If you haven’t doodled something interesting in a meeting, then you simply haven’t been to enough meetings.

While the Doodlers Anonymous blog doesn’t limit you to drawings composed in the bizarre depths of a hours-long corporate meeting, it does showcase some damned fine doodles.

These days, I don’t do that much ad campaign work, but developing image/headline thumbnails is simply doodling - the kind of work that fully engages your brain in both a visual and conceptual sense.

At one point, I bought “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” and taught myself to draw (a little bit), and yes, it did help me develop (and pitch) ad concepts.

Did it improve my writing? It’s hard to say, though the gift of “seeing” forms instead of objects is not to be underestimated.

My favorite entry on the Doodlers Anonymous site?

The Doodled Wall - a photograph of a basement office “decorated” with Sharpie line drawings, replete with line-drawing artwork, historical figures (like Rocky & Bullwinkle, Winston Churchill, etc).

You can read more about the Doodled Wall - and see a 360-degree view of it - by clicking here.

And if you haven’t totally lost the kid within you - the one who drew broccoli trees and wasn’t self-conscious about it - then what the hell. Doodle something this week.

Keep writing (and doodling), Tom Chandler.

doodling, fun break, ad concepts