Gosport woman sets up business to make meetings fun using illustration

Emma Paxton set up her business Imagistic in 2016 after being made redundant.

She was previously an event manager for 20 years, but started developing her skills working self-employed focusing on conference facilitation after her redundancy.

During her career, she picked up facilitation skills, using pinboard meeting techniques - something that she carried over with her when she became self-employed.

She spent a lot of time taking minutes in meetings and pulling out key information, giving her a good foundation to start her business.

Emma is a graphic recorder and illustrator, which means she draws pictures that capture the key ideas and messages during a meeting or conference, to turn ideas and points into interesting, easily digestible images.

The 49-year-old said: ‘Meetings can be quite boring. It’s another way of challenging people's minds and it engages them. There’s lots of benefits to it and it’s really good fun. It’s a different way to tell a story really.’

She attends events and draws live during presentations, as well as team meetings, stakeholder meetings, networking events and exhibitions.

She also creates hand drawn visual agendas and evaluations, postcards, business cards and much more.

She said: ‘I really enjoy what I do. Every graphic recording is totally unique and after the conference or meeting my work is shared with participants and displayed in my clients offices as a reminder of the event and to spark the next level of conversation. I am naturally creative person and enjoy taking complex information and turning it into an easy, understandable visual.’

In June, Emma worked with charity Barnardo’s, recording and visualising the charity-wide staff training project, Trauma Informed.

The graphics were displayed throughout the three days to help refresh everyone’s memories and are now being used as posters to spread the word throughout the organisation.