Were you the type to draw elaborate doodles in your math class margins? Well, great news: Science now says that letting your mind wander is good for you. And indie Swedish design studio Henrik & Sofia went and made a Max for Live device that brings back your freedom to doodle and animates and exports your drawings. It’s a fabulously whimsical break from staring at colored rectangles and waveforms.
Founders Henrik and Sofia Gillström sent this one over to us. It’s time to put your distracted mind into action. Klottra is Swedish for Doodle. They explain:
It’s an audio effect that adds a lightweight drawing canvas to Ableton Live. It doesn’t process sound, it simply reads the amplitude of the track it’s on and animates your lines in real time.
We’ve always doodled while listening or thinking through ideas, so we built a way to do that inside Ableton. Klottra has eight curated colors, dark/light themes, stores everything inside the project, and exports drawings as crisp SVGs.
Love it! And the image at top is a reference to the fact that they’ll even produce fancy framed versions of your doodles if they’re really special.
The app is 30% off for launch until the start of next month.
Okay, about the focus thing, let’s reference this rather than just make that claim:
The Neuroscience of Doodling: Understanding Attention and Creativity Bryant del Toro (with links)
The “thinking” benefits of doodling [Harvard Health]
The impact of doodling on cognition and affect: A scoping review [The Arts in Psychotherapy]
Or it’s also possible it does nothing, but hey, if it makes no difference, you get the same results with a doodle, which, to be honest, was always my personal goal. (Only capitalism wants us to constantly improve our productivity. I want to be more productive in terms of doodles produced, yes.)
Note-taking for the win: Doodling does not reduce boredom or mind-wandering, nor enhance attention or retention of lecture material
Doodle on, I say.
While you’re pimping your Live set, it’s worth mentioning our friends over at Isotonik Studios have their Black Friday-season sale going on. So while I work on wrapping some other news/reviews from Max for Live land, feel free to peruse these gems, too!