Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m on a mission to help as many people as possible be just as good at the whiteboard as they are at the keyboard. In other words, I want to help people bring more drawing into their lives and their work, for better meetings, better problem solving, better creativity and better communication.
How hard can it be, right? Turns out, most people are pretty nervous about drawing, especially in front of others at work. That big blank whiteboard can be pretty threatening for some people! But given the right tips and templates to start with, I’ve seen people and meetings transformed… just by using pictures as well as words.
I’ve been teaching sketching and visual communication for years, and enough people said to me “You should totally write a book!” that I did exactly that: in 2017 I published “Presto Sketching: The Magic of Simple Drawing for Brilliant Product Thinking and Design” (O’Reilly).
I live in Sydney, Australia, where my day job is as a designer and facilitator at Atlassian, a software company.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book is ebook only, and it’s called “Draw in 4! Over 100 4-Step Drawings to Boost Your Drawing Confidence”. Last year I went to EuViz conference in Denmark, where I met loads of people like me who drew as part of their jobs. I was so inspired by their drive to make positive change in the world, that I wanted to dedicate my next project to raising funds for a good cause.
I did a (highly informal and unscientific!) poll on Facebook, to ask them what causes and charities they support. The main causes that rose to the top were to do with supporting women and children in developing countries, and the organisation that fit the bill the most from the votes was Plan International.
“Draw in 4!” is available for preorder now at http://drawin4.com, and launches on Monday 4 March, 2019. For the first 3 months, all profits will be donated to Plan International Australia, and I’m hoping the sketching and visual practice communities out there — well, anyone really! — can really get behind this, and support Plan International Australia.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I have a fairly long commute to and from work, so I actually do a lot of writing on the train. In fact, most of Presto Sketching was actually written on the train!
When people read my writing, I really want them to get a sense of what it’s like to be in my classes, so my style is quite conversational. With that in mind, I often read aloud my writing, to test how it flows, and how it connects one idea to the next idea. My kids think I’m completely daft, hearing me rave out loud to myself for hours on end in my study!
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I have a pretty varied reading diet. I’m definitely influenced by Dan Roam and his first book “The Back of the Napkin”; he’s the one who really kick-started using simple drawing as a way of visually explaining and influencing.
I also gravitate to authors with conversational styles, like Jason Fox and his books “The Game Changer” and “How to Lead a Quest”, and authors who can blend theory you can really get your mental teeth into with practical examples, like Scott McCloud and his books, like “Understanding Comics”.
What are you working on now?
I’m in the middle of launching the “Draw in 4!” ebook, and investing a lot of time in trying to promote it as much as possible without being annoying about it.
In my working life as a designer and facilitator, I’m really interested in making cards for teams to use, as a way to help them work better together, generate ideas better, communicate better, and so on. I’ve got a couple of decks of cards I’m in the middle of finishing, and trying to find a good way to publish and distribute them.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Honestly, I’ve no idea! I’m new at this game of book promotion, and promoting anything doesn’t come easily to me. What I DO try to do is to loop people in on the journey that I’m going through, so I post various updates to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram whenever there are moments worth sharing.
Beyond that, I’m always experimenting with ways to spread the word VISUALLY. It’d be pretty ironic if my book promotion methods didn’t include pictures! 😉
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Start small. You don’t have to start with Your Greatest Novel Of All Time. Start by writing an article on Medium or LinkedIn. Start by writing about one scene that you see in your head, or one character. Keep a scratchpad of ideas, phrases, words, themes, tropes and constructions that tickle your fancy. It doesn’t have to all join up and be complete; just write bits you enjoy.
Understand and embrace that what you write now won’t be awesome, but is the necessary material you have to churn out to make progress toward the awesome stuff.
Oh, and try sketching what you want to write about instead! If you want to communicate a story about a journey, sketch out that journey on a map, including all the features and events along the way. Sketch your characters to help you envision what they look like, behave like, speak like, and so on.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Finish something. Just finish something. Everyone has a book they’ve 50% written, a product they’ve 50% made, a song they’ve 50% composed… Perfect is the enemy of good enough. You learn so much by actually finishing something and putting something out into the world for others to use and give you feedback on.
Any creative endeavour is a conversation. You need to finish the sentence you’re trying to say, for others to hear it and reply, so that you can reply back, and so on.
What are you reading now?
I’ve nearly finished “No Friend But the Mountains”, a frightening read by award-winning journalist Behrouz Boochani, who has been stuck in one of Australia’s offshore asylum seeker detention centres for over five years. He wrote it by text message on a smuggled phone, where it’s now been translated and published. It’s a searing testament to the cruelty of Australia’s policy of indefinite imprisonment of innocent people, simply because they came to Australia by boat.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I’m going to see if “Draw in 4!” catches on a fun way to get into drawing, and boost drawing confidence. If it goes well, I could easily fill a few more volumes with cool fun things to draw.
If not, I want to invest time in writing a book about *sketching for strategy*. It would extend some of the themes in Presto Sketching, and focus on how to help teams with creativity, strategy and prioritising what to work on.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Oh wow, great question! There’s this book I’ve got called “Your Own Devices”, written by someone in the SAS, I think; it lays out all you need to know to survive in the wild. Eating strange things, setting traps, building shelters, stuff like that.
I’d definitely take a book about how to make a boat out of palm trees (if such a book exists), and how to navigate at sea. But I’d also pack a book of Calvin and Hobbes comics; anything by Bill Watterson is eternally funny and interesting!
Author Websites and Profiles
Ben Crothers Website
Ben Crothers Amazon Profile
Ben Crothers’s Social Media Links
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