love any tweeted me or whatever. But yeah. And then, then, yeah, as I say, you just, you do, you just build up, build portfolio that way. And then obviously that meant that the company I was doing work for in key thinking they saw, you know, they hug more of my work as well to, to to, to promote and they could see that I could actually handle you know, the pressure of work. Cause you mean at the end of the day, as somebody once said to me, when you’re doing graphic recording, you know, you’re the only person who listens to everything, aren’t you,
Neville:
It’s a good point. Yeah. You really can’t afford to zone out. I mean, all of us, you know, go to conferences and events and you know, you, you listen to a couple of talks and then you’re like, I’m just going to hang out in the, in the coffee area for a bit. I need to breathe there, but you can’t do that when you’re there.
Verity:
Well, everyone’s having coffee, I’m coloring in or like, you know, I’ll do the coloring and when everyone’s having coffee, but no, no, you do. I mean, I finished. And so I’ve done, I’ve done you know, one day two to three day events and three days is a lot twos, twos, you know, good going and afterwards I’m incoherent. I am, I can’t string a sentence together because it’s just the level, the, the adrenaline and the level of focus that you need. And, and yeah, so, so it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s good though.
Neville:
You started doing these kind of what I would call like spec projects, right? Do work on spec where you would just, no one was necessarily paying you and then you found is it inky thinking, which, which started to give you, it sounded like freelance work. So I’m wondering, like at the point when you started doing this, were you still in that second stint of corporate career or had you already left that?
Verity:
So, no, I lost my job in, in, I think it was the December and I started doodling in the following February, and then I found this whole community not long after that. So, so yeah, so it was, I started really, it was about 10 months after I lost my job. I actually started getting my first paid gigs. So
Neville:
What point did it, did it sort of enter your mind that like you might actually be able to do this as a career like that this could be more than, you know, a creative outlet or a fun hobby?
Verity:
I think when I started getting involved, it was like, this is the way I’m going. You know, I mean, I was very much, this is if I can get, make this work, this is what I’m doing. And, and what I did is I took the lessons I learned from one, I did photography you know, after spending a heck of a lot of money on equipment. What I did was I literally was, I, I went with the limited amount of market pens and whatever, because you actually become more creative than the more limited your resources are. If you actually sell my market collection, now you might have gone over the top again, but yeah, you didn’t, you just become, you become a lot more resourceful. And so I just arrived. And I, and at the same time I was applying for jobs.
Verity:
I thought, well, I’m not going to stop applying for jobs. But I almost tried to try and put this into words. I know when I started trying to do photography, I was saying to people, I’m going to be able to talk. I’m a photographer, I’m all. And when I started doing the graphic recording and stuff, I was going, well, I’m doing this little thing in parallel, but I didn’t never look at it, head on. It was almost like if I just sort of let it carry on alongside me applying for jobs. And I was at the same time I was doing visual CVS and goodness knows what I was making everything a picture. But I didn’t, I didn’t go around announcing that this is what I was going to do. And, and, and it, and again, traction little by little and, and, and I just thought, well, you know, if it doesn’t work, I haven’t actually told anyone I’m doing this. So it’s fine. It’s a bit like the teaching stuff. It’s only the graphic graphic facilitation group, but, but, you know, as it started to gain traction and every now and again, a friend would say, no, you still doing that daily, weekly thing or whatever, or, you know stop got a couple of things on you, I’m doing something, you know, and then it did it just gradually grew from there. So,
Neville:
And at what point did you feel sort of comfortable actually telling the world, like, this is what I do. It’s not, it’s not a little side gig while I look for my next job, but like, I am Verity to graphic recorder or visual storyteller. Like when did that become your identity
Verity:
That much after? I think so. So I started doing my first sort of paid gigs, and I say it was about September, October, November, and then the following year, that was it. Somebody posted in, in the first book group that was some gigging in Barcelona in the March and they couldn’t do it. Can anybody do it? And I just said, I cannot, I got this, this job. And it was for a citizen science conference. And there was the keynote speaker was a guy from the European commission. And and when he found it was an Irish guy and when he finished his speech and when he came over to look at the visual at the end of it, I just said, Oh, you know, he’d mentioned some European question conference that was going to tip there. This, I said, I can come to that contact.
Verity:
And I got the gig and I think that was it when I said, okay, I’ve got a gig with you. You’re a think, yeah. Okay. I can tell people now that I’m actually doing this for, for, for real and whatever. And then I started doing work for for, you know, other NGOs and bigger companies, as I said, the pharmaceutical. And then once I started getting, and I realized people really liked what I was doing. And they were like, can you do this as well? Can you do that as well? We want to make our powerful present point presentations more engaging. And that was when I went, okay, I can do it when I realized I could pay the rent and I wasn’t, you know, getting to the end of the month going.
Neville:
So a good, a good measure of like you found yourself, you know, something to take seriously. I love too that you, that it sounds like at every point along the way, it was you stepping up first to just do these on spec, as we talked about. And then in that Facebook group, just kind of know when no one was handing you the work stepping up and saying, yeah, I can do that. And then from that event, finding another one and saying, Hey, I can come to your other event. It’s volunteering, oneself, I think is an underrated strategy.
Verity:
Absolutely. And I think and that was it. And then occasionally on Twitter, I’ve seen the odd thing where an event and, you know, I kind of like anything that’s related to things like you know, sustainability or citizen science or things that will you know, I’m working now and you will have seen the presentation by Chris, from Masavia, I’m collaborating with Masabi, which is all about financial education and developing countries and whatever. So anything that’s also, you know, got a little bit more of a, of a social, economic, greater good of, of, of more people as well. I, I, I like as well, so
Neville:
We’re six months or so into this kind of pandemic and shut down and not too many you know, physical in person meetings are happening right now, conferences and things like that. So where does that leave you? Are you, are you still able, and, and is there demand for doing this kind of work on something like a zoo where you’re attending remotely?
Verity:
Yeah. So now that the work has gone remote and digital, you know, a hundred percent digital for me, I mean, there are people who are still working on paper at home of the whole setup with webcams and whatever. But, but yeah, and I mean, I was quite lucky in the fact that when, when pandemics when that lockdown started, I was working on quite a big project with a number of videos. So I had that to sustain me, but at the same time you know, the week that we were locked down I had had conference canceled that I was going to be live at. But what else? So what’s what happened was, you know, within the community of, of graphic facilitation and graphic recording, there’s quite, it’s quite a tight community. We have this group on Facebook and very often as has said, you know, if somebody can’t do a job, they’ll actually put it out to the group.
Verity:
And there’s also the international forum of visual practitioners where, you know, work gets shared or, or, you know, if somebody can’t do something physically, then they’ll say anybody up for doing this, or any Spanish speakers or anybody who can, you know, work Pacific time on such a day. And and a lot of these, these people within the community, there’s a lot who hasn’t done a lot of digital work had predominantly worked on paper. And so again, it was you know, you mentioned me putting myself out there. I I’m quite a nerd with the digital side of things. And I work a lot on the iPad and I on two different software’s on the iPad, which, which procreate and concepts to different apps. And I got into the animation side and one of them, and I just put it out there on the group saying, if anybody wants to learn a little bit about how to work, you know, use animation assist on, on procreate, I’m happy to do a masterclass if anyone’s interested.
Verity:
And literally within 36 hours, I had a hundred people say yes. So I was like, Oh, okay, I’ll do that. So I’ve just from within your group say, yeah, that’s it. And so coming back to your question, you know, I’ve kind of started compensating what I might’ve lost in the live work with doing teaching, which, which in a way and we were talking about this earlier and I’ve talked about doing online classes of, of, you know, explaining things with doodles and whatever, and I’ve signed up for teachable. I’ve signed up for perjury, I’ve signed up for Kajabi, I’ve gone on there and go, Oh, I’ve got to create the content and then not being got, got there. And then with this, I just, right. I’m going to do a master class. And that way I’ve got the interaction with the people. I know what their questions are.
Verity:
Obviously it’s a very specific group with specific needs, so that, so I knew I would be able to answer the questions because I’ve gone through those, those kinds of pain points at the same time. And as a result, I started giving master classes and I love it. So for me, locked down and the pandemic has basically, fast-forward a lot of the stuff that I’ve just fucked around with for the last 18 months. And it’s also made me realize that rather than maybe creating online courses, I might want to create more like communities or, or, or, you know, stick with master classes and then look at how I can develop that. And so I’ve kind of done the pivot thing and started to compensate what I might’ve lost in, in, in revenue with life stuff. I’ve, you know, started doing the teaching and I very much was conscious of the group. I you know, I put my stuff out to, you know, pay for a price because I wanted to be able to reach everybody. And for everybody, you know, there’s a lot of people that lost their main source of income. So,
Neville:
So you just said to the group, basically, is anyone interested in learning this? And you got, it sounds like an overwhelming number of replies. And then rather than, you know, go and create a formal prerecorded course, are you teaching it like in something like zoom or something live?
Verity:
So it’s masterclass in zoom. And so I, I generally, what I’ll do is I will teach one in the morning and one in the afternoon, so that people on different time zones have the option of joining one, which isn’t, you know, it doesn’t mean them getting up at three in the morning. And and that means there’s interaction. So people ask questions, you know, are if people need me to repeat something it’s great. And then also, you know, I, I find out what, what they’re looking for as well. So, you know, the first one I did, which was quite an advanced class on the animation feature, I did a couple of things where, you know, where people are like, Oh my God, how did he do that? That was magic. And I said, okay, well, that’ll be the next masterclass, you know? And, and then awful, there were people who were complete beginners and, and so, so yeah, so I just, yeah, just did master classes. And I, I, I liked the interaction because I then know what people are after
Neville:
You’re doing your market research and getting paid for it. But I just think I’ve dabbled a bit in, in teaching in course, creation myself. And I find that it’s, you know, when you’re not live, but you don’t have the students either in front of you or at least interacting in real time, it’s so much more difficult to sort of, you know, guess what, what someone might get stuck with or what they know or don’t know, as you said, different students are at different levels. If you can do it this way first, especially the way you’ve done it, where you basically just said to the group, like, Hey, is anyone interested in this? You had no sort of sunk cost at that point, had they said, Nope. You know, or you got no replies. Like you’re only out at the time. It took you to write that Facebook post.
Verity:
Yeah. And I was blown away. I mean, it was just like, Oh, Oh, Oh right. Yeah. But I think about how I’m going to do this. So, so, so yeah. And so that’s why I ended up, I ended up doing it through, through Gumroad and cause it was the simplest, you know, and, and I think sometimes we, and it goes back to the, you know, the alligator and night and here we think we’ve got to have these everything done and it’s all gonna be done and then sell it. Whereas actually, it’s, it’s, it’s going back to the basics of just seeing who your audience is, who might be interested. And it’s the same thing with, you know, I’ve tinkered with this, you know, this explained things with the doodle. And I ended up teaching a course here on with, with an organization here that this society for economic promotion of grand Canadia.
Verity:
And that was a series of four masterclasses. And from that I learned a lot because I wasn’t dealing with people who are within my sector. This was people who maybe wanted to use doodles for the work environment or whatever. And there you get whole different set of questions. Then you realize that you have to explain things in a different way. So I’m learning at the same time, which is great, but it’s given me a great way of thinking like, okay, well, if I want to market further down the line, I now have a better idea. So
Neville:
Yeah, yeah. You you’ve done that research and you know, like where a student with that kind of background is likely to get stuck or what questions they have and you can like bake that into the course material versus just brain dumping, everything, you know, and then, you know, you’re on less than 10 recording or whatever, and someone who’s taking it as stuck on less than one, because the thing that you thought was an easy keyboard shortcut or whatever, they have no idea. And you’ve just lost them.
Verity:
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, and it isn’t, it’s, you know, I think the storytelling thing, because I’m so used to sort of getting, getting involved with narrative cause you know, not only was when I was doing this sort of a bit of blogging when I was doing photography, I was very lucky in that I had a mentor who was a well, a well press photographer winner. And he really helped me with, with visual narrative and whatever. And so yeah, things like narrative, maybe something that is quite obvious to me, but then, you know, you start talking to somebody else it’s, you know, when you’re talking with clients about, when you want to tell a story and I let’s not do it in a linear fashion. Okay. Because that’s the way that a lot of people think, Oh, we do this. Then we do that.
Verity:
And we did do that. How about we wrap it all up in a narrative and you know, you’ve got to bring. And so when I was doing the explain things with the doodle and I started getting onto narrative, I realized, Oh, this is going to need more than one class, you know, multiple more than one session. So, so you learn as you go along as well as, like you say, if you’re building a course, is that when you’re doing sketches, like we do sketches for a final piece of work until you’ve done the sketches, you don’t know what’s going to be difficult to execute.
Neville:
The other thing that’s standing out to me though, as I, as I hear you describing this, is that on the surface. And even as I was kind of putting my notes together before this episode on the surface, it sounds like you’re this person who’s had this like giant kind of pivot from this very buttoned up corporate career to what you’re doing now. And I’m sure there’s, there’s some truth to that as we’ve discussed. But what I also hear is that you’re, you’re sort of just accumulating and stacking skills. And this is a pattern that I’ve, that’s come up on this podcast before, like you were in sales and obviously sales is sort of a universal skill that can help you in any business, but certainly working for yourself. It’s a very necessary one. But you also had this exposure to the corporate world and understanding, as you said earlier, kind of what, how they think and what they want, which would be very different to say, if you were just working as an artist, you know, with a totally different set of clientele. But then what you just mentioned that kind of caught me, or was even even photography, which, you know, sorta sounded like this detour during the find yourself phase actually fed right into what you’re doing now, in terms of just the learning that you did and how to compose visually and now with, with graphic recording and now even teaching graphic recording, like it’s just all of these skills stack together into what you are and what you’re able to do now and the brand and business that you’ve built.
Verity:
Yeah, no, and it’s the old, I was telling somebody yesterday here. I said, have you ever watched the Steve jobs done for the dress, the joining up the dots? You know, I mean, I sit there and I’m going, I’m a walking example because you had the, you know, the time when I delved into doing photography and I spent all of that money and you know, I’m quite sure there’s a lot of friends who had saw that as being a failure. Whereas I see it as being a really massive key part to what I do now, because yeah, as I say, when it comes narrative, how you tell a story and, and even the order that you put stuff in, it all goes back to that. And I could say I was really lucky in that I had a great mentor textiles
Neville:
Design fit into that in some way. You mentioned that that’s what you studied initially.
Verity:
I mean, yeah, it’s the tech and everybody think it’s things it’s closed, it’s not it’s fabrics. And so basically the way where the textile comes in it’s color form strict, I mean, and any kind of creative study throughout, there are always basics that you’re going to keep going back to and things, like I said, color form structure, how you, how, how and hierarchies, you know, in, in, in, in the way that you put something together. So, I mean, I always like to think I’m quite strong on Cola and using white space as well. And I’ve done quite, you know, since, since I started doing this, you know, I’ve, I’ve delved into graphic design, but I would never ever call myself a graphic designer, but I know how to do a layout and know how to set things up. But again, it’s just having that visual I have of, of what works, what doesn’t work and getting the balance between what’s most important to what’s what secondary as well. It, it all comes in when I did textile design, I learned, I hadn’t didn’t, it was a long time ago. We didn’t have Adobe creative suite, you know, it was all paper and ink and, you know, people are like, Oh my God, you have real sketchbooks. I’m like,
Neville:
Yes, I was just kind of curious since you mentioned it. So what would be like a typical career for someone who studied textile design? Like what would you have been expected to go off and do with that type of a degree?
Verity:
So you’re not people who design fashion fabrics or furnishing fabrics or weave on it. So yeah, it’s, it’s the, the clothes were stood up. Oh, you know, somebody has to design even just the Jersey of this, this, you know, the weight of the cotton or the, the fabric and the drape and whatever. My, my specialty was printed textiles. So you think of wallpapers curtains, fashion fabrics, which have a repeat on them, that’s what I would have gone off and done.
Neville:
And those are industries, if I’m not mistaken, that, that were big once upon a time in the North of England that I think subsequently went overseas. Is that
Verity:
Yeah. I mean, so I did my degree in Nottingham, which was a massive late industry, but, and then yes, and there was a textile mills up in the, up in the North of England. But there are still some very big design house in the UK. You know, some beautiful fabrics and whatever. But yes, I think a lot of production did. And nowadays, you know, again, people can go online and do their own fabric design and, and produce them must produce them and whatever. And this is where I get to become a bit of a purist or say, you know, you’ve got to understand how a poem works and whatever, and, and repeat and things. But and I even doubled when I first lost my job and I started doing creative stuff, I thought, right, I’m going to try on Photoshop to do illustrations, to do a repeat. And I was like, I’m much better off with photocopies and doing this and sticking them on a piece because that’s how I learned.
Neville:
And whereas I think a lot of people now, like, you know, are only comfortable digitally. So I think having that, Hey, you know, having experience working in both mediums is certainly helped you, especially cause I’ve seen you work on, you know, this a giant, basically like a wall of paper as your, as your canvas,
Verity:
It can’t on paper. You can’t double tap it. Doesn’t, I’ve tried it.
Neville:
We started your story. You, you were already working in sales and living in Spain. So how did you end up in Spain to begin with?
Verity:
Oh my so my ex husband, who wasn’t my ex husband at the time, he was my soon to be husband. He got offered a job in Madrid with Amadeus. And at the time I was also looking for a new job and we just said, okay, whoever gets off of the job first, that’s what we’re going to do. And so we, when he was offered the place in Madrid, it was right. Well, adventure let’s, let’s go and let’s go and do it. So so, so yeah, we did. So it was 1999 that I, that I moved over. And then when you got divorced diners, well, not going back to the UK, you know, I spent most of my, my adult life in Spain, so, so yeah, there was no question,
Neville:
But you recently moved again. You’re still in Spain, but you’re now no longer on the peninsula and you’re living in Gran Canaria. Is that right?
Verity:
Yeah, I moved. So I left Madrid on the 11th of January. I spent six weeks in Tennery for Nicole living coworking place there in nine. And that was part of the plan, but I was always coming to Las Palmas. I’d spent about four or five years looking. I wanted to leave Madrid. I wanted to live by the sea, had to be Atlantic. I wanted to be a good international community and whatever, and I hadn’t even thought of the Canary islands. And it was a friend who said something to me in about may last year. Why don’t you look? And then from there I discovered nomad city conference. And I came in November last year for that week. And then two months later I was selling over. So, so yeah, it ticked all the boxes. Cause you know, I wanted tomorrow I could do sport pretty much anywhere, any, you know, you’re around as well.
Neville:
It’s the place where we met and it’s a place that I love and, and love coming back to Las Palmas and Gran Canaria as a whole has become sort of like a second home to me.
Verity:
Yeah. And it’s, and it is, it’s really good. And obviously now I mean I moved into my new flat, the day locked down, started, so it wasn’t quite start. I was thinking I was going to have problems, you know? So I w but in a way it’s quite good. Cause I think if I’d been here for like a year and then all of this had happened, I’d be like a bit resentful of having given up this you know, amazing outdoor life. Whereas, you know, I’m just starting it slowly, you know started doing spot a get, well, we did it for the first three weeks and then we got locked down and then, so it was in Cola living from the beginning. And then yeah, so my w my life here in Las Palmas is just, yeah, just getting, going slowly, but don’t regret it. And it is, it’s, it’s, it’s a square place to live.
Neville:
Perfect. Well, we’ve come full circle. I think that’s a, that’s a really good place to leave it. But before we finished for anyone who’s interested in learning more about you and your work, and just seeing some of the examples of what we’ve been talking about, what’s the best place for them to find you
Verity:
So I’ve got my website, which is, thinkdoodly.com. And then Instagram is also @think_doodly, and then my own personal one, which is Verity_Ink they’re the main places I’m sporadic with Instagram, but Inktober is coming up Inktober is where you get a challenge to draw something in ink for every day of October. And I managed to do it last year. So I’m hopefully going to do it again this year. So, and I do, that’s where I get my hands dirty.
Neville:
I’ll share links to all of those in the show notes, Verity. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining. It’s been a pleasure.
Verity:
Thank you.