In this 5 minute Ted talk Sunni Brown talks about the art and historic stigma of doodling and why it is important to us suggesting doodling has a profound impact on the way we can solve and process information.
Sunni opens her speech mentioning the historic and negative connotations surrounding the word and act of ‘doodling’ in which the word derives from ‘diddly daddly’ or a more appropriate term ‘doing nothing’. We are took through the ages of how doodling has been demonized in such light from a doodle being a simpleton the 17th to it being considered a corrupt politician in the 19th century. This has intertwined and adapted into schools as scribbling meaningless or uncorrelated scribbles. This has created a negative and harsh stereotype against doodling in general which has altered many people to refrain from the ‘habit’ especially during work.
Our culture is too focused on the written word rather than visual information which Sunni is trying to change. Half way through her speech she alters her own definition of the word, “To make spontaneous marks to help yourself think”. The idea that doodling is the spark to creativity and ideas and that it can be used to capture a vast amount of information and inspire the foundation of ideas.
I find Sunnis judgement and teachings true, before I started this course I was a little bit intimidated at the fact that we were allowed to openly doodle and sketch small and unorganized drawings due to the fact that doodling is so heavily stigmatised, at first I refrained from doing it, now I openly do it whether that be on a whiteboard, sketches and even digitally. I found this talk by Sunni heavily motivational and has changed my mindset on doodling.