I’ve always used doodles, drawings and diagrams as part of my note-taking process, but after discovering sketchnotes / visual note-taking through Sacha Chua’s blog, I’ve started illustrating my notes much more deliberately, and legibly, with the intention of making them something I can share.
Here’s a sketchnote from this week, which I’ve tidied up a bit in Photoshop. I was thinking about the evolution of an idea – how it begins, and how the writer or artist transforms it into something that a reader or audience can appreciate. Do you visualise the creative process in a similar way, or something different?
I like that visual note-taking forces you to slow down. Information gets processed better at a slower speed, and it sticks in the memory better when the information is coded in two different ways. My memory needs all the help it can get at the moment. Sketchnoting also appeals to my stationery fetish (I bought a new Moleskine notebook and some Muji gel pens to make my notes clearer and more scannable).
If any of my future sketchnotes are share-worthy, I’ll post them on here.
Muji pens! Yes!