Ciao, my name is Filippo Buzzini, but you can call me Sketchy :-) and I am a visual practitioner from Switzerland. I see visual communication as a way to create meaning and better understanding through drawing, so, in a way, to help people solve problems, that is why I named my business ‘Sketchy Solutions’. I am mostly busy with graphic recording but I also do other forms of visual communication such as visualisations and illustrations. I work fluently in four languages (English, French, German and Italian) and across sectors and I cherish the challenges of deeply foreign and complex topics because I believe they are the ones where my contribution can be the greatest. You can check my work on my website www.sketchysolutions.ch.

From the very first day in this field, I knew that I would only work with Neuland markers. And let’s be honest, the fact that there is a franchise in Switzerland with a floor full of flipcharts where you can test every product sure played its role as well. But the main reasons why for me it was so clear were, first, because they are so comfortable to draw with and for the great color palette! Then I also got fond of the fact that they are refillable, produced in Germany and of the highest quality altogether. The more I used them, the more new products I started using. First it was only Neuland No.One® wedge nib, then came the Neuland No.One® Outliner round nib, then the BigOnes, then the ArtMarkers and finally even the FatOne … and now, for a standard graphic recording I find myself using all of them together!

If you have seen my work, you might have noticed that I use a lot of ink, but I also like to have different lettering styles within my recordings, and each style requires a different tool. In order to allow myself to have the flexibility that I want, no matter what recording, I always have with me all the colors I use in Neuland No.One®, Neuland No.One® Art and Neuland BigOne® format. Plus, for the Outliner, as I use it for the drawings, I prefer the No.One round nib as it allows me to have more homogeneous lines. For the other colors, I usually go with at least one darker and one lighter one (additional to the black outliner), which are in line with the customer/event colors. If I am free to select the color combination, my choice would be the red 200 for subtitles and very important text or details that need to stand out; the blue 300 for the most important words in the text; the yellow 500 for shadows in the drawings and the orange 600 for containers and background. This combination also allows me to fill in important text or titles with a ‘darker to lighter’ homogeneous shading (red to orange to yellow). If the titles are short and very prominent, I like to make them with the FatOne filled with yellow 500, to then make the outline with the Outliner and a shadow with the BigOne Outliner. I also love to fill the blank space with a solid color, and for this, a combination of the BigOne and the FatOne are essential to be able to do it fast enough.

Another of my absolutely favourite products from Neuland is the BaggyOne marker pouch. I use it as a belt and it allows me to have all of my markers on me at all time. And finally, as you might have seen in the ‘Switzerland 2018’ video (Neuland Blog article here) I was part of, I am a big fan of the Graphic Wall V3. It is so light and easy to transport, that I think I went quite a bit beyond it ‘indoor’ use and found myself using it in the mountains, in the middle of vineyards, in the middle of cities, in the forest and even transported it in the snow. Of course, I also use it for ‘standard’ graphic recording and it has already accompanied me on all the major train routes in Switzerland.