Monday, March 15, 2010

Visual note-taking, or the method of taking notes in a more illustrative, comic book style, is something I've always done in one form or another, but mostly without realizing it. I've been scolded in meetings and classes for "doodling" when, in fact, I was actually taking notes. Until this session, I had no idea that some people were doing this for a living. The panelists each take casual in-meeting noes and create art, and they showed us how they do it.

Dave Gray, Austin Kleon, Mike Rohde, and Sunni Brown are all very talented visual note-takers and artists, and I highly recommend checking out each of their sites.

After showing some gorgeous, fun examples, the panelists ran us through a number of drawing tutorials. Simple stick figures, a wide array of expressions from simple lines, shadows, bullets, lines, frames, connectors, and lettering techniques were all covered. Small pocket notebooks (like the one pictured above) were handed out before the session so everyone could draw along. It felt like a really fun art class.

Not only was it fun, but it turned out to be one of the most worthwhile sessions for me. I'd been taking notes at most sessions up to that point, but the quality of my notes really improved after this healthy dose of inspiration. I ended up having a lot more fun with my note-taking, and I think that helped me capture a more valuable information. In fact, most of these SXSW recap blog posts are written from notes I took using visual note-taking techniques I learned (or re-learned) in this session.