What’s Trending In Events–and How to Give Your Next One A Creative Boost with Live Event Drawing
For two years, we’ve prepared our live event drawing service, visual note-taking, for ever-changing event formats. Hybrid. Virtual. In-Person. The event industry quickly pivoted, proving it could create meaningful events no matter how and where they occurred.
That was then. Now, in 2022, the focus is shifting. It’s time to prioritize and plan for the experience, rather than the format. This progression makes sense: We’ve learned the ins and outs of pandemic-era planning, freeing us to think bigger and better about attendees’ overall experience.
So what should this look like? People want more personal, purposeful, even sustainable experiences. Delivering this in new and creative ways is how organizations create engagement and loyalty.
At Ink Factory, we’re seeing these event experiences take lots of different forms, and our artist team is building impactful visual experiences to match. Read on to find out what experiences are trending right now, and how you can bring fresh creativity to each one.
Shake up your standard format
Experience: The remote team destination meeting
Creative Boost: Visual thinking workshops
As companies look for ways to bring remote teams and workforces together, destination meetings are rebounding. In fact, the Ink Factory team recently returned from its own retreat to Mexico. After months of remote and hybrid work, reconnecting in-person allowed for team building and business planning (and an all-around good time).
Professional learning and development is another common element of these meetings. If L&D is central to your agenda, shake up the status quo with a visual thinking workshop. More than half of your workforce learns better when visuals are involved, so it makes sense to nurture and develop visual communication skills.
At Ink Factory, our Think Like Ink artist-led workshops are ideal for creatives and non-drawers alike and can be built around a topic of your choice. For example, you can host a team-building workshop that fosters collaboration as groups work together to visualize goals for the year ahead.
Ditch PowerPoint for good
Experience: The virtual conference, repeated
Creative Boost: Swap slides for illustrations
Early data shows companies are set to host more virtual events in 2022 than they did in 2021. It’s a convenient format with a lower cost to produce and attend and after fine-tuning the experience over the last two years, 3 out of 4 attendees give virtual events a thumbs up.
What doesn’t earn high marks are boring slide presentations. Our mantra? DITCH THE SLIDES. They compete with the speaker and are proven to decrease comprehension and retention. Instead, use building illustrations to visualize key points. This visual presentation technique makes dense content more accessible and memorable.
IT automation leader Puppet used building illustrations to complement its CEO’s keynote at its virtual conference. As key ideas were shared, the on-screen illustration revealed a new layer– “building” a visual story for viewers. In this case, the keynote was pre-recorded, but live presentations work, too.
Keep it simple, but fun
Experience: The intimate leadership off-site
Creative Boost: Add an art break
Bringing smaller groups together in person is a popular choice, especially when the objective is idea generation. Just be sure to avoid the common pitfall of a too-full agenda, which can lead to burnout. Instead, add “art breaks” to the schedule to keep the ideas flowing.
New research points to art as an effective way to hit reset and return to a meeting with less stress and a clearer head. The result: attendees will participate more intentionally and think more critically.
Get started by hosting a workshop that brings out attendees’ inner artists. From learning how to draw people to how to improve handwriting, we offer workshops that swap smartphones and laptops for markers and paper. The best part is no drawing skills are required!
Try a unique approach
Experience: Audio-only events
Creative Boost: Live event drawing
Remember the rapid rise of Clubhouse, the drop-in, audio-only social app that launched in 2020? Since then, the audio-only concept has steadily gained traction in the event space. And for good reason: it’s easy to use and accessible, and allows people to learn while multitasking.
But audio-only doesn’t mean forgetting about the other senses. There’s a lot you can do visually to keep the conversation going post-event. Whether you’re hosting a LinkedIn Audio Event or Reddit Talk, consider live drawing the event to capture all of the ideas and voices. After the event, these visual notes can easily be shared on your website or social media, providing a creative takeaway for participants.
If you’re actively planning meetings and events and want a fresh, creative boost, Ink Factory is here to help. We’d love to hear your plans and brainstorm how visual experiences can make them next-level awesome. Send us a message anytime to schedule a call.
Wait, there’s more! Subscribe to the Ink Factory newsletter to learn the latest on visual trends.
With a community of 4,000+ visual thinkers, you’ll be in good company. Join us!
