Doodles Versus Words : Images Tell a Story
getting one's message across
Recently I was drawn to Robert Reich’s story “Why I draw”.
Like Robert, I like to think that images can help give another perspective to a story. Robert’s article was a fun and insightful read. I delve into my rather extensive collection of doodles to illustrate my stories. I have fun looking for a doodle that connects to each article. Like Robert I’ve been doodling forever and so rarely do I have to consider a new doodle for an article. Readers might find my connection between the doodle and the story somewhat bizarre. Perhaps looking for a connection can be part of making sense of my stories?
In my days as an academic I had to attend various meetings which often bored me, so I began to use meetings for creative purposes. This wasn’t always appreciated, but I was listening and my doodles often captured the essence of a meeting.
In this article I document an interesting AGM for an environmental group some years ago. The meeting was in 2017, but the 5 doodles I constructed during the meeting have given me a recollection of the meeting that a set of minutes would surely have failed to capture.
The AGM commenced in a friendly fashion which resulted in one of my free-flowing efforts.
There followed some inspiring discussion about good things that had happened over the previous year. This led to a doodle which I called “Empowered bird”.
Unfortunately a few elements of the above discussion led to chaos and a doodle which I called “Conflagration”.
It took a while to sort out the contentious issues, but that was followed by an all-sweetness-and-light period which resulted in a doodle I called “Lightness”.
By this time we were reaching the end of a most eventful AGM and so my last doodle encapsulated the mood with “Bubbles and kites”.
I’ve participated in many AGMs over the years, but I confess that my doodle sequence of the 2017 AGM still brings a recollection and smile. Note that there can be the different interpretations based on context as I’ve used the “Bubbles and kites” image previously in my article on Seres Therapeutics and the gut microbiome.
I hope that you enjoy my doodles and if you follow me you’ll have fun making sense of each doodle that accompanies my articles.
Finally an apology to readers beginning to follow me. I’ve been distracted by some unusual (and one very sad) events recently, which have messed up my writing flow. My goal is to get back on track for at least a weekly story and maybe some additional less regular commentary. I hope you’ll consider following me. While I’m not a financial advisor I like to think that my take on big changes in energy and transport, as everything gets electrified and we start to exit fossil fuel use, is insightful for investors in the energy and transport sectors. With a long history in biotech, both in terms of technology and also as a biotech entrepreneur, I also hope that my perspective in biotech might be of interest to investors looking for new adventures in biotech.