How To Create a Block Letter A with a Wavy Edge

Every year when I was teaching, I made sure to teach my students (kindergarten — 8th grade, and maybe a few preschoolers who were a bit more advanced) how to create block letters. While fun for students, the ability to create your own block letters can make quite a difference in the professional world, especially those who give presentations, run meetings, or need to create signage, to name a few.

Yet, many professionals either don’t know how to create block letters or are not very confident in their abilities!

So here’s a series of posts to help you out! To get the most out it, watch the video first all the way through. Then watch it again and draw along with me, pausing when needed. And finally, get a fresh piece of paper and create a new block letter all by yourself.

If video is slow to load, you can watch on YouTube.

For more in-depth learning, join the One Squiggly Line Classroom.

Free Hand-Drawn Animated GIF

Warm up this chilly season with a hand-drawn animated GIF. Click the image above for instructions to easily text this GIF from your smart phone. Available for a limited time.

Visual Notes Template For Meetings, Workshops and Discussions

Simple Meeting Notes Template

It can be helpful to take notes during a meeting, but only if you can make sense of your notes later on! This free download and printable template can help you structure both your notes AND your meeting time more productively.

Designed for re-occuring one-on-one phone/video meetings but can be used for pretty much any meeting type or size. For maximum impact, have all participants use the template and pause periodically to give folks time to write things down.

Can also be used as a pre-meeting prep sheet or post-meeting reflection sheet.

Head over to the One Squiggly Line Shop for your FREE download.

Visuals Make Facts Friendly

Friendly hand-drawn visuals make facts more friendly and approachable. They can also make the fact more memorable. This is one of many visuals about fun facts of San Francisco.

Visual Thinking: Simple is Powerful

Friendly hand-drawn visuals can breathe new life into an old message. The topic of New Year's resolutions has been covered time and time again. So much so that people stop really paying attention to it. In effect, it becomes invisible. 

When that happens, a new approach is needed. Something to break the pattern and grab people's eye. No need to make it fancy or complex. Simple can be very powerful. Plus, when you keep things simple, they're less scary so you're more likely to follow through.

Creativity & Visual Thinking: They can be taught!

So why not combine the two to accomplish more in less time? That's what DoodleBlocks is all about — creating new ways of thinking based on key pieces of creativity, presented and practiced in a visual way.

When done consistently, these new ways of thinking will become a habit that will allow you to be a more visual and creative thinker, which will make you a better problem solver in your everyday life. Knowing and understanding various parts of creativity will also give you some new tools to use deliberately when creative inspiration is no where to be found.

In the mean time, here's a Thanksgiving themed DoodleBlocks sheet to get you started right now! New to DoodleBlocks or need a refresher? Check out the instructions first.

Free Thanksgiving Download

Creativity: Think inside the box, too!

There's a myth out there that highly creative people just sit around and wait for inspiration to strike. Like a great big lightening bolt from the sky. Or a soft whisper from a mystical muse.

Truth is, creativity is not quite so passive. It is an active process. And there's a science to it, not just an art. There are even formulas, methods, and procedures for generating ideas and, equally importantly, evaluating them.

While there's often a push to "think outside the box" when generating ideas, thinking inside the box can be just as important. And productive. "The box" gives you a starting place, and sometimes getting started can be the hardest part.

So when looking for creative ideas, it's really ok to start with what you know, right where you are, with whatever you have right in front of you. Because once you start, you'll most likely keep going until that great idea hits you.

Visual Illustration: Live Graphic Recording

When working live, you never know what's going to happen. I usually only have the same information the people in the audience have, which is a basic agenda. So I know the speaker's name, title of their talk, and how long they are scheduled to speak. That's it!

It's not uncommon for talks to go longer as planned, like the one above. That's usually a good sign, as it means the audience is really engaged. But it can be a challenge to capture all that extra content on the same page.

Color is a great way to keep things organized when there's not much space available. Grouping concepts and thoughts according to color allows you to have completely different ideas right next to each other without things getting confusing.

See more visual notes created live at One Squiggly Line's graphic recording page.

Visual Thinking: Visuals Impact Your Brain

It probably comes as no surprise that cheerful, happy visuals can put you in a cheerier mood. Or make you crack a smile at the very least.

What may come as a surprise is that cheery visuals impact more than mood. And that impact differs between men and women. Men experience a greater drop in anxiety than women do when looking at a happy picture. Women, on the other hand, experience a greater boost in their working memory than men do when faced with a cheerful picture.

Check out One Squiggly Line's About Visual Thinking page to learn more.

Visual Thinking: Have a Strong Vision

A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others do. — Leroy Eims

Leadership starts with a vision. Whether you're leading a country, a company, or simply yourself, you must have a vision. A strong one. Because the stronger the vision, the more likely success will be.

That vision, strong or not, always begins in your imagination, or the mind's eye. That's where you start to see things as you'd like them to be in the future. Or the way you wish things could be right now.

Getting that vision out of your head and onto paper makes it more concrete. That allows you to see your vision more clearly, to flesh it out, and to better communicate it to others. It also allows you to see what may be missing or what may not be necessary. A tangible drawing makes your thinking and communication much more efficient!

Drawing out your vision and keeping it someplace where everyone can easily see it, keeps your vision front and center in everyone's mind, which fuels the motivation needed to continue moving forward. A physical image also allows everyone to see how far you've already come, hopefully prompting you to celebrate those successes along the way.

So pick up those markers and start drawing! Remember, you're drawing to communicate here, not to create the next Mona Lisa!

Check out One Squiggly Line's About Visual Thinking page to learn more.