Lockdown - a visual journal part 1

My visual record keeping of those first months in the UK

9th March 2025

Today is Covid day of reflection here in the UK.

A couple of months ago I thought it would be interesting to see the visual journal pages of everyone who kept one at that time. My ambition was to group them into a collection that showed how individuals experienced those surreal days, weeks and months differently. But life and work gets in the way of best laid plans so here I am… sharing my first pages. If you kept a visual record of this time I’d love to see your first pages, please add them here.

I love the fact that I thought to do a front page - The optimism of a serial visual journal starter! I certainly found a lot of comfort in keeping this journal for the first few months of lockdown.

Week 1 - This was a scary week for many reasons, but as a self employed person who makes their living as a graphic recorder drawing at live events it was the week that our business fell off a cliff. £20k of booked work was cancelled. We are a 2 adult household who both work in our business, so in one tv broadcast we went from doing okay, to zero income for the foreseeable future. I can still feel that feeling.

If you’re interested I’ll share week 2 next week.