Practical Sketchnoting

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I’m a bit of a lapsed comicker...

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...and I draw sketchnotes like these...

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...and work as a User Experience Lead at Cynergy...
http://cynergy.com/
(Sorry, that’s... a bit off-brand up there.)

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...where I help design and build apps on all sorts of devices...

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...for big companies like Microsoft and eBay.
[Yep, shameless plug here.]

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When I was in school in a few years ago, I kept notes like this. Dense, detailed, but not something
you’d want to revisit.

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I stumbled across this fantastic book, The Creative License, by Danny Gregory ...

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... the important message of which was much the same as the keynote that you just heard from
Jeannel King.

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So I started keeping a sketchbook,

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drawing in pen, and I made illustrations with little journal entries beside them, and started
peppering my notes with larger sketches.

Dave Gray - http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/davegray/3382577656/in/set-72157615766728785
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It wasn’t until I stumbled across some SxSW conference notes by Dave Gray of xplane that I
realized that my conference notes could be much more visual.
http://www.xplane.com/
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/davegray/3382577656/in/set-72157615766728785

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This was where I discovered sketchnotes.

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Sketchnotes are visual notes taken at live events that ﬂuidly combine lettering and images to
make memorable documentation of something you’ve seen.

Eva-Lotta Lamm - http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/evalottchen/7575898138/in/set-72157607235674386/
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They can be really rich and evocative, like these sketchnotes from Eva-Lotta Lamm, who’s a
designer on the Android Team at Google. (She’s got a book full of these: http://
sketchnotesbook.com/ ...go check it out, it’s fantastic!)
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/evalottchen/7575898138/in/set-72157607235674386/

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Why would you make sketchnotes?

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I like to draw sketchnotes, like these from the Interaction conference this year in Dublin, as a
way to...

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map what I’m listening to and put it in context...

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...to help me remember things that I’ve seen or talks that I’ve heard...

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...to make notes that I’m more likely to re-read (because they’re interesting! they tell
stories!), and to help me know where to ﬁnd certain things within my notes...

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...to create a story that I can share with others.

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Besides that, it’s just plain fun...

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...and as a bonus, the skills and speed you get from practicing sketchnoting will help you
with all sorts of other sketching, too.

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So... I maaay be putting the cart before the horse here, but I’m guessing you’re probably
already getting ideas about sketchnotes, and when you might use them. Before we continue,
I’d like you to crack open your sketchbook and take a minute to write down some ways that
you plan to use sketchnoting, so that you keep it in mind during this talk. If you’re feeling
brave, snap a picture of it and tweet it: #sdsketch #ps0 (We’ll do this for each of the
exercises.) Are you ready?

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Here’s what I’m going to talk about today ... [quick rundown]
We’re going to have a bunch of timeboxed wax-on/wax-off exercises building up to some
actual sketchnoting of a talk, inside this talk, where you’ll put it all together. A talk inside a
talk... so very meta! (If I had that Inception sound — “BONGGGG!” — I’d play it right here.)

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And as we start with tools, I have to warn you what I’m not going to talk about: digital tools.

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Although there are many nifty digital tools out there, like...
- LiveScribe pens, which use a special paper printed with patterns of microscopic dots to
digitize your notes AND map what you’re drawing to the audio recorded when you’re drawing
it—but I’m not going to talk about that!
- Evernote moleskine notebooks which are printed with dotted lines instead of dashed lines
so that they scan better and OCR all your handwriting to make it indexed and searchable, and
you’ve got these colored stickers that you can use to tag your pages of sketches—but I’m not
going to talk about that, either!
- or the Wacom Inkling, which is a box that sits at the top of your sketchbook and uses
infrared signals and magic to digitize your sketches...I’m not going to talk about that.

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Nor am I going to talk about iPad apps...and believe me, there are lots of great iPad apps out
there! I’ve tried a slew of them, and if you want to geek out about these, talk to me
afterward. Honestly, working with most of these will just slow you down...because all you
REALLY need is...

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...just a sketchbook and a pen.

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And I say a pen, not a pencil, because they’re faster—you’re less inclined to go back to ﬁx
mistakes—, and they don’t become a smudged gray mess in your sketchbook after your
sketchbook gets jostled around in your bag.

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I look for two things in my pens: pens that have a good, fast ﬂow, and pens that don’t bleed.
(This example of bleedthrough is brought to you by Sharpie™.)

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Here are some of my current favorites. I’m currently a huge fan of gel pens, particularly the
Pilot G-2 05. Sharpie Pens—not Sharpies—are awesome, too; they’re like cheaper “microns”
or pigment liners, if you’re used to those, and they don’t bleed through paper like Sharpies
do. And G-2s and Sharpie Pens both come in colors.

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For a sketchbook, I’d suggest a medium weight, medium-to-low-tooth paper in a spiral
bound book. Try a few things out to see what kind of paper and pen combination works for
you, and which sketchbook size you like best. You want a sketchbook that’s small enough
that you can take it with you, but not so small that it’s hard to draw and write in when you’re
in the dark of a conference hall. For years, I used less-than-$4 Walgreens sketchbooks, so
you don’t have to pay a lot of money.

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But speaking of dark conference halls, let’s talk about approach.
You obviously want to ﬁnd a place to sit that’s close enough to see the speaker, and near a
light source, if you can.

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Sketchnoting is tricky, because you have to take notes, draw, and actively listen to what’s
being said, AND try to ﬁgure out how you plan to draw it on the page...

Creighton Berman - http://www.core77.com/blog/sketchnotes/sketchnotes_101_the_basics_of_visual_note-taking_19678.asp
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...so like this sketch from Creighton Berman depicts, you end up keeping a mental buffer of
what’s being said while you’re drawing something from a minute or three before. (It’s good
practice in multitasking!)
Realize, at least at ﬁrst, that you’re not going to capture EVERYTHING. If you need to, make a
quick sketch or jot a few words and come back to it later after the talk. Listen to what’s
being said and try to anticipate what will come next-- if the speaker says they’re going to hit
three main points, plan for that...but don’t bank on it, because they may skip a point or add
one: “There’s 4 things I want to talk about: .....1.....B....5....” You’ll be wondering where the
other thing was, and if you missed any others in the middle!

http://www.danroam.com/blah-blah-blah/
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Think ahead about how to render an idea to put it in context--in Dan Roam’s new book Blah
Blah Blah, he talks about mapping verbal data to visualizations that match it-- so if you hear
a set of dates, think about putting them on a timeline. If you hear a percentage, think of a
creative chart to render that.

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Emphasize what you feel is important with text-treatments, lines, borders and images (we’ll
get into all of these).
Overall, it feels very much like a big improvisation, where you’re trying to record what the
talk brings to mind as well as the talk itself.
Note that sometimes, speakers will talk WAY TOO FAST, like I did, in the beginning of this
talk.
(Check out Scott McCloud’s TED Talk for a great example of , cued up to the 2 minute 41
second mark: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXYckRgsdjI#t=2m14s )
You can resign yourself to slow down and capture a few key points in detail, or lapse back
into text note-taking if you need to, or …”cheat” and draw a few key images and words, then
go back in to ﬁll in the details from memory right afterward.

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...just feel free to experiment with it.

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Remember: do it for yourself, and by that, I mean...

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...consider your audience. If you’re taking sketchnotes to share with other people, that’s one
thing, but when you’re getting the hang of it, do it for yourself and your own note-taking
ﬁrst and foremost. You’re not going to rock the sketchnotes right out of the gate, so if it’s
something that you REALLY need to record in detail, maybe keep regular notes and save the
sketchnotes for less high-pressure note-taking.

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We talked about how sketchnotes were words and images, so let’s start with the ﬁrst part,
lettering. What’s the most important thing about lettering? Anyone?

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That’s right...it’s got to be legible!

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Sometimes when you’re writing really fast, if you’re not careful, your “a”s can rotate and start
looking like “o”s.

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But if you’re TOO careful, you can take too much time to write. Yes, you want to leave the pen
on the paper as much as possible for speed’s sake (picking up and moving it is “expensive”),
but in my experience, cursive is too slow. Too much pendulum motion backwards.
(Does anyone still even know how to write cursive?)

To solve the ﬁrst problem, Brandy Agerbeck, who describes herself as a graphic facilitator
—and yes, there are people whose whole job is to go into boardrooms and sketchnote
business problems!—, suggests writing ʻaʼs like this...
[This is from Brandyʼs excellent book, The Graphic Facilitatorʼs Guide:
http://loosetooth.com/gfg/ ]

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You’re not going to mistake this a for an o!

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To solve the second problem, try printing crossed with cursive.

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And another tip from Brandy, practice writing letters using as few strokes and pen pick-ups
as you can. A y is faster when it’s just one continual stroke instead of 2-3 separate lines, or
(for me) a lonnnnng loop of cursive.

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So, break out your sketchbooks! This is the ﬁrst exercise, also from Brandy Agerbeck: draw
lines to divide a page in your sketchbook into thirds. On the top third, write the alphabet as
slowly and legibly as you can. On the bottom third, write the alphabet as quickly as you can.
In the middle, compromise and write as quickly as you can while still keeping it legible. If
you have time when you’re done and you’ve written all in uppercase, write the lowercase
alphabet as well.
And if you still have time after that, and are feeling brave, tweet it: #sdsketch #ps1

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Don’t underestimate your lettering...it’s a key component to visual notes. Lettering can be
expressive enough to make amazing sketchnotes itself.

Mike Rohde - http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/rohdesign/2330499862/in/set-72157607737442397/
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Mike Rohde’s SxSW sketchnotes that popularized this whole sketchnotes craze? Largely
lettering.
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/rohdesign/2330499862/in/set-72157607737442397/

Carolyn Sewell - http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/pedestriantype/6858932971/
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Carolyn Sewell’s sketchnotes are dense, black oceans of letters.
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/pedestriantype/6858932971/

Paul Goode - http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulgoode/7726487184/in/set-72157631050650106
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Paul Goode makes these colorful and flowing text sketchnotes of Christian rock lyrics and
sermons. They’re pretty awesome!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulgoode/7726487184/in/set-72157631050650106

Kent Kanouse - http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/35946983@N00/3201140770/
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Letters by themselves can be attention getting, as you’ll notice if you pass any newsstand.

Sketchnoting? It’s fun! OH MAN, really.
Humanist / Old Style - [ Aa ] Big Caslon

Transitional - [ Aa ] Baskerville Old Face

Modern - [ Aa ] Didot

Egyptian / Slab Serif - [ Aa ] Rockwell Extra Bold

Transitional Sans Serif - [ Aa ] Gill Sans

Geometric Sans Serif - [ Aa ] Futura

Surprisingly Puffy Sans Serif - [ Aa ] Sniglet

http://thinkingwithtype.com/contents/letter/#Type_Classiﬁcation
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Different typefaces can add emotion and personality to what you’re writing, ...
(For a great introduction to typography and typefaces, check out Ellen Lupton’s wonderful
book THINKING WITH TYPE: http://thinkingwithtype.com/ )

http://www.myfonts.com/newsletters/
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... which can in turn, help you remember it better, and serve to underline what you’re writing.
[If lettering and type appeal to you AT ALL, you owe it to yourself to subscribe to MyFonts
newsletters. Tons of inspiration, twice a month: http://www.myfonts.com/newsletters/ ]

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Lettering can capture the emotion (and intonation, and inﬂection) of a speaker in a way that
plain text notes can’t. This person could be saying “Debugging! {joyously}” or “Debugging!
{ruefully}” and you can record that in the lettering. (It doesn’t need to be THIS theatric, but
it’s an example.)

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Let’s try this! Pick any three typefaces and let’s take a few minutes for you to try your hand
at writing a few words each in each of the typefaces...

high noon!

circus cowboy?

Cute kittens! OMG.
Ancient mariners talked of
“mermaids,” but avast, we
Every Movie Title Ever

THE LIBRARY
IN A WES ANDERSON FILM

GOVERNMENT
SURPLUS
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...and here are some typefaces for inspiration. I’ll leave these up here.
(Bonus question: Can anyone name the font used in EVERY MOVIE TITLE EVER?)
(Answer, courtesy Kirby Ferguson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
feature=player_embedded&v=t87QKdOJNv8 )

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....annnnd that’s time. Don’t forget to tweet to #sdsketch #ps2 if you have a chance.

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So now we’re on the road to fast but readable handwriting, and we’re getting creative with the
lettering, so let’s (ﬁnally) add images. IMAGES!

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Images fall on a spectrum from symbolic (with letters themselves being the most symbolic) to
representational (or likenesses) annnnnnd...
Look, what you really can take away from this is that you’ve got three levels of drawings that
you can run with:
icons / shapes / symbols;
cartoons;
and more representational illustrations, things drawn in a way where you’re trying to make
them look like what you see.
[This is heavily inspired primarily by Scott McCloud’s UNDERSTANDING COMICS and its Big
Triangle
http://scottmccloud.com/4-inventions/triangle/index.html
The likeness is supposed to be Morgan Spurlock, from this Flickr photo by Rachel Lovinger:
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/mirka23/8042441099/ ]

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Before we go further, I’ve got a bit of a social experiment I’d like to try. Break out your
sketchbooks and draw...
- an icon for an idea
- an icon for a web search
- an icon for a conversation
- and a stick ﬁgure of a person
(You have about 90 seconds. Be quick, don’t be precious...)

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Oooookay, times up! Show of hands: how many of you had an icon for an idea that looked
like...

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...a lightbulb? How many of you had an icon for a web search that...

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...had a magnifying glass involved somewhere? How many of you, when drawing a
conversation, used...

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...word balloons? And how many people had a stick ﬁgure that looked something like...

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...this? (Oooh, you’re getting fancy there.)
You’ll notice that most of you had the same icons—this a cultural symbolic language that you
can leverage when you’re taking sketchnotes.

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You don’t have to get super-artistic to begin to make your notes more visual. Use icons like
we just drew as waypoints and markers in your map of a talk. I like to use a search
magnifying glass as a bullet for items that I want to Google later.
This is from a museum exhibit on Native American Skateboarding Culture* (I know! How cool
is that??!) ...and there were obviously too many nifty things for me to draw in the time that I
had, so I used a search icon to mark things that I wanted to look up later when I got home.
*[ http://www.museumofman.org/blog/ramp-it-so-much-more-skateboarding-exhibit ]

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You can use them as bullets to group ideas together, too, or tags (like the evernote stickers
we talked about).

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But lets get back to stick figures. Stick figures can be especially useful in your sketchnotes to
rapidly model scenarios that a speaker is describing. Sketching these scenarios is usually
FAR better if you can evoke emotion in just a few lines—you’ll get empathy for what these
stick figures are going through.
I’m going to show you a trick that will make your stick figures a bajillion times better [more
expressive].

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Just start with a box for a body. Add an oval for a head. Add jointed limbs. It’s that simple.

Dave Gray - http://www.davegrayinfo.com/2008/04/03/how-to-draw-a-stick-ﬁgure/ 79

This isn’t a new trick. Dave Gray [remember him?] has been advocating this method for
years...
[I got this trick from cartoonist Jett Atwood — http://tg-studios.com/about.html — who
taught this method in a screencast on a now-defunct site called sketchcast.com.]

Coke cans designed by Tom Gauld - http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2010/march/tom-gauld-cans - http://www.tomgauld.com/
80

...and Tom Gauld, whose work you’ll probably recognize from these Diet Coke cans, has
made an entire body of work with stick ﬁgures in the same style... boxy body, dot for
head, ....

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...and you’ll notice that having a box for a body can give you a stick ﬁgure that’s got scads of
expressiveness.

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Pride, for example, after stapling that giant stack of papers...

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...or “NO! DON’T PUT THAT TORTOISE IN THE MICROWAVE!”...

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...or this guy, who’s having a particularly bad day.

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But now you try it: break out your sketchbooks again and using the same bending box for a
body, draw a stick ﬁgure who’s proud, one who’s sad, and one who’s fearful.

86

How’d they turn out? As you can see, you can get ...

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...quite a lot of expression from just a few simple lines.

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But you may be noticing something as you look at your stick ﬁgures...

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...and it’s that, when you break it down, stick ﬁgures are just...

90

...made up of shapes. And here’s a dirty, dark secret of drawing...

Bennett, I hope you don’t mind. - https://twitter.com/skunkwUrX
91

...so are PEOPLE.
(I know, it’s like “{Gasp!} SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!” “{Gasp!} PEOPLE ARE MADE UP OF
SHAPES!” But it’s true!)
If you look at this picture of Bennet, you’ll see {pointing to it} that his head is kind of circular,
with a rectangular chin and a triangle nose, and his hair has a part that kind of arcs on the
top, but the rest is a bit squarish.

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One of the things that I like to do when sketchnoting is to try to capture a likeness of the
speaker so that when I go back to my notes later, I have a face to put with the words. I’m not
always good with it, but I’m getting better. Here are some tips:
First, try to figure out what position the speaker is holding for a while. While some people
are really animated, speakers tend to return to a common pose or three, and it’s really hard
to draw someone who’s constantly moving. If you can’t figure this out, then just bet on one,
and try to fill it in with glances throughout the talk.

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Try to break down the person into rough shapes.

94

Start with the silhouette, get the gestures, then work in, ﬁlling in details.

95

Crazy trick that works: get the hair right and most people who know the person will be able
to recognize the person.

96

Most people will be able to recognize this sketches from just the hair!*
[* This is a Western culture thing, and why bank-robbers wear wigs. In Asia or Africa, hair
can be more similar, people identify each other more by other facial features like eyes and
cheekbones. This information is from an old Exploratorium science museum exhibit on
memory:
http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/wig/index.html ]

TeeFury shirt by Daniel Castelló Muñiz - http://www.teefury.com/archive/1804/Science_Without_Limits/
97

And it’s pretty true! Can anyone name this television show?
Yep, it’s FRINGE. And if you’ve ever seen the show, you’ll ﬁnd that you can recognize the
craggy-browed Walter, or Astrid, or Olivia, all without eyes or noses, and primarily by hair.

Very sorry, Mr. Frank. Audience, you’ll understand later in this slide deck. - http://zefrank.com/
98

Another trick for drawing people: how many of you have seen an old movie where artists are
holding up a pencil or a paintbrush or their thumb and then turning back and painting, and
then holding up their thumb and squinting...? What they’re doing is measuring relative
proportions. Do what you can to get the proportions right, and it will go a long way toward
making a good drawing. Try to mentally compare the dimensions of shapes you’re
constructing in your head... so here you’ll notice that the eyes are roughly in the center of the
head, and the corners of the eyes and the bottom of the mouth form an equilateral triangle,
and... so on and so forth.
[Proportions are one of three principles advocated by Emil G. Bethke in the excellent, slim,
out-of-print textbook BASIC DRAWING FOR BIOLOGY STUDENTS:
http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Drawing-Biology-Students-Bethke/dp/0398001480
...the other two are shading and perspective, neither of which we’ll get into much here.
Another great book for representational drawing/sketching skills is the Swedish book
LEARNING CURVES, by Sjölén and Macdonald:
http://designsketching.com/learningcurves.php
It’s pricey—$77 for a single copy shipped outside the European Union!—but it’s a solid book
ﬁlled with valuable tips and stuffed with detailed color examples.]

Very sorry, Mr. Frank. Audience, you’ll understand later in this slide deck. - http://zefrank.com/
99

Faces are the easiest to mess up.

100

I generally start with cheats-- dots for eyes, and key lines (as few as possible) for mouth and
nose and ears-- and reﬁne from there. If I add too many lines, it looks wrong (especially if
you’re sitting farrrrr away from the podium), so don’t be precious.

101

Add color or shading last...and as a beginner, I’d be wary of it. Also be wary that the marker
your using might smudge your ink, so test it ﬁrst.

Why, yes, it is who you think it is.
102

Let’s try this with a random picture of celebrity Rainn Wilson:
Follow the tips we just covered:
- break him into shapes (you’ll notice he has a head that’s a bit squarish)
- break into smaller shapes, eyeballing the proportion of the head to the shoulders and neck
- get the hair right—you’ll see he has kind of scraggly hair at the top of his forehead and a
high hairline
- start with dots for eyes, and build from there, drawing glasses and brows and eyelids
- and so on...

103

Now we’ve had a whirlwind tour of drawing, let’s pull it all together with LAYOUT.

104

First of all, start with the title. Are you going to put it in the center of the page or at the top?
At the bottom? Where?

105

Since you know what it is, take time before the talk starts to write out the title and the
speaker in fancy lettering.

106

Try to have a rough idea of the direction you’re going to ﬂow. Here are some common
layouts, and I’m going to walk through each of them...

Krystal Higgins - http://www.kryshiggins.com/sketchnotes-from-ﬁrst-person-user-interfaces/
107

First, there’s rows, left-to-right. These sketchnotes are from Krystal Higgins
http://www.kryshiggins.com/
and you’ll notice that she draws the metaphors that the speaker invokes, which is a good
trick...so for example if the speaker mentions something being a “slipper slope,” she’ll draw a
stick-ﬁgure sliding down a literal slippery slope.

108

Next is vertical columns.

109

You could also arrange your notes radially around a center. (I’m sure this exists, but I didn’t
ﬁnd examples of it before the talk!)

110

One layout that’s very handy for panels is the “talking heads” approach, where you draw
small portraits of each of the speakers and then chain what they say in a series of word
balloons.

Austin Kleon - http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/deathtogutenberg/3376651151/in/set-72157615774456940
111

This is a trick that I picked up from South by Southwest sketchnotes, like these from Austin
Kleon.
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/deathtogutenberg/3376651151/in/set-72157615774456940
http://www.austinkleon.com/

112

And last, there’s an approach I like to call “the winding river” where you just draw things on
the page wherever you can and connect the thoughts in order with “boxes” and “arrows.”

113

Just make sure that when you’re doing this, to always WRITE THE TEXT before you draw the
“box” or container around it, or you’ll end up running out of room like this.

114

So! We’ve arrived at the ﬁnal exercise! Are you ready??! You should be! We’re going to
sketchnote the following talk, so take a moment to write out the title and speakers’ names:
It’s called “Teen Brain,” by Ze Frank and Rainn Wilson, and it’s from a podcast called A Show
with Ze Frank. (Great show!)
http://ashow.zefrank.com/episodes/38

115

Let’s do this!
http://ashow.zefrank.com/episodes/38
{I cut it off at the bye-bye song.}

116

Annnnnnd, you’re done! This is what we’ve covered!

In no particular order...
Aldryn, Ahron, Dmitry, Asa, Joel,
Eva, Mike, Charlene, Boon, Krystal,
Scott, Bennett, Chad, Amaya,
Shahn, Clint, Yelena, Matthias,
everyone else I forgot to mention,
Nathan, Ma & Pa

117

HUGE thanks to everyone who helped, directly and indirectly, on this presentation!
If you’d like to learn more about sketchnoting, there are a few good books I’ve linked to
earlier in the notes, but I’d like to also mention:
- The Sketchnote Handbook by Mike Rohde
http://rohdesign.com/book
- Sketchnotes Field Guide by Binaebi Akah and Charlene McBride
http://siriomi.com/portfolio/sketchnotes-ﬁeld-guide-book/
...as well as the blog Sketchnote Army
http://sketchnotearmy.com
and the “Let’s Sketchnote” workshop at Midwest UX by Binaebi Akah, Veronica Erb, and
Charlene McBride.
http://verbistheword.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/lets-sketchnote-at-midwestux-2012/

118

If you have any further questions, I’m “justsomeguy” on twitter:
https://twitter.com/justsomeguy
Thank you! I look forward to seeing your sketchnotes!

Practical Sketchnoting

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