Studio Visit: Scriberia

Scriberia help brands visualise and communicate using images. We caught up with Creative Director, Lauren Gentry, to find out more about their work and what it's like working as a scribe or visualiser. 

What does Scriberia do?

Scriberia brings together consultancy with creativity to help clients define and share their vision. The company makes pictures with purpose; we apply creative problem-solving skills to cut through clutter and complexity to offer clarity. What began as a live scribing agency, quickly evolved into a multi-service visual thinking agency, where pictures – be it vision maps, animations, illustrations, infographics or murals – do the hard work.

What are the different job roles at Scriberia?

We have three teams within our creative department; visualisation, live events, and animation.

Each team is managed by a senior producer and an assistant producer. They are responsible for project delivery. 

Within the visualiser team, we currently have two lead visualisers and two visualisers. Our visualisers illustrate studio projects (like infographics, for instance) and scribe events (both live and virtual). We also work with a talented network of freelancers.

What’s a typical workday for a scribe or visualiser?

For a visualiser, there is no typical day. There’s a great variety in the clients we work with and the problems we solve. The day ahead might include, working through a brief on a call with the client, drawing out a rough draft, making amends, critiquing work with the creative director, or taking an infographic to its final colour.

If a visualiser is scribing on that day (illustrating live content), they might hop on a train with pens and paper, to meet the client at the venue, or log in to an event from home to scribe remotely on their computer or iPad. They might scribe for a few hours, or the whole day.

Can you take us through a typical career path into being a scribe?

Our scribes come from all backgrounds, and not all of those are creative, nor do they have to have a degree. A good scribe has excellent illustration skills, is a strong visual thinker, and is unafraid of new challenges. 

If they’re at the beginning of their scribe journey, then they’re researching the profession, reading, learning, and practising to listen, think and draw simultaneously, preferably in front of other people. 

As a way to keep our thinking sharp, we run quarterly 'Digi jams’, which are an opportunity for our internal, freelance, and budding network of scribes to live scribe a hot topic on Zoom and gain peer-to-peer insight and feedback. 

Both scribes and visualisers need quick thinking, however, the key difference is the time. Performance is a big part of scribing, and a scribe needs to be able to work quickly, multi-task, be decisive and keep calm while under pressure. 

A scribe is ready to work with a client once they demonstrate they have the skills to visualise content in a smart, beautiful, bespoke and engaging way in real-time.

And how about a visualiser, does it differ?

Our visualisers have all the skills of a scribe, but our studio work requires them to establish more of an in-depth understanding of the challenge at hand and to be able to create illustrative work in a variety of styles. For more complex jobs, a visualiser will collaborate with our client to co-create a visual that is both stylish and valuable. 

We have 2 tiers within the creative team; visualiser and lead visualiser. 

The visualiser will work with the lead creatives to establish strong skills in all of the types of work we produce.

The lead visualisers have responsibility for the quality and timeliness of illustration and scribing projects. They’ll also liaise closely with the producers, to ensure schedules are realistic, and with the creative director to ensure the work is of the highest quality. 

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We’re an outsider in our client's world, and are able to act as a filter and draw out the overarching messages from a mass of information.

What are the perks to being a scribe or visualiser?

As a scribe or visualiser, we have the unique opportunity to use both our artistic and problem-solving skills to visualise our clients’ ideas. It’s a fantastic job. 

Our clients vary and so do the stories they’re trying to tell. 

All of our creative work starts with a deep understanding of the story we and our clients are hoping to tell. But good storytelling is about so much more than establishing a narrative, it’s also connecting your audience with that story and making them care.

We’re always striving to create bespoke visuals for our clients, which keeps things fresh and challenging as a creative.

What are the challenges?

The benefit of working with Scriberia is that we’re an outsider in our client's world, and are able to act as a filter and draw out the overarching messages from a mass of information.

For us, the challenge is getting to grips with the content and making sure we have a clear understanding of what the key messages are. A scribe or visualiser needs to feel confident enough to ask those important questions to be able to to clearly bring the story to life in the simplest way possible. 

We’re always trying to make sure we’re delivering bespoke work for our clients. This means immersing ourselves in their world, having empathy with their challenges and drawing the best visual that communicates the concepts in a unique way.

What are you most proud of as a company?

"I’m most proud of the fact that we’ve taken drawing, this very common, simple tool and shown our clients that it is powerful and essential. Every year we create tens of thousands of drawings, from rough sketches to storyboards, that help them make sense of their world. Our work really does make a difference and that feels great." –Chris Wilson, Co-founder 

What advice would you offer someone wanting to become a scribe? 

• Do your research. Scribing is a fast-growing global industry 
• Get comfortable drawing quickly and confidently in a style that works for you.
• Learn to listen and be able to identify the most important points in the conversations 
• Interperate ideas in ways that are meaningful and relevant to the client
• Learning to use hierarchy and structure to tell the best story
• Practice, Practise, Practise…
• Ready to draw live? Apply to join our network of scribes

And a visualiser?

• In additoin to the skills above, get curious about the world and communicating ideas through the power of pictures. This could be anything from spot illustrations, infographics, or data visualisations
• Exercise your visual thinking and problem-solving skills by creating images that 1) communicate facts and data to make them easier to understand, and 2) explain a journey, system, or a process
• Develop your illustration skills and demonstrate an ability to work in different styles
  
  

Follow Scriberia: Website & Instagram

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