Marker Fanatics & Facilitating with Great Markers!

Great markers provide you with the option to create many different types of charts, diagrams, and pictures in your training or facilitated sessions. If you don’t use markers in your sessions, that might be a sign you need to make some changes!

Visual elements (and hence markers) are a big part of Training From the BACK of the Room, which is a training framework based on the latest brain science, that increases engagement and retention! I’ll talk about markers a bit more as well as other aspects of great training in another post later this week titled, Is Your Training Amazing & Engaging? Or Does it Smell? 

Marker Options

You can certainly use dry erase markers on flip charts or Sharpie even has ‘flip chart’ markers.

I used them for years and they do work. Although I got tired of throwing them out and the tips getting smashed. If this is your only option however, I’d rather have them anytime then have no markers at all!

I like the scented markers for students, since they smell better (and it’s fun to see people with dots on their nose — think about it). Having an assortment for each group of students is ideal!

At this point, we at Helping Improve use Neuland Markers. They are refillable (yes, really), come in tons of awesome colors, you can replace the tips (“nibs”), and you can see what color the marker is when storing them tip down (better ink flow). The markers themselves are not that expensive, but when you buy 25 of them with the refill ink, you might be in for some sticker shock! However, if you add up all the throw-away markers you have purchased, I think you are better off (sorry data wonks, I don’t have a quantitative analysis of the ink usage!). Note: I don’t know anyone who works at Neuland or get any kickback (but if they read this and want to send me some samples, I’m cool with that!).

How to Tell if You or Someone You Love, is a Marker Fanatic

Are you a marker fanatic? I am. I was not always this way… I’m not sure when it happened. But I think I know the person who got me fully hooked.
If you get irritated by more than a few of these, you may be a marker fanatic:

1. People use your markers and don’t put them back in the holder correctly! Tip DOWN

   

   people!

2. People take your markers with them and you don’t have the color you NEED!
3. Your marker set mistakenly only has a large grey marker, but you REALLY needed the small grey marker!
4. You did not know you would need your markers and are stuck using old dry erase markers on a flip chart!
5. You see other people writing charts that are not complete enough, don’t have borders, or enough colors! (but you restrain yourself from updating their charts)
6. You DO get up and fix other people’s charts and are incredulous that they are annoyed! It NEEDED a Border!
7. The only markers available have a round tip!
8. You have all the right markers and are marking great visual charts, but you are not allowed to put them on the walls!
9. What did I miss?

Neuland Markers

I have a lot of clients who ask me what kind of markers we use and which ones I recommend. Some of this will depend on what you are doing. If you only facilitate the occasional session, the full set we use will be overkill. The set I list below is for someone who is doing a lot of training, facilitating, and organizational coaching — and use flip charts! You can browse the Neuland US site or International sites, but be careful, they have some really cool stuff. They do have sets of markers, but we’ve found that the sets they have are not the best mix of colors and sizes. We have a standardized set based on our experience with them. The BigOnes are great for creating charts, No.Ones for writing key text, and the Outliners for writing most of the text on a chart and they have permanent ink that drys instantly so you can highlight over it with BigOnes.

“the set”
All with a wedge nib (not the round nib).

BigOne

• 101 grey
• 102 light grey
• 200 red
• 300 blue
• 301 turquoise
• 302 light blue
• 303 pastel blue

  

• 400 green
• 401 light green
• 402 olive
• 403 pastel green
• 500 brilliant yellow (added 12/18)
• 501 yellow
• 600 orange
• 700 violet
• 701 pink
• 702 pastel violet
• 704 neon pink (added 6/19)
• 801 golden ochre

No.One

• 102 light grey
• 200 red
• 201 dark red
• 300 blue
• 302 light blue
• 304 denim blue
• 400 green
• 402 olive
• 802 dark brown

Outliner:

• I bring 5 for any of our in-person classes. We use this for most of the lettering so you need more of them. Then using the colors for highlighting and emphasis!

Ink

• You need to get the ink for all the colors you buy, but Pro Tip: You can get away with only the Outliner ink to start, since that goes the fastest if you use the Outliner black for most lettering. [Note that the Outliner ink is a different ink (permanent) than the other colors].

The mesh cube above that we hold the markers (They allow you to stand up all your markers, so the ink flows to the tip) are no longer available. However, we have found some other cubes that we are using now. You can find them on Amazon.

Although, I really want to do a Kickstarter to create a marker vest modeled after John Popper of Blues Traveler’s harmonica bandolier vest or if you don’t know that reference, picture Chewy, but as a facilitator with markers!

Questions? Comments? Other marker recommendations? Other colors? Other questions to help determine if someone is a marker fanatic?