Carlil & Carbolic

I came across the work of Hannah Palmer back in July where we had a few conversations about a new contract law resource she was developing. Her idea was to take a visual approach to helping students learn cases, making them more memorable. Unsurprisingly I was excited to hear this and had a few sneak previews along the way.

Hannah launched carlilandcarbolic.com just before Christmas 2020 and I’m delighted to be able to highlight her work on TL;DR.

Here’s what she says about the project:

Aim

The aim of my website is to bring a visual dimension to case law. It’s a great area for visual imagery as each case is a little story with characters and narrative. The illustrations provide a visual hook, whether through colours, characters or humour, to help students memorise the case name and legal rule. At the moment the website covers only contract law but I’ll be extending the concept to other areas in the future.

Materials

• iPad
• Apple Pencil
• Sketches app by Tayasui
• Average drawing skills
• Terrible sense of humour

Process

I’m a very visual learner and would always revise by creating spider diagrams and then remembering where certain cases were on the page. Or creating visual images in my mind of case law and case names to help remember the stories. When I finished studying I wanted to create something for other students so I began playing with the idea of law cartoons. They started as strip cartoons in a book but I realised that having a single image that captures something memorable was more effective. And a website more flexible than a printed book. Sometimes the image for a case comes immediately and is really easy to create. Other cases are much more difficult. And I’ve also discovered that drawing horses is impossible!