Visual note-taking is the new religion
Forget Scientology, Kabbalah or The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the growing Movement of Visual Notetakers is where it’s at.
One of my big hopes pre-SXSW was that I’d learn some cool stuff, particularly about how to present thoughts and ideas visually. A good few of The Many are skilled draughtsmen who easily loop and whirl their way into the thoughts that spring up during brainstorms, workshops and meetings. I’m not one of them. My notes are always predictably outed as bullet-pointed lines; I’m a word person.
Thanks to Sunni Brown, Austin Kleon, Dave Gray and Mike Rohde, I enjoyed one of the most entertaining and instructive sessions at SXSW, and got a lovely wee notebook to remember it by. I wasn’t quite prepared for how much enthusiasm and general religious fervour erupted in the room, but then I guess I was in the US of A and when folks there get enthusiastic, they get enTHUSiastic.
Sunni was particularly encouraging – she’s a self-declared non-artist who has taught herself how to take notes in a visually arresting way. Her main takeaway point was around content capture – she talked about using a short-term memory cache to keep the salient points from the conversation in mind and ensure that these get translated onto paper ahead of the fillers and rambling that go on in most meetings. Manage the hierarchy of information by ordering points as you see them and interpret as you go along.
She took us through how it’s really simple to use things like dividers (dotted lines, curvy lines) to separate big ideas; how you can get creative with bullet points so that they reflect the subject you’re noting e.g. red crosses for medical, $$ signs for monetary; and how you can use comic-book frames (the flashes you see around ‘Kerpow’ when Batman schlocks the Joker) to draw the eye to key points.
Mike showed us the basics of beefing up your typography with a few simple lines, whilst Dave taught us to draw people – always the hardest thing – in a few simple strokes. Draw the biggest thing first (i.e. the body), then the focus e.g. mobile phone, then fill in the rest.
Dave also talked about drawing mini platforms on the page to house individual ideas which can then be connected with arrows to show flows and interactions. He also suggested that laying down some key structures before the session starts can be a helpful way of making best use of your page.
Austin (apt name for a SXSW panellist) quoted American childrens’ book illustrator Ed Emberley with: ‘Drawing is collage’; in other words, drawing is a collection of pieces that you assemble to create something good. He went on to prove this brilliantly by getting us all to draw a grid of nine squares and then create nine emotions using just three shapes.
As with all skills, being good at visual note-taking is as much about practice as imagination. I’ve got a lot more practising to do before I’m as skilled as the SXSW panellists (check out this fantastic Visual Thinking primer from Dave Gray on Flickr).
Visual thinking is the new religion, come worship.
Fantastic sketch of the Ze Frank talk from SXSW 2010 by Austin Kleon (see more about his SXSW exploits on his cartoon blog).
20 comments
I loved this panel. My favorite part was the 9 box emotions grid. So simple and easy.
Cool stuff … also have a look at Mind Mapping as devised by Tony Buzan (http://www.thinkbuzan.com/uk) which could be an even more powerful way of capturing your thoughts visually. You could easily add Mind Mapping skills to visual notetaking – really powerful stuff :-)
http://www.thinkbuzan.com/uk
Love and learn heaps,
Ian
These visuals are so beautiful!
But isn’t this basically mind-mapping by Tony Buzan that has been around for a while? Or going back further, Leonardo Da Vinci?
What a terrific and simple way to capture a conversation and its meaning. Thanks for sharing this.
Waht other said, get the mind mapping book by Buzan. Great stuff!
I agree that was very cool: boiling it down to these kinds of basic tools gave me the belief I can draw (even though I can’t…).
I’m a total level-entry newbie when it comes to this stuff, unlike you. I can tell from the sketch Mel Exon featured in her excellent ‘Joys of SXSW’ post on http://bbh-labs.com – you’re good at this stuff.
http://bbh-labs.com
@Ian @Mattias I once spent a long afternoon with Buzan’s Mind-mapping book (a book club favourite, by the way, which I think unfortunately reduces its kudos/impact) and liked the idea of expanding thoughts into visual molecules on the page. But I never really adopted the methodology, not sure why. Possibly because I was studying English Literature at the time and words were my currency.
For me, the live experience of the SXSW panel really helped cement this stuff in my mind, and the practical exercises offered easy ways into experimenting with visual note-taking.
@Jiah Kim – you’re right, there’s nothing new under the sun! Leonardo da Vinci’s detailed sketches and notetaking are no doubt the source of inspiration for a lot of people in this space.
I knew calling visual notetaking a ‘new religion’ might cause trouble…
@Mike – I’m really glad you found this post useful. Dan Roam is another guy to check out, mainly on problem solving and selling ideas using sketches http://www.thebackofthenapkin.com/
http://www.thebackofthenapkin.com/
Check out @LenKendall’s posterous of wonderful things from SXSW: http://lenkendall.posterous.com/tag/sketchnotes
http://lenkendall.posterous.com/tag/sketchnotes
I might try this next year. You actually end up with something worthwhile…
Awesome post Charlotte. Another SXSW session that I NOW wished I’d gone to! I went to Dan Roam’s ‘back of the napkin’ session – the master of visual comms – but it was higher level (but great!) compared to the hands-on nature of this one… nice.
I don’t think that visual note taking is the same as mind-mapping.
I’ve always thought that mind-mapping is a tool that can be used to extract what’s in your head and make new connections between those thoughts.
However, visual note-taking is about writing/drawing someone else’s thoughts as they’re talking/presenting. Admittedly you’re applying your own prism to them by choosing what to highlight and sketch, but they’re still another person’s work. For me, that’s a big difference (both in technique and process) and one that mind-mapping isn’t best suited for.
This post has been really helpful to me, Charlotte.
Like you I’m a word person and I almost don’t trust myself to actually capture what I need when I shift to a more visual style of note-taking. I have tried several times but I always cave and go back to my old tricks, taking minutes-style notes on what happens and jotting down my own ideas as they arise. Funnily enough, I take my most useful notes when I do move away from my old habits, but the thing about habits… hard to break.
I really like Sunni’s point about using a short-term memory cache to keep the important bits in mind and sort of sieve them out of the filler and rambling (not that we fill or ramble at Made by Many, no, certainly not!). This could be a good trick, I’m going to try it at my next note-taking opportunity.
Charlotte,
What an excellent summary. Thank you so much for taking the time to write it up. Now let’s see your visual interpretation of the panel. :) But truly, I am glad to know you were encouraged and I just want to reinforce to you that there is huge ROI is learning how to make and take visual notes. I was a skeptic and as you mentioned, a non-artist, when I approached this skill set and it has been transformative for me and my own learning ability (which I didn’t even think was struggling originally). So if you’re inspired, go with it.
Cheers,
Sunni
Oh, and, in regards to the question about whether visual notetaking is equivalent to mindmapping. It is and it isn’t. Mindmapping has a predictable structure in that the drawing will ultimately resemble the neuronal pathways in our brains – webbing and branching. Mindmapping is hugely valuable and supported by a lot of evidence in terms of what resonates with us cognitively. Visual notetaking, in my mind, is mindmapping on a bit of steroids. You can start with the basic structure of a mindmap (idea in the center, related ideas radiating outward) or you can start anywhere you want and make a structure that’s meaningful for you or for the specific content you’re wrangling with. So, while they do share many advantages, I would say visual notetaking and mindmapping are related, but they’re not twins.
Sunni
Unfortunately I had to leave Austin before these fabulous graphic recorders presented, so I appreciate the fantastic post! It sounds like it was an amazing discussion with some amazing panelists!
Hey Sunni, thanks very much for your comments. I’m with you on the untwin-ness of mindmapping and visual note-taking.
For me, the difference between them is that the latter gives a much freer hand to use visual cues that neatly summarise a thought. The former is more about tracing connections and grouping thoughts but is likely to end up as a few circles and words rather than a fully-fledged thing of wonder.
I’d love to share my interpretation of the panel but… I’m still practising. Let’s see where I’m at come SXSW 2011.
Hi Charlotte, all
You might want to take a look at Tim Casswell http://creativeconnection.co.uk/ – an Artist in Residence at the Southbank Centre . Really beautiful work, which he uses in various companies/ meetings/ Olympic 2012 bid.
http://creativeconnection.co.uk/
Here we combine videojournalism with Tim’s visual minutes to tell a 3 minute story about Jude, artistic director of the Southbank Centre. :)
http://www.viewmagazine.tv/artistinresidence/index.html
http://www.viewmagazine.tv/artistinresidence/index.html
david
p.s I presented at SXSW last year and it ranks as one of those special indelible memories
Yes Jiah, mind-mapping is a form of visual note-taking. And yes, Da Vinci made a lot of visual notes and sketches. But I am not sure I get your point. Are you saying that this is nothing new? If so I agree with you. Something that has led to success in the past is worth repeating.
What I believe is not so much that visual note-taking is somehow new or revolutionary, but that it’s a successful strategy for thinking, remembering, creating and inventing, and so it’s worth both learning and teaching.
Charlotte, thanks so much for capturing your thoughts in this post about your experiences at our visual note-taking 101 panel.
It’s great to hear feedback from attendees out in the crowd, and especially helpful to hear that you enjoyed the panel and took good ideas away from it.
Our hope and aim was to bring very practical skills to everyone in the room, and a nice little Scout Book from Pinball Publishing to help attendees capture those ideas on paper.
I wanted to reflect what @Sara commented on as well — I used to be almost fanatical about capturing notes as a stenographer, worried about missing a word or nuance. When I moved to visual note-taking (sketchnoting), I really loved how drawing less freed me up to stay at a high level and think about ideas and concepts being presented.
I still capture details, but being free to float above the talk and observe the ideas helps me resist the urge to capture every detail and instead focus on the important details rather than every last detail.
That is probably the more valuable skill to develop — the ability to see in your mind what the ideas are. It takes practice to get there (am I’m always working to improve) but I find it very well worth the effort.
Thanks again, I know Sunni, Austin, Dave and I appreciate your feedback!
Cheers!
I learned more from reading Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics then any other source; it’s one of the greatest books of all time! Other greats: History of Poster books; and the history of Cinematography documentary “Visions of Light.” My new book Cartooning for Teachers has my best visualization art games (see web reference). Thanks for sharing — I do illustrated notes too, and an illustrated diary that is too x-rated to share.
I’ll be sure to check out those other references, thanks Robert.