DRAW WHAT MATTERS Wade Forbes I got cut from a team this month. A client I'd wanted to work with for years (and years) finally brought me on. A few weeks in, they let me go. Honestly, I was okay with it. More than okay. Which is a weird thing to say. Had pursued this one for a while, and when the call finally came, I told Megan this was going to be the big one. But when we got in the door, within a few weeks I could feel it was not my game. Getting cut is supposed to sting. This one mostly...
14 days ago • 2 min read
DRAW WHAT MATTERS Wade Forbes I spent years working in offices, and for most of them, I quietly could not stand it. Not the people. The people were some of the best I have known. It was the office itself. The thin carpet and the fluorescents humming. The sense that the room was built to pull work out of you and give nothing back. I was standing in another kind of office this week, illustrating and painting a mural, and it is the first one that has ever made me realize…offices don’t have to be...
21 days ago • 2 min read
DRAW WHAT MATTERS Wade Forbes If you know me, you know when I find something I like, I tend to buy the same boots over and over. Keen, the ones that last forever and let me stand at an event all day and never once think about my feet. I am a fan. Keen knows it, so they email to remind me they make boots I love. I already own the boots. I am wearing them right now. And still the emails come, and I don't mind a single one. Another favorite, REI, sends emails reminding me that I like being...
28 days ago • 3 min read
DRAW WHAT MATTERS Wade Forbes “This is not going to work.” That was my first thought when I saw the plan for one session at the Braver Angels convention this summer. One session ran ninety minutes and moved twenty people across the stage to do it. A fifteen-minute talk, then someone else had seventeen minutes, then twenty-five, then two people would come out to dance. Stage would clear, and a piano would roll to the front for a song. If you run events, or you’re new to this kind of thing, I’m...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
DRAW WHAT MATTERS Wade Forbes This past year, I had a fantastic experience that helped me shape how I interact with all of my clients now, in a great way. A client flew me out to their company all-hands, which is not anything new. Here’s the transformative (for me) part…alongside the drawing, they asked me to run a session for the whole room on how to work with a graphic recorder. Whoa. Thirty minutes on the practical side of the work: when to pass along the agenda and materials ahead of...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
DRAW WHAT MATTERS Wade Forbes The World Cup is happening right now (sad that it’s winding down, actually). TVs around the world are tuned in, and it's taken the US by storm as well. Bars around the country were full of people you wouldn’t normally find rooting for the same thing. Strangers high-fiving on goals. Half the bar wearing the same colors. This camaraderie is real. And nowadays it seems, increasingly rare. A week or so ago, I spent a weekend watching the same thing happen, but this...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
DRAW WHAT MATTERS Wade Forbes You might say I got beat up this week. At least that’s how I put it. No bloody nose. Nothing dramatic. Nobody yelled at me, nobody pulled a contract. Just a series of small things that, taken together, sat on my chest for most of a week. The 11 PM email about a payment status. The math in my head about what the job should have cost compared to what I billed. (OOF!) The internal negotiation about whether to send another follow-up on an unpaid invoice that’s been...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
DRAW WHAT MATTERS Wade Forbes When I first started this business, I had it in my head that being a graphic recorder meant “to show up and draw”. For a while, that’s what I did. Got hired, showed up, drew, went home. The client got the boards. Vibrant, colorful, and engaging, and I figured they had what they needed. Along the way, and somewhere around 500 events later, I know that my job is more than that. The drawing is the visible part. But I would argue that there are three other parts that...
2 months ago • 3 min read
DRAW WHAT MATTERS Wade Forbes I have a conspiracy theory that I think needs to go viral and could use your help. What if the Scots invading Boston for the #worldcup knew exactly what they were doing by spreading copious amounts of joy in the U.S.? It’s easy for us to be stuck in our own mud. The mired goop of polarization from political social media posts thrust at us constantly, and all the while, the world is watching us too. The world sees that the people of the U.S. have forgotten about...
2 months ago • 1 min read
