After seeing me work, I'm often asked: "How can you draw so fast?"
There are a few reasons:
I have a lot of practice
I use similar symbols and icons over and over — like a visual alphabet.
It's faster to draw an idea than to write something down verbatim
The last point seems counter-intuitive, so I like to demonstrate it with this image:
I recently expanded on my process, and the efficiency of images as communication tools, in a guest post for the ExactTarget blog.
If you're already a believer in the power of visuals, but need some hard data to convince your colleagues, check out this super-cool, meta-infographic: 13 Reasons Why Your Brain Craves Infographics.