My day job at the moment is working as an "Agile Coach", which basically means I am a bit of business coach, a bit of management consultant and a bit process specialist. I am really passionate about how visual communication can help people communicate better. This is really helpful for coaching, visualising complex problems and connecting information.
A lot of the time trying to get concepts across at work can be really difficult, and when attempted often ends up boring and lifeless. I've spent a good portion of my professional career trying to discover ways and techniques to better communicate ideas. There is a common aspect to make these successful, whether you are doing a personal sketchnote in a meeting, graphically recording meeting notes, or trying to communicate new concepts.
That aspect is storytelling.
Adding some kind of narrative to your work immediately gives it power. Whether it's realistic or whimsical, telling a story helps connect people to your message. You not only need to make it relatable but also pique the interest of the reader. If you can do this your message is more likely to stick in their memory.
In this context I was supporting a fellow colleague who was giving an introductory workshop. He would be covering the essential concepts of Agile and Lean ways of working. There were a few core lean concepts (and associated measurements) that he wanted to promote and needed a clear visual that he could put into a slide.
In the Lean world we often use motorways as examples for some of the ideas, especially the M25 in the UK! This circular motorway is a great example because of the active measures that are used in real life to manage its flow. These measures are based on queuing theory and other models to predict and manage the flow of traffic.
I was also unusually starting out this illustration with a high level of subject matter knowledge, so research was a lot easier than normal. I mentally had thought through a number of different ways of using a motorway metaphor, but in the end it was best to start using my sketchbook to start resolving them.
I had first started with a very clinical diagrammatic circle illustration, but it really felt like had no story to tell. If that was the case I knew it would come across like any other Powerpoint slide, and would easily be forgotten. So my mind got me thinking about zooming in on a section of the motorway, one that was artificially short but would allow a greater density of examples, and also would allow me to have fun with some storytelling!
I thought about all the necessary information first, and then thought about exploring some of the nice-to-have concepts. I expected this to be quite a challenging render, so I planned out what exactly needed to be in the image, and as you can see above I thought about how to make the render process more straightforward. It was, after all, a lofty task I had given myself! The motorway metaphor allowed me to use different vehicles to represent different ideas. Onto the roughs!
In sketching out ideas, I had inadvertently skewed the motorways perspective to I could fit it nicely onto the page. It has started to take on an isometric quality, and this is a style of illustration I had not tried before, so I thought it would be a good learning experience. I drew up the rough on layout paper (above). I wanted to use the hard shoulder as a metaphor for reserved capacity, but my original sketch had it on the wrong side of the road for the UK! So I ended up having to switch the lanes around to make it just realistic enough. The upside is that the crash's position allows it to become the focal point it is intended to be.
I started to render the image in Affinity Designer, which was a painstaking process to start with as I researched different rendering techniques for isometric illustration, working out what worked for me, and also allowed me to be productive. This was a really challenging and interesting part of the process, as I got to understand the angles needed to transform flat images. This meant I didn't need to try and render the perspective perfectly, the maths took care of that. That way I could concentrate on fidelity and quality.
I also learnt to use an isometric grid within Affinity Designer. The specific angle I used for maximum productivity was also slightly different to my roughs. This meant I had to constantly re-address my composition as I went. I continued to add in different vehicles. I am particularly proud of learning to use the "symbols" feature of Affinity Designer, that allowed me to save a group of shapes together as a symbol. When you then changed an aspect of a symbol, it was replicated across all other copies of that symbol! This is a huge time-saver and allowed me to make consistent improvements.
The assembled illustration was really coming together, and I was very proud of the result. However, it all felt a bit flat, and I knew that some lighting was in order. I resolved to address this problem after I had created the last (and most difficult) asset - a coach! The first question to answer was where was the lighting coming from? Part of my decision had already been taken, as I had added some shading to the vehicles as part of the design process. So I doubled-down on that design choice. I wondered if I should add texture, but I thought that making it too stylised would not be suitable for the illustration's audience. To bring all of the colours together I also added a colour overlay to the image, to help homogenise the palette and make it easier to read.
I played around with the text to amplify its readability by using contrast and position to (hopefully) its best effect. I then added in a background gradient to add to the sense of afternoon lighting and support my shading choices.
I am really happy with the image, and it seemed to go down well with the workshop attendees. I really learnt a lot about isometric illustration and I would like to try a more stylised approach in the future, especially with everything I've learned about texture in Assignment 4.
Comments