Brown, S. (2014). The Doodle Revolution: Unlock the Power to Think Differently. Penguin Group USA.
Sunni Brown made her first call to revolution in her highly viewed TED Talk “Doodlers, unite!” in 2011 in which she advocated that we redefine doodling to mean: “the making of spontaneous marks with your mind and body to help yourself think.” (p. 221). Ms. Brown asserts that with our current and historical scholarly emphasis on numbers and letters acquisition, we have neglected the significant benefits visual language and disconnected ourselves from a powerful means of interpreting and understanding information. The Doodle Revolution: unlock the power to think differently is a 250 paged elaboration on her TED that provides deeper context and research to support these arguments as well as practical applications of how people can reacquaint themselves with the practice of combining text and images to encourage and ignite learning and new thinking for individuals and with groups. This workbook style book is particularly relevant to teachers, CPS practitioners and graphic facilitators, but anyone who is interested in how they might organize visual information to communicate and learn more effectively will find it useful.
Practicing what she preaches, the book itself with its bright yellow cover and content that combines an interesting balance of doodles, drawings and words, is inviting from the start. Sunni engages the reader with humour and personal accounts using a casual, supportive and nurturing voice grounded in experience to get her points across. Divided into 6 chapters, the book is organized in such a way that the reader can begin at the point in the book most relevant to them. Once you begin to dig into the content you will be hard pressed to not want to read it all at least once.
Brown makes an important and clear distinction between visual language and art. While art uses visual language, not all visual language is art, nor should it be. She differentiates between the two as she argues that many people have stopped doodling because they did not know there were other important ways they could use their skills other than for artistic purposes. Under her definition, doodles can be messy, ugly, badly drawn - (so can art, but I digress). The value of the doodle is in the process of making it and the visual interpretation of thinking or the interpretation of visual thinking that leads to discovery.
Sunni shares that when one doodles mindfully, there are many cognitive processes occurring in the brain that support thinking and learning. Doodling is a powerful tool because it engages the visual, auditory, reading/writing and kinesthetic learning modes simultaneously. She frames the multitude of benefits to doodling under a 3P framework: Power, Performance and Pleasure. With regards to power, the deliberate doodle is a cognitive tool that can increase retention and recall. “…doodlers retained …29% more of the content than their non doodling counterparts.” (p. 18). Doodling helps up focus. The doodle provides an opportunity for students to deeply engage with information. “Research has shown …when students shift their focus from interpreting presented visuals to creating their own…they have considerably deeper learning experiences” (p. 19). With regards to performance, group doodling engages all individuals to participate during meetings and leads to less redundancy in content therefore saving time and literally and figuratively getting groups on the same page. And finally, Doodling is pleasurable. Using the doodle to comprehend and hash out ideas is fun and can lead to a state of flow for the doodler. It also physically captures ideas in a format that invites discussion and reflection after the fact. Most significantly, Ms. Brown makes the argument that through the act of doodling, we can visualize what we want to bring to life and in doing so “directly impact our potential of moving toward those realities” (p.36)
Establishing the significant benefits of doodling and punctuating this by sharing that many of societies’ most innovative contributors were doodlers, Sunni moves to offer a basic visual alphabet of 6 forms (closed shapes) and 6 fields (open marks) that seem easy enough to grasp. Used in combination with each other and along structured organizational layouts that she provides, one can easily learn to express any idea, subject, noun, verb or concept in visual form. The reader is provided with games, exercises, tips and challenges to practice their newly acquired knowledge and skills. Several of these applications are variations of CPS tools. The practice of doodling is then extended to be applied in different contexts for different purposes from the easiest to grasp application; to interpret written material for the individual to the more challenging public applications of “infodoodling” in meetings to facilitating groups and doodling collaboratively. Each chapter builds on the previous and the book culminates with a summary of the key points and benefits before the reader is sent away to try it out and on for themselves.
Although seemingly lighthearted and fun, Sunni Brown challenges readers to rethink the lowly doodle and to use it as a tool to ignite thinking and problem solving. Her book may well pave the way to more colorful and interesting note taking and more engaged, focused collaboration (and dare I say fun) in our classrooms and workplaces. Considering that a lecturer can speak up to 160 words per minute and that our hand is limited to writing 31 words per minute one can see the value of learning to use pictures in combination with text to say more in less time and space. This reader is convinced that the strategies in this book work and has already informed her students that they should be doodling and drawing during lectures and when making notes. It is my hope that this revolution sticks No longer will kids who doodle in class be told to stop but rather, they’ll be encouraged to continue to activate the powerful learning tool they are already using. For me, using doodles to learn has proven to be so much more fun. I enjoy making and looking over my notes, and others do too. Why not give it a try?
Want to know more:
http://sunnibrown.com/article/cbs-news
http://sunnibrown.com/article/fast-company-2
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/us/uncovering-an-enigma-wrapped-in-a-doodle.html?_r=1
http://www.inc.com/magazine/201402/nancy-averett/sketch-note-brainstorms.html?cid=sf01001