Pixel Mightier than the Pen? How I used Digital Live Illustration for International Health Promoting Campuses Conference:

Its been a busy summer for me so far, I’ve been here there and everywhere creating live visual notes for a plethora of conferences, meetings and events! That’s why I was very excited to work locally with Healthy UL for the International Health Promoting Campuses Conference (Hello cycling to work! What a novelty).

The IHPC conference was held over three days, across the beautiful University of Limerick Campus. My task: capture the six Plenary Talks and create a visual record of the work being done in the writing room. I used a blended method of Live Illustration for this conference - I used my iPad to create Visual Notes for the Plenary Talks and then set up my physical canvas in the writing room.

Pixels Vs Paper

Pixels:

✅ Compact: moving from one room to the next is very easy with an iPad, perfect for large conferences being held across multiple venues. 

✅ Fast: I was able to instantly share the live illustrations with the organisers each day, digital notes require less editing post production compared to paper notes.

✅ Colourful: The colour combinations for digital notes are endless! My colour palettes is not limited to my marker collection. 

Paper: 

✅ Wow-Factor: Drawing on a big canvas in front of an audience is way more impressive than digital notes in my opinion. People get REALLY excited when they can see the canvas come to life.

✅ Humanity: Pen on paper has a more organic and ‘human’ feel to it. There is a certain charm that is achieved with physical materials and ink when creating live illustrations that just isn't there with digital notes.

✅ Interactive: It's super fun to include an interactive element when I’m drawing visual notes on a big canvas. Event attendees are able to chat around the canvas, make suggestions or even add their own little doodles via post it notes.

Check out both the digital and physical notes I created for this conference, which do you prefer?