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Your Company Meeting Needs a Live Sketch Artist (4 Reasons Why)

Think back to your company’s most recent meeting. (Maybe you’re in the middle of one now…in which case, pay attention!)

All joking aside, most meetings aren’t that fun. In your average company meeting, most of us fall into two camps:

Camp 1: You’re there, but you’re not there there.  In other words, your mind is somewhere else, drifting into a corporate haze of deadlines, demands, and daydreams. Weeks, days, or hours later, you don’t even remember what the meeting was about.  It might as well have never happened.

Camp 2: You’re there, and you’re trying to be present. In fact, you’re feverishly taking lines upon lines of notes, ensuring that you’re as present as possible. But there’s a catch. If you are like most people, these pages of notes fill up notebooks or word docs, which then get shoved into a drawer or filed away in some digital document, doomed to a sad eternity of neglect. If, however, the stars align and you choose to review those notes (which you probably won’t), you will have to sift through all those lines of text just to find the one or two items you needed to reference.

What if we told you that there is a better way? Spoiler Alert: there is!

Here are four (of many) reasons why a Live Artist will vastly improve your company’s meeting experience:

1. Visuals make meeting content more understandable (and actionable)

The purpose of a meeting is to convey information that leads to action which generates results, right? Well, the science is settled: visual learning is the most powerful channel of learning, drastically increasing comprehension and retention when compared to other channels of learning. Research shows that people tend to remember 10% of what they hear, 20% of what they read, and 80% of what they see. If you want meeting attendees to “get it” and then take meaningful action, you need visual aids.

2. A Live Artist will make your meeting more fun.

Let’s be honest: Meetings can be pretty boring, and most of us would rather be somewhere else (“I’m sorry, I’ve got a dentist appointment…”). Why not make your company meetings more fun? Having a live artist at your meeting will do just that.

Meetings can also be overly serious affairs, full of egos, stiffness, and expectations. Why not add some levity? When people see their meeting content beautifully illustrated in full color, they lighten up, relax, and engage.

Life is too short to suffer through mundane and monotonous meetings. A Live Artist will mix things up and keep your meeting fresh.

3. You get visual takeaways that people will actually use

Be honest with yourself here (if not with your boss): When was the last time you read that 30-page PDF meeting recap document? Digested the entirety of a follow-up email? Downloaded that PowerPoint?

A Live Artist’s job is to produce visual takeaways that people will actually read. Nobody wants to read through a dense document. But a picture, however…now that’s fun to look at!  By providing an interesting and easily digestible visual takeaway, your meeting attendees will not only revisit the content, but they will more effectively take necessary actions following the meeting.

4. There are Millennials (and maybe some Gen-Zs) in the room

These younger generations have grown up in a visually-saturated environment. While you may be tempted to discount it, our Millennial colleagues expect (and need) to process information in a visual format. This group will quickly tune out blocks of texts, dense meetings, and periods of long, uninterrupted discussion. A Live Artist is a fantastic way to keep Millennial team members engaged and contributing.

Your time is your most precious resource…stop wasting it in boring, ineffective and unengaging meetings. If you want your next meeting to be as valuable as possible, hire a Live Artist! Everyone will better understand the meeting’s content, they will have visual takeaways that will be happily referenced again and again,and they’ll be better equipped to take action.

CTA graphic with images of graphic recording artists live sketching at in-person events