“Who Else Is Team Linear?” Workers Draw Their Personal Visualizations of Calendar Years

In order to sell products to people, you need to be pretty darn creative at communicating specific ideas and emotions in an inventive way. Being creative is the practice of that expression and showing how you see something. If you're trying to sell a product though, presenting it in a favorable light that grasps attention is ultimately the name of the game.

Cornett (@teamcornett) is an advertising agency that regularly uploads TikTok content, giving a glimpse into what it's like working at the office, and a sneak peek behind its creative process for some of the ads it creates.

In a recent video, however, they demonstrated how various employees who work in their firm visualize months in an annual year.

It's evident they had a great time engaging in this exercise, but it also demonstrated just how differently people view things and is a testament to how creative firms are always looking for new angles in representing widely adopted concepts, like a calendar, in different ways.

"Here's what a year looks like. It's like a clock, all right?" one woman says as she draws a circle on a dry-erase marker board with a black marker.

The video then transitions to her labeling the 12 months of the year in a similar fashion to the dial of a clock face.

12 o'clock is nearest to January, 1 is nearest February, and so on and so forth. However, the way that the months are spaced out, she sets the clock's "numerical values" to the halfway points of the months. So technically the "12" marker is December 15th according to her design.

Someone else off-camera asks about the placement of December on the clock, asking why it's not at the bottom but closer to the top. The clock visualization was echoed by another person in the room, Burks, who drew their own month clock to delineate the point further. "You separate into ... quarters, you go around like a clock."

After driving home his point, Burks turns to the camera and holds his hands up.

Next up is Audrey, who traces both of her hands on the board. She smiles into the camera while someone off-screen says: "Audrey, you can't be serious."

She then points out how, when counting on one's fingers and the spaces in between that folks can visualize months that way, as well.

Robert's method made the months look like files in a computer folder. He drew out several rectangles, dedicating a single "page" to each of the months.

Nicole then demonstrated how she views the months, stating that she "pictures a planner," where she draws out calendar entries for each day on the board.

Paige's take on how she visualizes months is a bit different. She draws groups of Scrabble tiles that begin with "D" (December). This then moves from left to right until she hits April.

Next, for some reason, May is visualized beneath April and then, in another set of Scrabble tiles, the next group of months begins above these months and hits June, which moves right to left as it hits July, and then the months descend down that way till December is hit again and the cycle repeats.

"Why the right to left?" someone asks behind the camera, to which Paige replied: "I don't know, but if you were in my brain it would make sense." She goes onto say that December is on there twice because it connects to January,.

The person recording the video asks Paige why "May doesn't connect to June," to which Paige replies that she doesn't know, before stating that her design is a "circle." This surprises the recorder, as there's nothing circular about the shapes she just drew.

"It's a caterpillar," another person says, to which another person exclaims that, "It's not a circle!"

Paige wrote that she thought everyone thinks about months in the same way and someone else asked her how long she's visualized it in this way.

"Since I was born, what do you mean?" she says, cracking up.

Paige goes on to explain that when she's in one month "segment" she can only think about the months immediately before and after those months, and that the other ones come into view only when she's nearing them.

Caitlin's visualization of the year looked like all of the months were lemmings placed precariously on top of an upside down hill. Left to right, she labels all of the months.

She says it's linear, and the "hill" bottom portion actually ended up being an illustration to show how, after December, the months snap back to January and start all over again.

Paige, still trying to explain her visualization of the year, writes it down on a post-it, where she tries to explain how "June floats" and that may connects to June despite the space between the two, and that June floats to July.

"Don't you have two Junes on here?" the TikToker asks. "Probably," Paige replies, holding up the post-it note.

How do you visualize months in a year? Do you even have it laid out in your mind clearly? Was one of Cornett's employees' drawings close to what you had in your head?