From TED.com: Studies show that sketching and doodling improve our comprehension — and our creative thinking. So why do we still feel embarrassed when we’re caught doodling in a meeting? Sunni Brown says: Doodlers, unite! She makes the case for unlocking your brain via pad and pen.

From .net magazine, my article “Why the Doodle Matters.”

You can read it on the .net website or download a PDF version of the article.

Editor’s note: Editor’s note: Sunni Brown owns an information design firm and is a speaker and co-author of “GameStorming: A Playbook for Rule-breakers, Innovators and Changemakers.” She was recently named on Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business List and on the 10 Most Creative People on Twitter list. She spoke at the TED 2011 conference in Long Beach, California.

(CNN) – Humans have been doodling in snow, in sand and on cave walls for more than 30,000 years.

George Washington, Thomas Edison, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan and Vladimir Nabokov were doodlers. Bill Gates and Frank Gehry are among today’s active doodlers.

Yet most of us haven’t reflected on why we feel compelled to draw.

In fact, many parts of our society — including businesses, schools and colleges — frown on doodling and consider it a waste of time. While we can’t overcome cultural biases overnight, we can certainly ask a relevant question: Why is doodling so universal? What is doodling doing for us?

Virginia Scofield, an immunologist at the University of Texas at San Antonio, knows from personal and professional experience what doodling does. After struggling with organic chemistry in college, she decided to try doodling the complexities of the subject rather than memorizing them from the textbook. Scofield happened upon what native doodlers have known for a long time: Doodling can improve cognitive performance. Because of her success in transforming her own learning process, Scofield incorporated doodling and visual note-taking into her university classroom for more than two decades, and she told me it notably improved the success rate of her students.

Scofield is not the only one who’s learned to be impressed by the Doodle. Jackie Andrade, a professor at the University of Plymouth,published a study finding a 29 percent increase in information retention gained by doodlers. She noted that, contrary to popular belief, doodling seems to prevent people from losing focus on boring or complex subject matter. It gives learners who may otherwise mentally check out an opportunity to check back in.

Other researchers exploring the impact of doodling and drawing have come to equally significant conclusions about this deceptively simple act. A recent article in Science argued that drawing in science education caters to individual learning preferences and motivates students to engage and explore content in a more meaningful way. And classroom research shows that not only do learners better understand concepts through simple drawing, but it sets the stage for innovative and divergent ways of thinking. For a nation with an ego wounded by our decreased scores on the Torrance Creativity Test, this unfettered access to creative thinking shouldn’t be underestimated.

Just ask Google, the only company on record with an official Chief Doodler on the payroll. Google’s culture is well known for its 80/20 “innovation time off” rule. And for many employees, that time is spent using simple visual language to doodle, sketch and prototype new business opportunities. Indeed, many companies seeking an edge are looking to applications of hand-drawn visual language as a prospective lifeboat. In a hyper-competitive marketplace, thinkers need all the mojo they can muster.

To the throngs of doodlers around the world, this evidence is likely just the beginning of our gentle “I told you so” moments. Learning that accommodates more than text-based or verbal information amplifies the effects of cognition and creativity. And when the Science article suggested that drawing should be recognized along with reading, writing and speaking as a key element in education, it was a hallelujah moment for doodlers around the world.

I’m one of them. I use doodling for a variety of reasons: I use it to get clarity around a concept, I use it to relax, I use it to communicate ideas with others and get their refinement of them, I use it to map complex systems for companies, I use it to run innovation games for business, I use it to get insight on something puzzling me.

See some examples of how doodles are used

So how do you get better at doodling? It’s a delightfully easy task. Learners can start with the Visual Alphabet, a series of six flows—the point, line, arc, angle, spiral and loop, and the six forms—the oval, eye, triangle, rectangle, house and cloud. With these 12 “letters,” prospective doodlers can articulate any visual representation of any concept they can imagine. All it takes is a commitment to learning this language, native to our brain’s visual cortex, and applying it to challenges either at work or at school. Rather than talking in circles about a complex subject, try doodling it using words and pictures. Show your teachers and colleagues another way to see information. The insights and aha moments will arrive naturally in the process.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Sunni Brown.

Click a thumbnail for a larger view. Click here to view them on Flickr.

Being part of any TED event, whether as a speaker, facilitator or visualizer, has been like joining a family. A big, raucous, good-samaritan, wildly creative family. I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of being involved in various TED events, my first via an invitation from Duarte Design (another big, raucous, good-samaritan, wildly creative family) to curate a team of graphic facilitators in partnership with Steelcase and GE. One of our BrightSpot team members was at the Palm Spring simulcast, where people seem to run around in their bathing suits. This year, I sent another BrightSpot team member to the TEDActive event (more bathing suits) while I was participating as a speaker at TED Long Beach – a terrifying and exhilarating experience. And recently, TED invited me to participate at TEDGlobal in Scotland, where the whiskey runneth over and the people feel like friendly, neighborly Texans. This post showcases a few photographs of the murals created during the event, as well as the set-up. If you want to see a picture of Jetman, go to the Flickr set.

The purpose of this particular event at TEDGlobal was to showcase the remarkable work of three young, entrepreneurial Indian women. One filmmaker, one a fashionista and the third, a strange hybrid of incredible talent, whimsy and genius. The large mural that says The Stuff of Life (TEDGlobal’s theme) is hers. It’s beautiful work and indicative of the fact that she is a real artist, unlike myself. Remember folks: visual thinking doesn’t have to be art. It’s about clear communication and those don’t always overlap.

You can see images from the event here on Flickr or by clicking the thumbnails in the gallery below.

To my pleasant (and slightly confused) surprise, Fast Company chose me as one of the folks on their 100 Most Creative People in Business List for 2011. (I came in at #56, so take that, Ryan Seacrest!)

In seriousness, I was pleased to be acknowledged as a “Creative,” since it’s a title I haven’t embraced throughout my life. And from the lives of Frank Lloyd Wright and Marie Antoinette, I’ve learned that public appreciation comes and goes. So I’ll enjoy the glory while I can and thank you, friends and clients, for being supportive of my work.

Jeffrey Zeldman seems to think I’ve got a message worth spreading. He’s given me great opportunities in the last few weeks and I’ve tried to make him proud with my interview on The Big Web Show and now, with my article for A List Apart. Brilliantly, this stellar net magazine decided to do a double-feature with me and Mr. Sketchnote Army himself, Mike Rohde of Rohdesign.com. The double-dip was all about respecting the Doodle and honoring the Sketch. Mike has incredible talent and we both understand that drawing is a second language – one that serves all of us well if we simply commit to it. But I won’t start preaching, just read for yourself.

My experience as the Resident Doodle Expert at Sharpie, and the subsequent media tour it required, eventually led Margaret Webb-Pressler of the Washington Post to my telephone. She wanted to do a feature on doodling in the Kids Post and thought (probably because I myself am quite a child) that my work would be a great match for the story. The interview lasted about 30 minutes – resulting in, I don’t know, 17 whole words from me – and turned out to be the beautiful splash page you see above, with presidential doodles and all. We agreed there should be a Call for Kids’ Doodle Submissions for the holiday season and I’m really looking forward to seeing what gets published. It’s a two-part feature story, so perhaps in the next article I’ll squeeze in the line I’m now famous for in my family: “To doodle is to light up your mind!” Long live the Revolution, and thank you, Washington Post, for the coverage.

Sunni Brown at Duarte from Duarte Design on Vimeo.

Nancy Duarte, CEO of Duarte Design, is rapidly becoming one of my heroes. She’s not only intelligent, beautiful and driven, but she also has a humility and heart of gold you don’t see often in people at her level. Her firm designs presentations for people who know how to tell a damn good visual story – people like Al Gore and countless of the TED presenters. So I’m delighted to know her and learn from her and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to speak about The Doodle Revolution at her company in Silicon Valley. The slides I presented to them, mortifyingly, were slides I designed for my talk at TEDx UT because Nancy and her VP of HR asked me to do a presentation while I was on vacation. The only slides I had access to were from a talk to another crowd at another time. The horror of not being able to customize a presentation for the world’s pre-eminent presentation design firm was unspeakable. But what the hell. I made do. And Nancy told me later that her employees are a notoriously tough crowd to move, so she was happy with their response. And if Nancy’s happy, I’m happy. So with that, I give you another version of The Doodle Revolution.

If you’d like to see a pretty awkward interview, then check out the video above of me on the Whatever Show with Alexis and Jennifer. Good lord. It was only their 3rd show – the ladies having made the transition from Sirius radio to television – so it became pretty clear to me that the producers were still ironing out some kinks. Regardless of the slight fiasco, I thought that Alexis (Martha Stewart’s daughter) was inquisitive and endearing and I thought that I represented visual thinking fairly well in the freaking four minutes I had to do it. Have I done better? Yes. Did I learn something from the experience? Most definitely. What did I learn? (1) Television is a circus filled with sound and fury. (2) I look better wearing make-up. And (3) Even in the most ridiculous of back-stage circumstances, I can let go of pressure and enjoy myself. That 3rd discovery rocked. So even though I didn’t get my Sharpie mention in, I’d still have to say, in keeping with the title of the show, “whatever.” We all got through it.