Amber Anderson on live scribing, drawing conversations and doodling on Porsches
No do-overs, no second chances to perfect things, ‘live scribing’ is an illustrative skill that puts the artist’s ability to stay hyper-focused and think quickly to the ultimate test.
Listening as people speak, turning their words, ideas and even the mood of the room into drawings in real time, it’s a creative process that includes deciding what matters while simultaneously putting pen to paper. For Amber Anderson, that unusual combination has become a career that has taken her from conferences around the world to drawing directly onto a £150,000 Porsche.
Amber, who grew up in Dartford and has also lived in Margate, is an illustrator whose portfolio stretches from local murals, band posters and shop windows to work for Adidas Originals and Wimbledon. Yet increasingly, it is live scribing that has become her speciality.
“Essentially I go to conferences, workshops, events, anything you can imagine,” she explains. “And I will have a certain amount of space, whether it’s like a smaller A-board or a whole entire wall, and basically it’s my job to listen to all of the content, whether it’s discussions or keynote speakers or whatever is going on, and make a visual summary.”
The finished piece might combine words, lettering, drawings, diagrams, metaphors and snippets of conversation. The result is both a record of an event and a way of making its ideas easier to absorb.
“I had to learn how to let all of that go, and that it had to be in the moment, and it had to be that whatever came out came out.”
“Anyone that’s been at the event will recognise all of the content,” Amber says, “and it’s a good way for them to look back and review and just remember what happened on the day because quite often these events can be overwhelming and you might think you remember everything but then you go away and you forget bits.”
It is a skill Amber now has to deploy at extraordinary speed. Recently, she was in Norway working at the Oslo Business Forum, attended by some 4,000 people. For the keynote speeches, she was digitally scribing and had to deliver each visual summary just minutes after the speaker had finished.
“I was having to deliver it like five minutes before the end of the session,” she says. The image would then go to the technical team, who would put it onto the presentation, meaning that as the audience applauded the speaker a visual summary of the speech could appear on the big screen.
The pressure is considerable, but Amber has learned how to hyper-focus. “You’re just completely zoned into nothing apart from every single word this person’s saying,” she says. “And while I’m drawing or noting down one thing, I’m having to listen to the next thing, too.”
That ability began long before she knew live scribing was even a thing.
At school, she would make visual notes when revising, despite getting into trouble for it. “I’d actually take in all the information just by processing it out in visuals,” she says. It was only years later, after studying illustration at Camberwell College of Arts, that she realised she had effectively been training herself for the job.
The breakthrough came through a chance encounter. Having been drawing gig posters for local bands, window illustrations for shops and taking on whatever creative opportunities came her way, Amber was sitting around a friend’s house one evening and began doodling what the people around her were talking about and drawing details such as their clothes.
The next day, her friend’s boyfriend saw the drawings. He worked for a small agency specialising in live visual work and got in touch.
“I started working with them and they sort of taught me the ropes,” Amber says.
There was a catch: she had to unlearn some of what she had previously regarded as good illustration practice.
“I was very used to doing highly detailed illustrations that I really labour over,” she explains. “I had to learn how to let all of that go, and that it had to be in the moment, and it had to be that whatever came out came out.”
A decade later, that ability has taken her to almost every continent. She has worked with major corporations from British Red Cross to Bafta to Google while also working with community organisations and disabled-led theatre groups.
The work is not simply about making corporate events look attractive - Amber increasingly sees live scribing as a form of communication and accessibility.
“It’s also used as an access tool,” she says, particularly through her work with disabled-led organisations. “It’s a way for not only neurodiverse people but people with learning disabilities or people where English isn’t their first language - it’s a way of bridging barriers to access.”
In some cases, live scribing is now included in access budgets alongside services such as sign-language interpreting and captioning. The visual record provides another route into information for people who may not process spoken communication in the same way as others.
Amber’s skill is not simply drawing quickly. It is knowing what to draw. She has developed what she calls a “visual library”, allowing her to translate abstract concepts into images and choose metaphors that will resonate with a particular audience.
“It’s picking and choosing the right visuals for the right context,” she says. “But then it’s also really powerful when you can pick out metaphors as well… like ‘adopting new technology’ could be putting an iPad into swaddling clothes or something like that.”
That same ability to respond in the moment has featured in some of her more spectacular commercial projects.
At the Goodwood Festival of Speed, she spent four days live-illustrating a Porsche 911, where visitors could approach her and request elements, from portraits of former Porsche drivers to cartoonish V8 engines.
“I was literally putting a pen on a £150,000 car,” she recalls. Moments later, the Goodwood press arrived and suddenly “there’s like 15 cameras and microphones and everything around me - that was definitely a mad experience”.
Elsewhere, she has worked on high-profile projects including a London-centric T-shirt design for Adidas Originals. The limited-edition shirts were produced for the launch of the brand’s flagship Oxford Street store.
“Walking into the shop and seeing this whole display with my name and information and the drawing on all these T-shirts was, yeah, a ‘Wow!’ moment,” she says.
For Adidas x Zalando, Amber was one of about 10 artists invited to customise Stan Smith trainers live. Guests could choose an artist based on their style and request designs, which were then drawn directly onto the shoes for them to take away.
Her work has also included a Wimbledon Foundation activity book for children, murals for Urban Outfitters and a range of other commissions that have often emerged through chance encounters, personal connections and simply being open to opportunities.
But it is live scribing that perhaps best captures what Amber has built. It combines the instincts of an illustrator with the concentration of a stenographer, the responsiveness of a performer and the ability to turn complicated information into something instantly recognisable.
What’s that saying about a picture being worth a thousand words?
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