At the end of October a group of 20 people gathered in Milan to learn the basics of Visual Thinking and to start sharpening their thinking and communication by using simple visuals and spatial structure in addition to words. I was particularly excited about this workshop because I developed a brand new 2-day format to introduce the participants to the theory and lots of practice of expressing themselves visually.

Day 1 – Making friends with pen and paper

The first day was dedicated to learning the basics of pragmatic sketching and practising to draw objects, people, actions and concepts with simplicity, clarity and confidence.

Besides strengthening our motor skills and refining our hand-eye coordination we worked on simplifying what we draw to be clear and economical with our strokes, how to deal with perspective, apply shading and increase conceptual and structural clarity or our visuals.

Day 2 – Unleashing the newfound power

On day two, we applied the newly learned skills to various practical applications: we explored visual note taking and sketchnoting, the creation of visual explanations, how to use visual templates and finished with a round of visual storytelling.

The participants worked alone and in groups on concrete topics of their choice, thinking through and explaining complex subjects visually. There was ample time to exchange, to get individual feedback on their work and to give feedback to some of the other participants.

We had a wonderful international group of designers, developers, product people, researchers, agile coaches and facilitators from all over Europe and even two attendees from Japan.

I am looking forward to teaching more multi-day workshops to really dive deeply into the theory and practice of visual thinking with the participants and have lots of time to practice and give individual feedback to everybody in the room.

To finish, I’ll let some of the participants speak to what they thought about the workshop:

I enjoyed Eva-Lotta's enthusiasm on the topic. She was very knowledgeable and very patient with everyone. Plus she shared a huge portion of encouragement. It was brilliant.

It's a great way for boosting creativity through drawing and sketching along with the feeling to discover again the magic of childhood!

A great workshop whether you are at the "I can't draw" level or you are already good at it: be surprised in how much you can improve in just two days.

If you would like to do sketchnotes or visualize your ideas, then Eva-Lotta Lamm shows you how & proves that you can.

It has been a wonderful experience. Lots of practical advices and insights on when and how use visual sketching!

Eva-Lotta's Visual Thinking is a brilliant way to understand and learn sketchnoting. Two days and not one bored minute. Thank you!

A big thank you to the lovely people from Avanscoperta (especially Enrico) who I partnered up with ato take care of the organisation and logistics of the workshop and did a great job making everything run smoothly. All photo credits go to Avanscoperta as well.

Interested in this workshop?

If you are interested in organising a visual thinking workshop for your team, please get in touch.