Story of Gilmard.com

Sketching, drawing or whatever this is called, I always enjoy to make them. During my kindergarten, I can clearly remember that classmates liked me to draw on their notebooks. It was an interesting game for us, I was drawing and we all together were making the story! Even we voted for the destiny of characters, whenever couldn’t come to an agreement! Democracy practiced 🙂

Although playing with other kids were my favorite, making cartoons was a kind of solo game to me. I was directing my stories, where characters were created, lived and came to their destiny at the end. I really enjoyed it!

This continued during the early ages at my primary school. Later, it gets more mature, especially during high school teachers were sketched ;-).  At university, I was sketching for a few student magazines in a regular weekly manner. Those cartoons must be still available (will be here soon). Back to those cheerful university days, I always put some cartoons on my notes, not necessarily related to the topic but more like a very short break for readers (including myself).

During all these years, I have received lots of good reactions to my cartoons. I assume that not everyone just wanted to make me happy, so at least, some of them really liked the cartoons.

Despite my will to make my cartoons public, I don’t why I have never done it before! Maybe I would do it much sooner if I could know how much energy it gives to me.

Let’s see what happens a few weeks before Gilmard.com was born. Regarding my job as a software designer, my team and I attended a company event, where several teams like us were planning for the work needed to be done for the next couple of months. In our team, we found out the work balance was not fine for the coming 6 sprints (sprint = a 2-week interval). Despite our attempt to speak up, we weren’t sufficiently heard. I quickly make some cartoons on some sticky notes and put them on the board behind us. Fortunately, it did catch some eyes and the right person asked about our story and the balance issue was solved!

The cartoon was made very quickly to show an imbalanced amount of work during 6 sprints: no work at the first ones and lots of work at the end.

A colleague of mine, Ivan, brought them back to the office and put them on a public board in the office. A few days later, someone was passing by and stopped at the public board with the sticky notes. I didn’t know that he will play such an important role in my artistic aspect of life.  I was sitting near the board and “Do you know who made these cartoons?”, he asked. The answer was easy! Then he asked if he can take a photo of them to use them on his website. I proudly said “Yes!”. I showed him more of my cartoons (good time for advertising myself!), he shared very positive comments. A few days later, we had a coffee break together and we’ve had more sessions afterward.

That day, Mark Robinson took a photo of my sticky notes and he is still using them in his workshops. I must say that Mark and his positive feedback approach, which he utilizes in his courses, put one of the first breaks for Gilmard.com. So far, I’ve proudly made several cartoons for him and will be more in the future. He is a partner of Gilmard, I must say.

That’s how Gilmard.com was born.

Making cartoons is a source of energy for me. So is every reaction to my cartoons. I put a piece of me there and by this, I do really mean it. I thank you all for visiting Gilmard.com and sharing my cartoons on your networks. I appreciate every reaction, which helps me to grow.