While we love to show off the videos we make, there’s a whole lot we can’t show you. They’re top. And they’re secret. Well, they’re not secret to the clients that use them to explain internal changes, or illustrate sensitive reports. Or the ones that use them for change management, or to showcase innovative new practices. Or the ones that want to workshop challenging problems, or clarify data and confidential information. They get to see them, but you can’t. They are hidden from the eyes of the world. Because at Sketch Videos we understand that sometimes you want to shout out loudly, and sometimes, you want to shhhhh. Luckily, you can trust us to keep your strategy secret, your plans private, and your designs disguised. Let us visualise your vision without showing your hand to the world. Get in touch today.  Sketch Videos published their very first video on August 23rd 2012.
And in that four years we’ve come a long, long way. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all our clients: from government, not-for-profits, universities, hospitals and corporates – we’ve loved working with each and every one you and look forward to making more magic in the future. I’d like to thank the Sketch Video team – it’s wonderful to work with such passionate, professional and talented people. At Sketch Video we pride ourselves on our innovation, and our ability to use technology and creativity to craft messages of meaning and substance. We look forward to challenging ourselves, to inspiring others and to delivering the very best product for the next four years and beyond. And that’s some happy sketching. We posted a few weeks back about the value of expressing your idea in a single page—what we call a sketch poster. This is something that we've only started offering clients recently, but the concept is as old as time—taking a complex idea and capturing it in a one-page sketch.  Now, I always knew that the impact of simplifying your idea into a single page could be powerful. But I never realised just how powerful until last week when I got a call from a client. We'd collaborated to create them a sketch poster a couple of months ago. They had planned on using the sketch poster to present an idea to their global leadership team—they were seeking funding for an extraordinarily bold, ambitious project. We had a very short turnaround time of only a couple of days, but I was really proud of the finished sketch. However, I'd never heard how their presentation went. It was an internal project, so I can't share the name of the client or show you the sketch, but the conversation went something like this: Client: "Hi Matt, you're probably wondering why I'm calling you?" You read that correctly: 50. Million. Dollars.
Now, not to discount the competence of the team who presented this idea to the leadership team. They are visionary, and passionate, and engaging, persuasive communicators. They deserve full credit (they're also lovely, so I'm very excited for them!) But the sketch was integral—it was an absolutely crucial part of their pitch, and I'm very proud to have helped them elucidate their vision so convincingly. The power of presenting an idea as an image, rather than a document, or a slide deck full of bullet points, is huge. A simple sketch brings the important stuff to the surface, doesn't hide behind jargon or waffle, and communicates your idea in a language that everyone understands: simple, memorable, iconic images. We have a process to help you get your idea out of your head and down onto paper. We'd love to help you sketch your own $50 million idea. Get in touch to find out more.  It seems that briefs are a necessary evil when clients and creatives do business together. Necessary because how else does a client explain what they want to a third party? And evil because, well, one size rarely fits all. No one likes to feel squashed into a box when they’re more of a triangle. It’s hard to go past a briefing template. Templates are there for the basic questions that every brief needs to answer. Contacts, deadlines, budget, that sort of thing. But there’s much more that a good brief should be. (And that doesn’t mean make a brief long) It’s about asking the right questions and listening and clearly understanding the answers. It’s about understanding the why? The what? And the problem that needs to be solved.  A brief comes out of a need. A need to solve a business problem. To promote a new idea. To explain a new process.
There’s a need to communicate and the brief is the clarification. The brief is the time to think about your audience? Who are they? Why should they listen to what you have to say? And what about tone? Not as in middle C, but as in attitude. A brief is also the time to think about the takeaway, the call to action. What is it you want to achieve? What’s the best way of getting this done? And that, very briefly, is a brief. Remember, you don’t have to know it all. Blank spaces are for doodling after all. And doodling, especially in our Sketchy World, leads to some pretty amazing things. All you have to do, is brief. How lovely is that idea? A line going for a walk. And that line can go anywhere. It can take you from A to B. Or further. It can be both a journey and a destination.  At Sketch Videos we believe that taking a line for a walk, or, as we call it, sketching, can make any story better. We take your ideas and literally put them in the hand of extremely talented artists. They start with a dot that becomes a line that becomes a person, or a place, or a thing. Or whatever it takes to bring clarity and character to your message.
It’s as fun as it sounds. And even from the sidelines you get to co-create the fabulous illustrations that will bring your story to life. We work closely with our clients to make sure that you’re involved in key decisions about music, voice, images and script. We make it simple to make something sensational. It’s like taking a walk in the park. And if that sounds like something you’d be interested in, contact us and let us take your line for a walk.  If there were an Olympics of Sketching, we’d enter.
All that colour and movement – it’s a perfect fit! We’re experts at team sports. We're well practiced at relays. From copywriter, to illustrator, to cameraman, to client - we’ve never once dropped the baton. And of course, we’re very good at overcoming hurdles. We’re also pretty good at individual pursuits. We’d participate in the pencil jab-lin The pen-tathlon is a perfect place for us to make our mark. We’d excel at time-trials. We have lots of practice delivering to tight deadlines. And if at the end of the day we didn’t win, we didn’t lose and it all ended in a draw, well, we’d be okay with that too.  We live in a world of different races, religions, shapes, sizes, sexes, identity, age and colour. There is no ‘one look’, ‘one family’ or ‘one person’ that can accurately represent everyone. Diversity is exciting and engaging and we want to make sure that what we’re drawing, is the reality of what we’re living. At Sketch Videos we make a point of representing diversity wherever we can. We don’t assume a voice is male or female—we ask. We talk about who best can tell the story, and try to think outside the stereotype and cliché. Our talented illustrator Robin Cave is especially good at drawing diverse groups of people so we asked him for some tips of his trade.  Lately I’ve been called on to do several projects with an emphasis on racial diversity. I do find talking about racial stereotypes a pretty uncomfortable subject in these times of global racial tensions, and in my drawings I am really just striving for more inclusion. I think that most people are probably a mix of races and sometimes the drawings don’t end up being particularly one sort or another but that is OK because that’s life. Singling out a few stereotypical features might seem a bit racist, but it does work to bring some diversity to your drawings. I remember seeing a cabinet at the museum that had four sculpted heads in it from the 19th century, there was an African, Asian, White and South American (Mayan) represented. It was from a time when Phrenology was all the rage and lots of head measuring was being done (which we all now know is a bunch of baloney). It was at least useful in showing the very distinct differences in human head shapes. It can be quite tricky to represent diversity when you are trying to use as few lines as possible in your drawing. I sometimes find it hard to draw a distinctly Asian character, especially in a business situation. I don’t want to end up with just a line for each eye, so it takes a bit of work to get the right balance. Clothes are a good way to add diversity, for instance a Muslim woman wearing a Hijab is something that is easy to add to a group. Specific hair can also be an easy solution. Of course, a little shading in the right place can do a lot to help define a face or skin colour. I try to mainly keep it in three shades of grey rather than get into the rainbow of actual skin colours. My general approach is to get onto Google Images and immerse myself in the required look, then draw a few heads and try and work out what specifics are important and maybe emphasise these a little more, kind of like a subtle racial caricature. It can be easy to go too far and end up with a completely racially stereotyped caricature so you might need to tone it back. It’s really just a case of getting the right balance. |
AuthorMatt is Chief Doodler at Sketch Group. He has contributed to several books on visual thinking, most recently The World of Visual Facilitation. 
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