It was a pleasure to welcome the Drawnalism team at the fifth edition of EuroPCom, the European Conference on Public Communication. We were impressed by the smart and creative way they summarise and visualise the complex debates. They delivered over 40 colourful and inspiring drawings, which were highly liked, shared and commented by our 700 conference participants.
Tom De Smedt
Brussels, Belgium
EU Committee of the Regions
I can’t recommend Drawnalism enough! The way that Alex was able to quickly grasp our work programme and bring all of the parts together visually was brilliant. Everyone loves our Drawnalism picture, and it has had an immediate impact in improving how we communicate and share the work we are doing!
Jenny Nelson
Digital Newcastle — Programme Manager
Newcastle City Council, UK
Tooning up the City
Services
At the Studio
Thank you Drawnalism for helping us to convey a complex and important message about data management and sharing through fun and engaging animations. Matthew did an excellent job at interpreting our needs with creativity and provided a collaborative, iterative approach to ensure we ended up with a high quality product. The Data Policy and Practice team at CABI really enjoyed working with you!
The Data Policy and Practice Team
CABI
People, process, technology - from an extended piece of business development and operational drawnalism
Great communication with Matt and Alex from start to finish. I must admit I was slightly sceptical at first about how Drawnalism would capture the subject matter, but after seeing the work @drawnalismAlex produced over the two days at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s #defendmediafreedom Global Conference, I was pleasantly surprised. Alex’s drawings captured the sessions in a fun, witty and unique way. We could quickly display them, enabling all 1500 delegates at the event to enjoy these quirky, colourful and visual depictions of the sessions. I would definitely recommend @drawnalism for other events.
Representative
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
United Kingdom
Drawnalism adds a ‘special touch’ to our work. It helps us to communicate messages in a simple, attractive and creative way; and helps our clients to remember these better.
Edina Ocsko
ENRD Contact Point
I highly recommend working with Drawnalism. The products are exactly as discussed and the process - from initial briefing to final result, has been a pleasure; with regular, clear updates, feedback taken on board and integrated swiftly and a friendly, clear relationship the whole way through. Many thanks.
Christy Clemence
The People's Vaccine Alliance
Services
At the Studio and On the Air
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a workshop of the Directors-General of the European Statistical System had to be held in virtual form at short notice. It became clear very quickly that we needed suitable digital formats for this. The visual depictions Drawnalism created of the workshop contents were a central component.
Matt prepared a lively explanatory video that we could show to the participants and which excellently conveyed the core messages of the session. In addition, Matt visualised the plenary discussions during the event. The drawings excellently captured the discussions and provided further impetus to them. We were also able to make good use of the drawings in attracting the interest of the public.
Yvonne Vatter - Project leader at the Federal Statistical Office of Germany (Destatis)
Creating ‘human energy’ at a completely virtual event can be a challenge. Drawnalism’s presence bridged the digital and analogue, whilst echoing the creative, collaborative spirit of the event with their bright artwork. The images were delivered in time for us to display at daily wrap-ups, providing valuable summaries of the day. Plus, they were flexible and willing to take onboard our ideas – we will be talking about Alex and Matt's caricatures of participants for a long time! Thank you both for your excellent, professional service.
Katherine Findlay
REN 21
Professional, highly talented, friendly, supportive, interested, and interesting. Just a few of the words which can be applied to Drawnalism.
Open Data Camp Organising Committee
Services
We are very grateful for Matt's full focus, fantastic skill and flexibility that contributed to our event's success!
Technical discussions during a stakeholder meeting were much easier to follow thanks to Matt. With live preview, it was so much easier to keep track of all the ideas.
Drawnalism's in-event-drawing really added a new dimension to our scientific conference. The visual summaries fuelled conversations at the fringes of the event and helped to distill the essence of what was discussed.
Roeland Scholtalbers
Institute of Tropical Medicine – Antwerp
Services
Mobile, agile and smart
The Drawnalism team have an incredible ability to distill live strategic discussions into smart and witty visualisations, which help to add further engagement to workshop thinking.
What's more, they are super easy to work with - truly a great addition to a workshop team.
Lucie Sarif, Brand Director - Studio of Art and Commerce
Services
In the Moment
Great ‘in-the-moment’ drawings that were higly appreciated by participants and organisers (also for preparing the synthesis of the conference). In three words: Original, friendly and helpful!
Drawnalism have transformed our workspace into a colourful, inspiring and playful environment - it makes coming to the office a lot more fun. Aside from the brilliant drawings that Drawnalism have provided us with, working with Matthew has been a lovely experience, he has been so patient and inspiring, and I couldn't recommend working with him enough. We will definitely be using Drawnalism at the University of Southampton again.
Ruby Jackson
Senior Administrator
School of Engineering and Science
- administrator of the Future Towns Innovation Hub
To have someone at a conference drawing what is happening gives the event a tension, almost a kind of drama. Translating abstract spoken words into images not only makes things more tangible, but transforms them into something else, something completely new. This additional meaning is particularly interesting when the drawings are created by Alex Hughes.
Reinhold Wendler
BRCCH
A huge thank you to Alex for his incredible work during the 2024 Annual Meeting for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action. The drawings from this year’s event provided a wonderful visual summary of the meeting sessions and are always a highlight for participants and our members!
Kyra Loat
The Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action
Services:
Long running programme
Drawnalism have helped us with various projects over the years including a short film to communicate what we are doing with one of our many projects. We particularly enjoy the ‘in the moment’ service which captures discussions and conferences so that we can use it to sum up what happened on the day and reuse in later discussions. Staff always love this as they can see it happening before their eyes and relate what they see to what they have heard. Everyone has their phones out to take photos even though they know it will be circulated to them!
Alexandra Tye
Special Assistant
Hampshire County Council
Services
At the Studio
'I first came across Drawnalism when Alex drew a conference session that I was speaking at in Brussels last year. My husband and I were so impressed with how he’d captured my style and ideas that I commissioned him to do a series of characters and scenarios for my website, presentations and other company documents.
I wanted the images to capture both elements of control and storytelling and was keen to hear Alex’s suggestions about how we could play with the Ariadne and Minotaur characters as well as creating a storyteller (whom we called Homer) as well as some protagonists who were meant to represent the audience/or trainees.
I was not disappointed.
Laura Shields
Red Thread EU
I felt like I was a valued client — this was through the friendly manner of Matt and the good communication before the event. I thought that the humour that you both injected into the images was particularly good and I think it helped that you were not connected to our sectors so you saw things from a different and fresh perspective. I particularly liked my huge envelope at the end with all of the images in… a nice touch and makes for a perfect photo opportunity.
Amanda Morait
Radian Housing Group
We were impressed by how easily Alex was able to translate and summarise complex discussions into fun and more accessible visuals. Without much preparation and in a short time Alex followed our #EurochildGA online webinars and managed to create engaging drawings. Thanks to this we had beautiful drawings which replaced the photos that we would have never shot this year because of Covid-19.
Davide Rambaldi
Eurochild
We’d highly recommend the Drawnalism team. They offer a creative, smart and witty way to capture and share the outputs from conferences and events. We commissioned them to sketch 35 talks on cutting edge science research over two days. They proved adept at synthesising high volumes of complex information, in real time. And we’ve had excellent feedback from both our researchers and from non-specialist audiences.
Charlie Gorham
Wellcome Trust
Services:
From 1 January to 30 June 2020, Croatia held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union for the first time. Due to the COVID-19 crisis, a video conference 'Teachers and Trainers for the Future: Towards the New Normal' was held on 29 June, and Drawnalism helped us summarise key messages and participants' comments in a creative and unique manner.
Teachers, trainers, education experts, NGO members from all over the EU as well as Australia, the United States and Azerbaijan were thrilled with colourful and illustrative drawings that summarised the discussion on the future of education and training.
Drawnalism impressed more than 1,500 video conference participants for the original and innovative way the session discussions were captured and visualised. The drawings are highly liked and shared via the conference website, education platforms, as well as by teachers and trainers themselves.
Ministry of Science and Education, Republic of Croatia
I worked with Drawnalism for a six month period and was so impressed by their work that I've chosen to work with them for another six months. They're great at understanding the need, they illustrate in our own colours from our brand and their drawings are fun but also super useful for us as a team following our webinars.
Commissioner - ODI
Very content with our recent collaboration for the production of a video. Great collaboration, respect of all involved processes and modern, minimal and full of connotations design!
Nikolaos Antoniou - NEBS srl
Services
At the Studio
In the Moment
Working with Drawnalism really did bring an extra dimension to our project on the future of rural communities. Everyone taking part — from Parish Councillors to local businesses — found that Matt’s illustrations help them get a sense of what a typical village looks like today and how it might thrive in the future. Drawnalism helped prove that a picture really is worth a thousand words when it comes to thinking about the future.
Simon Eden
Director, The Southern Policy Centre
We were holding an internal workshop to discuss our thoughts on the Mayor of London’s draft Environment Strategy, and I wanted an imaginative and engaging way to capture the discussion so that I could communicate the results to others across the organisation. The artwork that Alex delivered will be a big help in me doing this.
David Cope
Director of Strategy and External Affairs
Drawnalism were commissioned to capture key messages coming out from plenary keynotes and interactive audience sessions. We had a very busy agenda and were really impressed with how the artists managed to absorb and illustrate the discussions on what couldn’t have been an easy topic to grasp! Incredibly happy with the end product and would definitely recommend to other.
Surita Solanki
Digital Birmingham
We decided to use Drawnalism for a one-day vaccine conference, to capture the presentations and
audience engagement in a more visual, creative way than run-of-the-mill slide decks and photos. It was a huge success!
Alex was great to work with before and throughout our event – he was keen to ensure he was well-prepared, which absolutely came through in his brilliant drawings on the day.The final product is fun, insightful, and witty. We’re looking forward to showcasing the drawings on our website, for a more engaging way to share our research!
Lee White
Project Coordinator
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK
Services:
In hard times
We have to be quiet about a lot from this event because of the sensitive and sometimes upsetting nature of the content.
We have worked with Drawnalism in NHS Improvement workshops in different organisations across the country. Recently they have supported a workshop we were involved with for Family Justice and displayed exactly the same skill and professionalism as before. We will definitely work with them again!
[Drawnalism have a] remarkable ability to collate information and present in a most attractive and accessible form. The flexibility of the team with regard to changing the workshop format was excellent.
Every time I’ve used Drawnalism I’ve been impressed. What I find most interesting for the work on in the moment on paper is that having that record of what was discussed on display in the office is a helpful reminder of an event but more than that everyone is often notice new things and share them. For our latest event Drawnalism designed the logo, lanyards, banners, which went down really well, I had a lot of questions as to who designed it, and no negative comments.
David Buck
DEFRA
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The visionaries of the GODAN Summit 2016, which took place in New York City, New York, USA, on September 1516, 2016, would like to thank you for your contribution in support of the goals of the Summit: to illustrate the opening, the use, and the importance of agriculture and nutrition data. Specifically, we would like to recognize the great work of Drawnalism. The posters you and your team prepared throughout the two days were a tremendous hit with attendees. We greatly appreciate the contributions of you and your team, you were a pleasure to work with.
Diana Szpotowicz
Strategic Communications Advisor
Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition
The feedback I have had from everyone at the meeting about your work has been amazing. I feel your presence and work really made the conference, and very much helped to trigger discussion and a lot of tweets for the meeting. A number of people have said how much they enjoyed watching your work and discussing with you. In addition, now that the meeting is over, the original art work is making wonderful gifts to plenary speakers who are very excited to have their work represented in art to put on their wall. It was an absolute pleasure having you with us at the meeting and I would recommend you and your work whole-heartedly!
Susie Dunachie
Professor, University of Oxford
Drawnalism provided an ad-hoc visualisation of a keynote speech. This was printed during the event as a poster for participants to take home and display in their offices.
The contact was always friendly and constructive and there were no equipment issues whatsoever, something that after years of experience we do not take for granted.
