Cartoons to the rescue!

Cartoons can be used to lift any subject matter that is complex, serious, dry or any of the above. Here is a selection of recent cartoons from business publications that cover insurance, law, technology, corporate finance, waste management and the health service.

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And here's an excerpt from some live drawing during a talk at a business conference. The subject here was cyber-security, another potentially tricky one ...

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Surprise role as wedding cartoonist

Recently I did day of live drawing at a wedding held at the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate. Between the ceremony and afternoon drinks the guests had a chance to view the works on display, which allowed for a few art-based jokes (above).

This was not the typical kind of job cartoonists do at weddings (i.e. live caricatures). Instead I drew a series of cartoons telling the story of the day -- much as I would do at conferences and workshops -- from the arrival of guests, through the ceremony and afternoon reception and up to the first dance in the evening.

Here are a couple of excerpts. Each page was drawn with a cartoon frame, to go with the gallery location, and I used yellow and grey, the wedding colours, so they fitted right in.

The cartoons got a great reaction (even the magician was impressed and he does magic) and certainly added something a little bit different to the day. A fun job.

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Going live: Cartoons in front of an audience

Drawing live at conferences and events is something I've been doing more of over recent years, producing a memorable cartoon summary of speeches, workshops and discussions.

The process is variously known as graphic recording, scribing, sketchnotes, graphic facilitation, visualisation ... I tend to just call it live cartooning. The subjects can be many and varied, though this one, held last month, was something of a gift: a conference called Comedy on Stage and Page.

It was held at the University of Kent by the newly established British Stand-Up Comedy Archive (BSUCA) in association with the British Cartoon Archive. The photos are copyright BSUCA, and you can see more here.

Below is one of the finished pages. I completed eight by the end of the day's events. Get in touch if you have an event that could benefit from this kind of cartooning.

Click here to buy Royston's cartoon book