In this episode, we dive into Luke Kelvington’s fascinating world as the commander of a submarine. Luke takes leadership to a whole new level by mixing in visual thinking and sketchnotes to shape how he and his crew make better decisions. If you're curious about how creativity plays a role in leadership, especially on a submarine, this podcast is a fun journey into Luke's underwater world.

Sponsored by Concepts

This episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.

Concepts' vector-based drawing feature gives you the power to adjust your drawings saving hours and hours of rework.

Vectors provide clean, crisp, high-resolution output for your sketchnotes at any size you need s ideal for sketchnoting.

SEARCH in your favorite app store to give it a try.

Running Order

• Intro
• Welcome
• Who is Luke Kelvington?
• Origin Story
• Luke’s current work
• Sponsor: Concepts
• Tips
• Tools
• Where to find Luke
• Outro

Links

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Luke on LinkedIn
• Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute Magazine
• Luke’s Bio - Submarine Pacific Fleet Website

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Notebook
• Sketchnote Idea book
• Neuland Bikablo Icons
• Neuland pens
• Ballpoint pens

Tips

1. Practice and take courses.
2. Use tools to perfect your work.
3. Share your projects.
4. It's okay to wait to be inspired.

Credits

• Producer: Alec Pulianas
• Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro
• Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer

Subscribe to the Sketchnote Army Podcast

You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.

Support the Podcast

To support the creation, production, and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!

Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike and I'm here with Luke Kelvington. Luke, it's so good to have you on the show. Thanks for coming.

Luke Kelvington: Oh, thank you for the invite, Mike. Appreciate it.

MR: So we got connected through the Cleveland Guardians. We both have a connection through that. And learned about your sketchnoting skills, and you sent me samples and I was like, "Oh, this is cool. We should have you on the show to talk a little bit about your experience and the way you look at it with the people who listen."

So I'm just gonna jump right into, why don't you tell us who you are and what you do, and then go right into how did you end up in this place? Even go back to when you were a little kid, were you drawing for your whole life? You know, was it a late development? I'm really curious to hear how it all fit into what you're doing now.

LK: Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah. I'm from Akron, Ohio, son of a third-generation mechanic. I'm pretty sure had my name been Earl Risk Kelvington IV, that's what I'd probably be doing. But I got into the Naval Academy in '19 — or 2000 and joined in 2001. And I've been in the Navy ever since. So I'm a career naval officer, submariner. I'm on my fourth submarine.

MR: Wow.

LK: I'm the Captain of the USS Pennsylvania Gold, which is a ballistic missile submarine out here in Banger Washington

MR: Hmm.

LK: Yeah. So as far as, you know, as a kid, I always liked, you know, drawing fonts. I would decorate the upper right-hand corner of, you know, my math homework, and you know, just different designs. And so, I've always just enjoyed just doodling. You know, I was a rugby player, art was not always at the forefront of what I was doing. But I will say that I had a math teacher in 7th grade, and he would give us certificates if you get a hundred on a test, and he would write out your name in calligraphy.

And in 7th grade, you know, I was like, "I'm gonna learn how to do this." So, you know, I learned calligraphy in middle school. And so, you know, that and fonts has always been just something I've really enjoyed doing. And I'll say that I've been challenged in the past by my mentors to make sure that I'm always doing something professionally with respect to journaling.

And when you know, COVID happened, and I got into this space with the Cleveland Guardians, and then I watched your presentation, and I was like, "Wow, it's just something I didn't even know I needed." And the simplicity of you the messaging and how you were able to show, "Hey, as long as you can do these shapes, you know, the idea's not art mantra.

As long as you can do these simple shapes, you could really convey a message. And even if it's just with yourself and your own journal, trying to figure out how to better yourself or your people," I found that, you know, I got really excited about it and started doing it.

And what I found was, I was listening to my leaders speak. So I was on an admiral staff, and so, I started Sketchnoting when he was giving his speeches. What I found was by sharing that with him after the fact, and proving to him that his message was simple enough to be able to capture an imagery and not really, you know, hard things to convey, that he was being very effective in his communication style.

So my job as a leader on a submarine is to design people's decision space. And if I can clearly communicate that in different manners, and one of which is through art. So for instance, last week I have these giant post-it notes, and I have my — we'll talk about nuance of pens later. But I have my Neuland pens, and I'll draw quotes and just simple designs.

This week was, the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack. I found on the noun project this, you know, this very simple drawing of a wolf. And it's just the imagery as they come in. It's not just words on a page. It's got a little bit more to it and a little bit of depth. You know, just a little bit of shading makes it look and makes it pop and makes it something that I think really resonates.

That Cleveland Guardian series, you know, we've been exposed to a lot of amazing leaders. You know, Dan Coyle, James Kerr, you know, Jay Hennessy's just done a fantastic job of bringing these people together. And James Kerr, in his book "Legacy," you know, he says, "Shrewd leaders invent a unique vocabulary of shorthand for communicating new cultural norms and standards using specific words, phrases, mottos, and mantras." And I would argue art is part of that.

Then using metaphor, the leader brings the story to visceral life across as many channels as possible. And in that way, the language becomes the oxygen that sustains belief. And in this way, leaders rewrite the future. You know, so using that metaphor and using the imagery, I think is a way to be very effective as a leader.

With my crew, my message is very, I think, simple. It's to build trust, and then, you know, I break it into character and competency, there's something that can resonate with them. Choose growth, and then to use your best punch.

And I've used that, "use your best punch" in this boxing analogy now and using some of the imagery from that to I think — you know, I've only been in command for about three months, but I think starting to build a culture where that can that resonate. And then you can use other things, like, you know, "what does it mean to be in someone's corner?"

As a coach, as a mentor, as someone that you know, is able to throw in the towel for you, when you see that they're struggling and they don't even know that they need the help. So, you know, being able to just effectively use imagery in order to either help you figure out how you wanna convey it.

So like, I don't share all of my notes, you know, with my guys and girls, but you know, making sure that it's a way for me to help frame again, how do I give them the left and right boundaries and then create that imagery to make sure that we're heading in the right direction.

MR: That's really cool. I'm really curious. You made a statement earlier, you said something about decision space. I would really like you to expand a little on what is a decision space, and then secondarily, how are you — it sounds like you're using this imagery as a way to frame or put boundaries on that decision space.

LK: Yeah. So decision space, I talk about the fact that, life is a choose your own adventure. And so as I get you know, 18 to 20-somethings trying to make sure that we teach them what right looks like. So some of that is in either words or pictures. Other instances is actually showing them on the job training of what that really looks like. So the idea is, as they're more junior, the constraining space is the left and right boundaries.

MR: Smaller.

LK: Yeah, are smaller. So again, if you can either use imagery or figure out how you are gonna frame your discussion with them and you can work that out, you know, what are the left and right boundaries that I want to convey so that you can then, and after the fact, "Hey, did I clearly communicate that?" Because honestly, when someone messes up -- I'm a huge proponent of human error. I think that, we are going to make mistakes. And it happens all the time.

You know, I give 'em the example. I say, "Hey, on your phone, how often do you hit the wrong button and you have to back or auto correct." And that stuff happens in real life. And just your normal day-to-day processes. So, if we can accept that human error — 'cause I think, again, our tendency is to run, hide, cover, and blame. That's kind of where we go. But how do we change that so that they feel safe enough to come in, tell you that they messed up?

And then making sure that there's enough of environment that's safe where they can go ahead and admit those mistakes. So that's kind of what I'm talking about there with the decision space. And again, sometimes it's with words, sometimes, again, in your journal, it's a way to, how do I best convey this message to my people?

MR: It almost seems like what you're trying to do, the way I read it is, they can't see inside your mind and what you're thinking, but you can use words and images and things to basically help each one of those individuals build that decision space in their mind to know where the edges are. And know, like, okay, I'm at the edge of, "I need to talk to somebody before I proceed with this." Or, "This doesn't feel right. I need to talk to someone and make sure something feels hinky about this, I better check."

Like, I'm imagining you're helping them to build it for themselves so they can — 'cause then that makes themselves sufficient. And then I guess the second thing is by making that safe environment where they can say, "Hey, captain, I screwed up. I did this." They're more likely to learn from it, right?

If they feel like they're gonna get beat up over it, then that encourages people not to tell you. And then you can ask something that can be a runaway problem that could build into some huge problem, right? You wanna catch it early before it becomes out of control, I would think.

LK: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I think being able to look at yourself first, "Hey, did I give you the time, the tools, the training to do it right." And when they see you with the humility to say, "Hey, I'm going to look at myself first before I go and try to put any kind of blame on you." I think that that helps us build that psychologically safe space to make sure that they do come forward. 'Cause In my world, troubleshooting a human error and a very technical problem is, you know, if you put the wrong number in, we need to know that, so.

MR: Yeah. That's pretty cool. That's really interesting the way you're using it in that. Now you mentioned too that you do journaling. Can you tell a little bit of detail about how you've integrated, I guess, visualization of some kind? Maybe it's rises to the level of sketchnoting in your own journaling practice, and how has that helped you?

LK: Yeah, so I will, a lot of times when maybe in, even in social media, I'll see something like, Adam Grant puts out a quote, you know, so I'll snap that, and then later on I'll take that quote, and then go into my notes and try to make it something that sticks, right? I mean, you wanna make it so that it's something that's sticky. And then, you know, once you kind of have that confidence, sharing that with others.

I'm a SEC football fan, and I was watching SEC Media Day a couple weeks ago, and Kirby Smart was talking and then Nick Saban, and I was like, "Holy smokes, this is a leadership 101. I need to capture some of this stuff." So, you know, capturing it quickly. You know, we can go into some of the advice stuff later, but make sure that you're able to make some shorthand notes off to the side, and then you can figure out how do I want to present this, you know, in a clear manner that I want to capture and then share in the future.

So, you know, I've got my journals, they're chronological, but, you know, I'll put in the front of those journals like a page number with something I wanna make sure I go back to. Yeah, and it's something that now it's sticky, it's there, it's an image. I can tell you, I do not have a photographic memory, but I can see, you know, an image on a page, and then I can go back to it and say, "Okay, this is —" It's gonna be something I can go back and say, "Hey, this is gonna be something I wanna apply to this situation.

Because, you know, as Mark Twain says, right, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes." And so being able to go back to those and say, "Hey, this is an effective message that I now can then share with my people." So, you know, I've been collecting quotes and reading books and putting those things together for really the last 18 years of my career. And for this moment to be able to pour the stuff out on my people.

MR: That's cool. So it does seem like — the things I take away from that are knowledge and insight can come from any place, right? You're watching SEC Media Day, you're getting stuff from, you know, head coaches to these football teams who are leaders, right? They have to deal with leadership. So even like kids and other people can bring you that. So being aware that knowledge can come from any place and to be ready. So that was one message.

And then the second message was, is when you place it in your journals that you have created in an index, so you can find it again quickly because you have a feeling like, you know, "This might be valuable for my team in the future, I need to be able to quick reference that thing and pull it back."

And then the third thing was interesting too, is you said you can see it in your mind. Like that's the way — the challenge for me is I could see it in my mind, and I know I did that thing and then, you know, I probably need to work on my organization of my books so that I can find stuff more easily. Maybe they need to be digitized, I don't know.

But I can definitely like, "0h yeah, I can close my eyes and imagine that sketchnote that I did." And a lot of times the where and when and details all around it. Now finding it in the book is the challenge. So that's my thing that I gotta deal with, but.

LK: Right. Yeah.

MR: Interesting.

LK: And you know, when we talk about tools, because of the nature of my job, I typically don't have my a cell phone, I don't have much when it comes to digital, so a lot of what I have to do is just on pen and paper. You know, so I have not gotten into — I recently did buy the surface pen to try to try the stuff out the digital world, but a lot of times it's just not something that I can take with me.

MR: Yeah, exactly. I think that feels like a real natural place to shift into the tools you do use. Are there specific pens that you like when you do journaling, are there certain books that you like? You talked about big sketch or big sticky notes and Neuland markers. So talk a little bit about kind of the tools you use and why you like 'em.

LK: Yeah. For the most part the journaling, I'll just use the normal, just regular you know, notebook. I do have your the Sketchnote Ideabook as well.

MR: Oh, cool. Nice.

LK: So, you know, I have one that I'm usually in a chronological order going through. And then I have a couple others that where I'm practicing. So, you know, I got the Bikablo Icons from Neuland, so you can kind of go through and practice the different emotions. I even have a little book that was by — it's my daughter's book. It's how to draw, you know, and it's just simple little things.

So, you know, working on that inventory of icons is really, I think one of the things that's helpful to have kind of a separate journal that I build that inventory and that muscle memory of what those — just like you say those simple shapes, but then you just add a little bit of depth and it just really it pops. I don't know how to better describe it. But yeah, I love the Neuland pens. And I like the fact that I can reload 'em and and the fact they don't bleed through the paper, I think that's the other piece's of it.

MR: Yeah. That's the best.

LK: On a day-to-day, I just have like a ballpoint tool as one of my go-tos, you know, in my uniform. 'cause the Neuland’s don't have an easy way to, you know, kind of stuff it in my uniform there.

MR: Yeah.

LK: Like I said when it comes to — I do it for sermons too, so every Sunday I've got a little sketch note of whatever that sermon was, but off to the side as, you know, saying his outline, I'm putting that on a separate piece of paper just to kind of sketch out, "Okay, this is what it was."

And then, you know, I've done a couple of your workshops, talking about different layouts, like what's gonna fit best for this particular sermon and making sure that I — and you're gonna make mistakes especially if you're just using pen and paper, but figuring out inventive ways to hide those mistakes is always a fun challenge as well.

And then a lot of times, I'll snap a picture of it and share it with my mom or you know, just — again, just being willing to share that stuff and get some feedback, and it seems to resonate pretty well with others. Yeah, when it comes to simple icons the Noun Project is definitely an easy one.

MR: Great resource. Yeah.

LK: And honestly, I'm also not shy about tracing an outline of it, you know? I'll put the phone behind it and trace the outline, and —

MR: That's a good idea.

LK: — you know, as I'm working on trying to, you know, build the repertoire of icons, but you know, sometimes I just can't get the proportions right so I'll just draw it behind there and trace it through, and it still looks pretty good. And then when I was in my job, in my previous job on that Admiral staff, I just had 5 by 8 note cards, and that would be my method of capturing those things, especially if I wanted to share 'em with them.

MR: Yeah. It's interesting, like 5 by 8 note cards, I've got a big stack of them. Well, I got smaller ones right here. I took to a conference years ago. Basically, we said, "Well, here's what we need." And I wanted 5 by 8 card stock, so they got eight and a half by 11, cut it in half, and handed it out to all the students in that workshop.

In person, I was in Philly, and they had all these leftover cards. So I took them and I was like, I really like these are really nice. You know, it's kind of a nice, you know, you don't feel too precious about it. If you screw it up, you just recycle it, start with another one, you know, it's independent so you can kind of move it around. And so that's kind of cool that you use that.

So when you're on the boat, are you able to take — it sounds like you don't take technology, so you take paper and pen or something, or do you take anything when you go on the boat, or is it pretty much get left behind?

LK: I'll take my pen and paper, you know.

MR: Oh, nice.

LK: And my journal. Yeah. So, again, I use it as a leadership journal, you know, capture things you know, obviously nothing classified, but —

MR: Sure. Yeah.

LK: But yeah, just building on those lessons and making sure that again, as I'm trying to visualize how I want to present information, one of the easy ways to do that is if I can — I'm convinced that if I can make it a simple image, then if I can communicate that image with words, then I think I'm winning there to be able to build what that — bringing that story to visceral life like James Kerr says.

MR: There's been a lot of talk about story too. Like we as people, if we see or hear story, if it's well done, it can be almost as though we experienced it personally. So that visceral life is actually like a real thing. Like, you can almost imagine, like in movies you've seen, if you really resonate with it, it could feel as though you experienced that yourself. And you can learn lessons from those experiences. Like, "Yeah, don't do that. Probably, this doesn't feel right. " You know, you're building knowledge from that.

So when you take your journals on the boat, do your do your crew see that? What do they think? 'Cause I saw, you know, you put it up on the screen, it's got stickers all over it and, you know, looks kind of cool. They're like, "Oh man, he is carrying a notebook." Does that seem unusual to them? Do they say anything to you about it? Or how do they react to that, if at all? Maybe they don't.

LK: I think that when I do show 'em the images, I think they do enjoy it, but it is pretty typical for, you know, senior officers to carry around at least some level of a notebook, but to me it's teaching them that, you know, that professional journal that you're learning and making sure you're capturing these lessons. 'Cause people learn lessons from good leaders, and they also learn them from poor leaders too. So making sure that even, you know, you capture both the good and the bad.

'Cause You can say, "Well, I really don't want to do it that way." You know, so when they get in charge, and making sure that they're taking things with them. The Navy is not something that is always a career for everyone, but making sure that those lessons that you learn and you've got something to be able to after the fact digest.

My engineer tour was a very a challenging tour. It was, over three yearS, but the notes that I took during that tour, I was able to then really digest. I ended up writing an article and getting it published in the Naval Institute Proceedings. I would've not been able to really digest that tour and clean all those lessons if I hadn't captured those throughout the tour. Just those little nuggets things I wanted to do better, things I learned. Yeah.

MR: It seems to me too, the other lesson I take away from what you're just talking about is, and this probably from the beginning too, is this idea of you can't just, you know, at the end of three years, like go back and reflect on everything and take every learning because you're gonna forget a lot of it. So it's really important that you are documenting this stuff as it's happening in little micro chunks and letting it build over time.

So you're building this experience, and it's a way of capturing like your lessons, because you know, as much as you'd love to think, you can go back after three years and reflect, and you could do dress and meaning, but having that reference would be huge. So that would be an encouragement for those listening or watching to maybe start carrying a, carrying a book around that they document stuff in the way that you do as a valuable professional tool.

LK: And sometimes it can just either be a small image or just a few words, and that'll trigger, you know, that event so that you can make sure, yeah, You can capture it and use it in the future.

MR: So we've covered your life story. We've covered tools. We're at the point where I would love to hear your encouragement in tips. So the way I frame it is someone's listening, watching their visualization person of some kind, and maybe they feel like they're in a rut or they just need some encouragement. What would you tell that person In three tips? Or you can go beyond three if you want to.

LK: Yeah, I think the first is you know, the practice, you know, building those icons so that later when you're stuck you can open up that other journal and take a look at those items. Or I would encourage 'em to, you know, take courses kind of like what you've offered, just to give 'em a little bit more courage or a little bit more just tools.

MR: Confidence maybe.

LK: Yeah, Confidence. Yeah, Confidence is the word I'm looking for there. That it is just simple images that could really resonate with just a little bit of practice. But then I think also you know, using those tools like the Noun Project and not being afraid to, every once in a while trace it out if it's, you know, to make it look good. I think sharing it with friends has been something that I've really enjoyed and letting them give you a little bit of feedback. I think that that will give them some more encouragement that it's something that people enjoy.

And then it's okay to wait, I think, to be inspired. You know, my journals are not full. Every page doesn't have images on it, right? So making sure that you, you keep the practice of journaling, and even if it's just the story and things that happened, and then as the inspiration comes and that you say, "Hey, this is something I really want to capture with an image." You know, making sure that you keep that muscle memory of carrying that notebook around.

And then that way when — like I said the other day, watching that SEC Media Day was like, "Wow, I need to capture this. And I think this would be something that I could then share with friends and we could get a conversation going." I move a lot, so connecting with others, if you send 'em an image and say, "Hey, let's talk about this. This is really exciting. This is something I just heard." It can help build that conversation. And so, it's not just, "Well, how you doing? Oh, I'm doing fine." so it's not just the family stuff, but it's also —

MR: Go deeper. Yeah.

LK: Yeah.

MR: Cool. That's really cool. I love those tips. Thanks for sharing those. Well, you know, you're probably on a boat some part of the time, and maybe you don't really have social media stuff. Is there anywhere you would send people to learn more about you? Or is there anything online that they can even find? Is there anything that we can send people to?

LK: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn. That's the easiest way professionally to reach out to me.

MR: Cool.

LK: I do have a couple articles that I've written in the U.S. Naval Institute proceedings so they can find a couple pretty, you know lessons there that I've captured. But yeah, other than that, my bio is on the submarine Pacific Fleet website, if they really wanna see that, but.

MR: Go dip.

LK: Yeah.

MR: Cool. Well, we'll make sure and get a link to your LinkedIn. We'll put that in the show notes and maybe we can have you find links to your article. So if people wanna read those, we can include those in the show notes too. But hey, Luke, this has been great. It's really been fun to hear — you know, when I started this podcast and never thought that I'd have a commander of a submarine talking about sketchnoting. You know, just the world is crazy. You just never know where it's gonna lead, you know.

LK: Yes, sir. Absolutely. It's been an absolute pleasure. I'm blessed to have been part of that Cleveland Guardian speaker series to get to know some of the awesome people like you, Mike, and yeah, it's been a pleasure.

MR: Well, thanks, Luke. We appreciate you. Thanks for your service. And for everyone who's watching and listening, this will be another episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast. Until the next episode, talk to you soon.

LK: You could make it Navy, you know, just for this episode.

MR: That's true. Yeah, the Sketchnote Navy. Never thought about that. Yeah. That's funny.

In this episode, Elizabeth Chesney shares her approach to teaching design concepts coupled with handwritten notes to help her subjects understand how design concepts work and why they work.

Sponsored by Concepts

This episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.

Concepts' vector-based drawing feature gives you the power to adjust your drawings saving hours and hours of rework.

Vectors provide clean, crisp, high-resolution output for your sketchnotes at any size you need s ideal for sketchnoting.

SEARCH in your favorite app store to give it a try.

Running Order

• Intro
• Welcome
• Who is Elizabeth Chesney
• Origin Story
• Elizabeth Chesney's current work
• Sponsor: Concepts
• Tips
• Tools
• Where to find Elizabeth Chesney
• Outro

Links

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Elizabeth’s Website
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Comic strip camp case study

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Uniball black rollerball pen
• Sharpie highlighter
• Kraft brown paper
• Ottergami dotted notebook
• Samsung Galaxy Tab
• Samsung Pen
• Concepts

Tips

1. There is no standard.
2. Create playbooks or scrapbooks of your work.
3. Get away from your desk. Take a break.

Credits

• Producer: Alec Pulianas
• Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer
• Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro

Subscribe to the Sketchnote Army Podcast

You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.

Support the Podcast

To support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!

Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike and I'm here with Elizabeth Chesney. Elizabeth, how are you doing today?

Elizabeth Chesney: I'm good, I'm good. It's evening here in the UK, so it's quite relaxed and we've got a bank holiday, so it's even more relaxed.

MR: Good, good, good. Well, you'll be laid back and ready to answer all kinds of questions and let us see inside you, the way you think. So I brought Elizabeth on because I follow her on Instagram. I don't know how we crossed paths, but I'm glad we did. And she does a lot of sketchnoting that she shares online, but also taking design concepts, which I really like.

Her approach is taking these design concepts and then breaking them down with handwritten notes on top of them to help you understand how these design concepts work and why they work, which is really helpful education, especially for people who sort of sense something's going on, maybe they're not trained as a designer, but they sense something's going on and they're curious about why it works that way. And you sort of fill that gap, which I love that. I love education, I love that whole thing.

So that is how we crossed paths. And I thought Elizabeth would be a great person because very recently, you were doing some sketching for a project, then it turned into a full-blown sketchnote. You shared video on Instagram. So maybe we can even talk about that project. And I thought this would be great to talk with her and see how sketchnoting fits into her everyday life, and the stuff she does. So, welcome.

EC: Thank you for having me.

MR: Yeah, you're welcome. So why don't you start by telling us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

EC: That's great. So I am basically in England, despite my accent, I'm actually Scottish, so any of the British listeners are gonna be going, "No, doesn't sound right." But so I though mainly work from home. I am a freelance based marketing designer. I do two types of things. On the average day, I'm either building assets for commercial teams whether that's sort of layout design, landing pages, websites, and a lot of that is UX based as well.

So I've kind of got UX interweaved quite a lot in the background. Very similar to yourself, Mike. It's kind of something I've grown into or using skills I've learned before and applying them in that way. And then the other part of me is actually working with seed-level startups, so people who have an idea but actually don't have anything behind them to help them with the funding.

So actually, I build lightweight brands. I call them diet brands 'cause they're like mini logos and brand sheets rather than these big brand books. And then helping them with like a commercial slide deck to help with their sort of buy-in when they're presenting their idea. And then some flat user interface design concept. So they kind of got like, this is what we're looking to achieve.

And I also work with 'em in a marketing sense of like, how's the best way to present that information? So they might talk to me for 10 minutes and I say, "Well, this is how you frame it, this is how you'd phrase it." And that's part because of the big marketing background, which we'll get into that I have. And so it's kind of like a unique sort of offering for these startups. And I've done a couple now and it really helps 'em look professional at that seed funding level.

So I kind of do two arms, one of this sort of big marketing aspect with sort of SME, B2B companies, so you're sort of quite medium enterprise companies and then right at the start founders. So it's quite nice. I've got a mix that I work with.

MR: And I suppose the ideal client would be someone that you helped at a seed stage who turns into the middle stage, right, where they grow, and then you can stay with them ideally, I suppose at some point in the future, right?

EC: Yeah. Coincidentally, this is my anniversary today of when I decided to go freelance.

MR: Really?

EC: Yeah. So a year ago, last year is when I went, "I'm going to do freelance. I'm going to make this sort of decision. This is what I want to do. I wanna work in a sustainability climate action sort of sector as well." So purpose-driven businesses. So it's been really nice to sort of work with some of these seed founders who have got these ideas to try and help the planet or help people.

And that's the thing, helping people, planet, or animals. That's kind of my three pockets. I'm quite happy at the minute that I'm working with a lot, which has actually enabled social connectivity. So actually, ironically from some tech issues we had at the start of this podcast, I'm working with one which has actually enable telecoms to more rural areas, so lightweight telecoms.

So it's cheaper, it's quicker to put in. So giving a lot of rural areas in Scotland and Wales and Ireland, better access to the internet because the pandemic showed how just proportionate access to technology and internet was. And that's what one of these companies I'm working for at the minute, is doing is these startup telecom pools and cabinets to be able to be put in these places so everyone's got access to the same level of internet. So it's quite nice. It's quite nice to see sort of the different ways that these people are helping communities in their own way.

MR: That's really cool. So you obviously, just been a year since you've gone independent.

EC: Mm-hmm.

MR: Talk a little bit about what got you to that point, what did you do before that, and a little bit of why you decided to go independent. That would be really interesting, especially I think about the audience that's listening here, a lot of times they do sketchnoting or visual thinking on the side or as a side thing at work. And there comes a point for some people that they wanna go independent. I know several people, so it might be helpful for them to hear your journey and your thinking and all that.

EC: Yeah. Well, I would start my journey really, you know, 20 years ago now. Which makes me feel even older. I was like, oh, brilliant. [Unintelligible 05:56] for a minute. All right. Monty, come here. Sit. Sit. Wait. I don't know if somebody at my door next to -- so hold on. Wait.

MR: Okay. We can cut this.

EC: He's very agitated, which makes me think it's our door. Calming down. You are calming down. I know. It's making for interesting TV.

MR: What kind of dog do you have?

EC: He's a Golden Retriever.

MR: Oh.

EC: So he's a big loud dog, hence the noise. But I do have my bribery box, so he knows that when he gets a treat, he's quiet. So I told you it was gonna be that subtler. Good boy. Good boy. Right. I think that's it. I think they've gone one tea. Right. We're going through it all today.

MR: Makes for a fun time.

EC: Right. I'll start again. 20 years ago, making me feel old, I did a dual degree. It was design marketing, so it was about 70 percent design, 30 percent marketing, and it was design-focused as well for marketing. So packaging design, point of sale design, print design, very traditional design. Unfortunately, I am that old where, you know, websites really were just becoming a thing.

You know, I went to uni when it was zip disks. That was the biggest thing that you could store everything on. And I remember thinking brilliant. And it was Yahoo search rather than Google search. I was very traditionally taught in design, so very much pen and paper. I think my entire first year was markers, pens, and fine liners. It wasn't digital. And then we moved into digital and the Mac labs and all that side of things.

From university, I was very fortunate, got a job straight away into a marketing team doing design for the marketing team. Exactly what I did for about six years. And it was really interesting. You've got telling so much about marketing, it's so much about the inner workings of a business as well and how everything works and the commercial teams, sales guys, you know, all that side.

Then lucky for everybody who's old enough to remember as well, then we had a financial crash in 2008 where especially in the UK, most people weren't wanting in-house designers, agencies weren't hiring. It wasn't seen as something people wanted. So I kind of, luckily enough having the degree I had, I flipped my degree. Basically, I flipped my career. I went from doing pretty much pure design with a bit of marketing. So, you know, I used to do marketing admin to started department marketing.

So I went up in a journey in marketing. I quite rapidly went up to manager level, but I was very employable because I could do design and I could save companies thousands of pounds 'cause I could do everything they were paying somebody externally to do. Or at least I could take some of the load of that budget off.

I think because of that, it meant I had a secure job, luckily. And when it got to about six years of doing that, so early 2010, '11, I was like, right, this is definitely the career path. So I kept going, kept doing the marketing management side, and went into digital marketing specifically to really upskilled in web design and really start to take, without knowing it, a UX approach to website design.

I was always data-driven. I was always nerdy about where do people go, what journey did it go, what are they clicking on, and you know, speaking to users and all that side of things. And it got really interesting. But I was getting to a point in my career where, unless I went to the director level where you're just managing people a lot of the time and not doing the work, and I like doing the work.

I like doing the job. I don't wanna manage people doing the job. I want to do the job. Because of the financial crash, people still weren't hiring in-house designers. So I decided to take quite a bold step and I decided to retrain as a teacher. So about 2014 '15, that was, I think it was, I retrained as a teacher. And a design teacher specifically. You know, I wasn't randomly gonna go and do geography.

So went to do design and that's actually when I came across sketchnotes because I'd obviously gone from being hand drawn-taught, very traditional taught to then being thrust into pretty much computer-first design really. And always going to the computer first, it becomes habitual. And I suddenly realized how I'm gonna be teaching kids that some have never designed before.

They may have done art at at primary school, so I always taught secondary school. So high school level. And it was like in America it would be like middle and you know, top high school. I realized I was gonna teach 'em these kids how to draw in terms of design versus art. And then I thought I needed also a way of me relearning how to teach them to design 'cause I can quite instinctively draw a box and I'll draw it in a particular way, but how do I communicate to them, how do you draw this box? How do we annotate?

MR: Yeah, it's a process.

EC: Yeah. How do we annotate it? And I think as you touched on at the start, I got so used to having to teach annotation side, tell you why this thing does this. And that's why I label a lot my drawings educate and saying this is why it does this and this is why this button does this or side of things now. But back then I was struggling. I was like, "How do I teach them this?"

And the funny thing about learning to teach, they teach you how to teach not how to teach your subject in a way. It was quite like, "I'm gonna learn how to go back to basics to draw." And I just by randomness came across your book and I was like--and you know, it was one of those things you think, "I'm an experienced designer buying a book about drawing." And you just kind of think, "This doesn't seem right. But also, really right at the same time." You kind of go, it's like somebody buying me a coloring book. You're like really.

So I got the book and then I just fell in love with the methodology more than anything 'cause It really works for me, the logical side, the iteration side. And I thought, this is perfect for teaching kids. It's perfect for actually getting me back into that traditional design, but more importantly, I was trying to find one so I could show you these traditional homework sheets of basically if you were a top end student, I'll give you the end picture, and they had to backwork it in the building blocks.

And if they were a lesser able child or one that hadn't really experienced any type of design or drawing, I gave them like little shadow boxes. This is kind of how you build up. So there was like, you can really skill it for different skill sets, but it was also, I was using that principle of, right, well how do I do this? And getting the kids to break things down, it was like, "Look at that object, tell me what shapes it is." Or "Draw those shapes under paper," right.

Now, we can combine those shapes under paper. And you could see some kids, their light bulb and their head go in. I never thought I could draw a camera. And then suddenly they just thought, oh, it's actually, I was saying it's a serial box. So they could visualize a serial box with like a round circle in front. That's all it is. And it was interesting where you could just see the thought process of realizing it's not art and it's not got a standard, it's not one plus one equals math. There's a different approach to this.

And then I really liked the methodology of sketch notes and it sort of kept it since then. And I would say the biggest decision I made in my life was training to teach. And I would say the hardest decision in my life was deciding not to continue. Because it was quite a big debate to admit saying this is not a route for me, 'cause sometimes you just think, "I've committed to this, now I'm just gonna have to stick with my guns." And I was like, "I've become one of those statistics where people go, ah, there's many teachers leaving in the first year of teaching. I'm now one of those statistics." Which I was like, well it's not really 101, but I'm one of them.

MR: You have to be real, right? I suppose.

EC: Yeah. And I was very conscious, and yourself and your listeners would be aware that if I was out of industry for a certain length of time, it would be very hard for me to get into a certain level in industry rather than start this at the bottom again. So I had to take quite a big bold step halfway through my first year and go, "This is not for me. At the end of this term, I'm going back into industry." So that's what I did.

I then went back into industry working for a manufacturing company, and I love how things are made. So that really ignited my passion again, I think. In a way, it was like taking a career break that I think that teaching it was kind of proved to be that sort of, well year and a half of a career break in a weird way. But it realized that I like design. I do like the marketing aspect in a smaller portion, but people are investing now back into design back into branding, regaining the customer base. So I went back into design, which I really enjoyed.

And I was focusing now on more sustainability as well. Sustainable business energy sector, which I work a lot in. And then action and climate change. So I've done quite a lot in sustainability. Learning a lot about that side as well. And I'm really focused on helping people with a purpose succeed.

And I got to about four or five years into the company I was working for previously last year, and I sat there and thought, again, "I don't wanna go to this marketing director level." I was getting to the same problem that I was like, I just, I like doing the work and I like project managing, which is a bit weird when you think, I don't wanna be a marketing director, but I like managing project, but I don't wanna be that director level. It's no interest to me and not everybody's career path is to go to the top of the pyramid. There's a lot of us like to sit a couple of steps below that.

And that's when I thought I'm gonna do freelance properly 'cause a lot of creatives, I've dabbled with it here and there and I've dipped my toe in and I thought actually -- and you know, it's a year ago to the day that sat, I remember on holiday went, "I think this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go freelance. I'm gonna work for purpose-driven companies. I'm gonna work for marketing teams because I know what assets I have to that team 'cause They understand marketing teams."

So I come from a very practical approach to what they do. It's like, this is engaging content and it's practical and I talk marketing. I understand how they can get the budgets for what they need to do. I understand all that side. And then the other part of me was going, if I work on that, then a small part of me now is focused on working with seed founders to help their ideas within purpose-driven, whether it's in climate change or whether it's in animal welfare, whether it's telecoms to level up communities. Whether it's all that.

And a lot of the time I'm working with them nearly at cost as well because I am a firm believer in giving back. And I know these ones are wanting to do good. They're not doing this to make money, they're doing -- but side note, some of these are not-for-profits anyway, the way they're setting themselves up. And the a quote that's always stood with me and random person that I heard it from, I don't if it's actually him originally, but it's the person I remember saying it, which is the rapper/singer Pitbull of all people.

MR: Okay. Yeah.

EC: And he said "Money does buy you happiness, you just have to give it away." And I thought it was a really interesting way of framing it. And I was like, so I worked with these smaller projects to try and give back in a different way. So enabling them to have something that will do good at the same time working for these bigger SME marketing teams.

Yeah, so for nearly under a year now, I've been doing freelance. I attempted freelance at the started of the year. I have a contract job with a marketing company which secured my time because of the experience I've had. They were like, "Well, work for us for 20 hours a week." Anybody who's freelance will know, you know, any work 60 hours a week, I'm working for myself as well sort of thing. You know, there's no real, "Oh you only do 40 hours freelance." It's like, 'cause you're also marketing and accountant and HR and social media.

MR: Right. Yeah.

EC: Yeah. So you know, social media. Video grapher is my thing at the minute. So it's interesting because that journey, all those things I've gone through and experience I've had like the financial crash made me more prepared to be freelance 'cause I knew what I had to put in place to cope with those sort of events. The pandemic also had the same effect. I know what I need to do to that. So hopefully, this is now my journey.

MR: Wow. That's really great. And I would think too, you know, going back to your education, you took that year and a half to kind of potentially switch careers and it was clear that it wasn't the direction. But I would think that that education on how to educate as much as, you know, it didn't fit for you to be a full-time thing, you found ways to integrate that.

That's what I think attracted me when I was on Instagram. I see you doing that kind of work in the things you're doing. And I imagine for those seed-level startups, you're teaching them how to position themselves and how to reframe, what's the narrative, right? All those things are things you can teach out of your wealth of knowledge in marketing and then teach them in a way that fits their situation. Would that be a fair way to think of it?

EC: Yeah. And myself, I'm a constant learner. Like one of the master classes was actually yours, an Interaction design foundation. So, you know, I've watched one of your master classes, I think I've done one of your other ones as well, one you did as an independent webinar. And I'm always wanting to learn and I always like to experience how other people teach as well thinking, oh, I like that or I like that --

MR: Me too.

EC: -- that technique. And I'll be like, "Oh, I'll write that down." And funny enough, I have that in my sketch notes. I have my playbook, which we'll probably get to in terms of tips and that. And I write everything down and I'm always wanting to learn, even if it's subjects that are totally nothing to do because I've just got an interest in subject. I've done a criminology diploma because I was just really interested in like CSI and things. I was like, "I just wanna know more about this." I have no interest in doing it as a job, but I wanna learn more.

And through my sort of social media and part of what I've tried to do with some of the, you know, here's the buttons and this is why this is this and like trying to break it down to people, like trying to understand to them why like three lines of text, why it should be orientated like this and the different shapes it should do. And it's really nice getting feedback from a couple of people who are actually junior marketing people that are following me going, "Oh that's just made it look so much better now my PowerPoint."

And they're applying these little concepts in different ways and it was so nice. A woman was so proud, they sent me like, "Look at this. I took your ideas." And I didn't even know they were following me 'cause I've never interacted with them. But they were so tough just to say. And I was like, it's like that teaching approach. And I've got like a whole program of other things that it's just getting the time unfortunately of other things I wanna say like this way, this is why it looks better than this way. Both are fine, but you know, let's have a look, breakdown.

So it's kind of that, it's so nice to see little things I've done just to try and like help and part that information, and as other people are sucking in, like the little silent people, they don't interact, they don't like your stuff. They don't comment on your stuff, but they're clearly just sit --

MR: You're having an influence for sure. Yeah.

EC: Yeah. And I get like little messages going, "How did you edit that in?" Like they go, "Well how did you do that in Premiere Pro? And I'm like, "Well I didn't. I used such and such to start with. I said, "It's far easier, if you're not a pro with something like Premiere Pro or something like that." Goes, "Use Canva, use Adobe Express. Just use something that's easier." Sort of thing. Don't think you have to use its big software 'cause the big boys use it. You know what I mean?

MR: Right.

EC: And I always say, you know, "Use something that's just user-friendly." And that's the kind of the wins.

MR: Yeah, exactly. I mean I use iMovie for almost everything, podcasts. I've used it for my teaching. So when I do my training and I cut it up and turn it into a video for sale, I'm just using iMovie. I mean, I've always believed this, like a lot of times we tend to think that we need the big software when simple software that's default on your machine is often more powerful than you realize because you just overlook it and that there's opportunities to really push it further than you really think it could push.

EC: And I think like going back to my secondary school education, the most advanced type of art software was the equivalent of whatever paint was back then.

MR: Yeah, exactly.

EC: We were drawing everything in paint. And I have one of the first things I ever did upstairs, it was a little folder that my mom -- my mom was obviously like, look what she drew sort of thing. And you know, we just think that's cringe. "It's cringeworthy, mom. But now I'm 40, I think that's actually quite cool that I've got something that I did digital or way back when."

And I remember looking at every time going, but on the other hand, paint could do a lot back then. And that was 20, and on CorelDRAW, I think we were using and quo we were saying with layout design quo and things. So, you know, I'm in the age with Dreamweaver, used to be owned by Macromedia rather than Adobe. And I do sometimes think like -- I always say to people, Microsoft Paint can actually do a huge amount. 'Cause I'm a Mac -- not a Mac user, I'm a PC user.

I use Notepad by default for a lot of things, typing up notes. And it's so great if you are doing web development 'cause it strips all the code out, it strips all your formatting so you know, you've got a clean copy and paste when you're putting in something. So I do think that we forget the simpler things.

And it's the same, we've going back to just sketching, going back to that idea of stop forcing myself to use Illustrator straight away because I'm not a pro at Illustrator. I have to keep Googling stuff 'cause I always forget stuff. When you have to remember how to use Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and InDesign, and Figma on your average day, you get to the point of "There's only so much I'm gonna remember how to do." Sort of thing.

MR: Yeah, yeah. You focus on the things you use often, right? And you Google things you use occasionally, which is fine. I mean that's -- those tools.

EC: I wish Google when I was learning would've been brilliant when I was at university.

MR: No kidding. Well, we're on this discussion of software. We sort of hinted at this when we prepared for this, talking about the drawing and software, and so, I think agree in this sense that I think it's important that you do your concepting on paper with pen to get the idea and to think through the idea before you get into software.

My theory or my view is, the problem with software as powerful as it is, even the simple stuff, is once you enter software, you tend to adapt to the things that the software lets you do or even to this discussion we're having now. You adapt to the things you know how to make the software do, which is a narrow subset of what the software probably can do.

But by using pencil sketches or sketchnotes or whatever technique as ugly or beautiful as it is, it helps you think through where you're gonna go before you ever touch any bit of software. So you're coming with this approach that's not hindered in any way by what the software can or can't do.

It's more like what's the solution that we're solving for the person, the customer, the user using this thing. Let's start from that point, which, you know, that's our UX perspective. And then work back to making it happen and then bring the tools in. Would you kind of track along the side of that and have you seen that I would apply?

EC: Yeah, I would. And actually, I would say it pretty much aligns with exactly a project I've just sent to print. I've nerve-rackingly sent to print. It's always one of those moments, especially if you're so used to digital design, you've got send something to actually print. You're like, "I'm gonna check this 500 times." So I'm gonna actually a bit show. This is useless for people just listening rather than those watching.

MR: If you're listening to the podcast, look on the link for the YouTube and you can check it out.

EC: So this is something -- I'm gonna try and get it in screen. There we go.

MR: You got it on there. That's all in.

EC: There we go. So that is actually quite a few sheets worth of work. But this was deliberately designed in a comic book style. And it was something that I knew if I went to the computer, I'm gonna go and default a couple of things. I'm gonna look at some stock illustrations that can get me the boxes and the styles and the effects. And then I'm gonna go quite rigid and I'm gonna do this.

And I'm thinking, first of all, I've got to think it through because it's about actually how product is made from -- it's that telecoms brand company. So how someone gets from that sheet of metal all the way through to a roadside cabinet with a telecoms pool coming out of it and a wifi device at the top of it and all the stages in between? And I've got to remember what those stages are.

And I think taking it back to pen and paper, it was kind of a big sketchnote gone wrong. I was starting to actually do it as very -- I did say it was a sketchnote gone wrong 'cause I did originally plan just to do like little sketchnotes, going right, this would be this and this will be this. Then I took another sheet and went, "Oh no, I'll just draw it out properly."

And then I got to the third sheet 'cause and I'll add a little bit of marker pen. It literally just started to build up. I was like, "This is quite funny. This is me really not doing sketchnotes now." I was like, "I've abandoned it. It's not a sketchnote, it's a full-on illustration." But the best thing about that was, it took me maybe a couple of hours to draw all out, get the concept, a few annotations kind of like the teaching side as well.

Just took a picture of it and sent it to the MD and went, "This is the idea and I don't wanna spend time doing a illustrate if you don't like the concept of this being this comic book superhero theme." And he was like, "I like it. I really like it." Luckily, he's got a good vision. He can see what's gonna be the end result as well. He knows what I'm capable of so he knows what would be produced. And even when he looked at this very basic sketch, he went, "Oh by the way, it's not called that, it's called this so you need to google this."

So you already gave me feedback just because the sketch was just good enough where you could get what it was supposed to be, but you could pick up on, "Oh you've not quite got that terminology. So just point in the right path." So my next version of that was fine and then fine lined it, took pictures of it, and then took it into Illustrator.

And I think it's better because it's, a lack way of putting it got that one key approach. And my lines aren't quite parallel. Like curves aren't perfect because I've traced the image of that. And it's given a very hand-drawn effect. And rather than if I had gone to illustrate straight away, I know I would've done really nice straight lines. A really nice arc. And it would've looked too polished.

And whole point of this was, it's supposed to be somebody sketched out like a story like you do with comics. Sometimes I have to remember that's actually gonna be a better approach. And I think that's why stripping back to pen and paper and having that base skillset really helpful in trying to convey an idea as well and get buy-in. Before I go and invest 40 hours of my time, "Are we all right with this one hour of time I've invested?"

MR: Well, and you have to think that way as an independent especially, 'cause that means if you spend 40 hours going all the way with that, that's 40 hours you can't spend on something else that maybe you should be, right? It's sort of a seed idea that, "Hey, is this right?" Even if it gets you arguing over the concept, at least it's movement. And then you can move from there. Either you'd say, "No, that's too loose. I don't want that." Or "Hey, it looks great, he chose that way, but at least it gives him an option and is our invested." And you can now choose your adventure based on that.

EC: I think the reason behind doing it as well goes back to maybe the last two to three years of really getting deep into UX design in terms of websites where really starting with pen and paper wireframes. Pen and paper wireframes, then even moving into just block design and saying, "This is where the hero shot's gonna be. This is where the interest's gonna be." And laying it out blocks like that before even building it.

And again, web design, we get so carried away from going, getting a brief and going right bang, here's your website. And then going, "Oh actually we don't really like that and it doesn't flow here. But doing it in that stage work, which does take more time, but then that's kind of part of the investment with UX rather than just going straight into web design.

And that's part of what I've been trying to do when doing freelance is going, but even when I approach the marketing teams, I go, "I don't do your brochure straight out the bat. What I do is I go, here's the general skeleton structure. This is what your page layout's gonna be." And I give them like a skeleton grid of their say 16 pages. These are where your content blocks are. This is roughly where your imagery is gonna be. This is the idea. And I'll give them a like a mood ball going, "And this is the visuals." And then they can buy in on that.

So when they produce the end result, it should be pretty much on the button rather than coming back going, "Oh actually, we'd rather it was a bit like this. And could those be amalgamated together?" Don't go it wrong. You do get ones like that. Where you've somehow, it's been lost in translation. But again, it's to try and help me knowing that that's kind of way marketing teams work as well. If you can give them an idea. If you've got somebody with a remote bit of creative brain, they can visualize it already in their head as well. They kind of know what the end result's gonna be.

And it just helps and gives them confidence that they know I know what I'm doing. So I kind of strip it down even if it's digitally kind of blocks. But yeah, I think going straight into the actual design end phase. And in a way that's what sketchnotes has taught me is to not always go for that sort of thing. Not always go for the end result with a color and a fine line and all that. You know, use a pen and paper, use a pencil sort of thing.

MR: That seems to work. I've been doing this for many years and sometimes I'll jump right to the computer and stop myself and come back and get out my iPad or a piece of paper and just sketch the concept. And it always seems that those projects turn out better. They iterate better, they're smoother. They're more thought out. Like all those things that you want in an end product, ends up getting bound into them when I approach 'em that way.

And typically, I do, but there's times when, if I'm in a hurry, I might forget that step and I'll have to like, "Okay, stop. Let's go back let's do some sketching." Even if it's just a little bit in my bullet journal, just to think through the process, that might be enough, right. It doesn't have to be some crazy detailed thing, but a little dump of ideas and seeing it helps reinforce things and give it direction, which is really valuable.

EC: Yeah. I even do that with quite a few of my social media posts. If they're gonna be actually illustrating a topic or I go for one that's about buttons. You know, I've got them in one of my notebooks where I was going, right, this is how it's gonna lay out, these are the buttons I'm gonna talk about. Giving myself the space and oh that's not gonna work. Do the next one. The next one. Rather than going straight into these ones were done in Figma. So rather than going straight into Figma and going, "Oh no, I have to resize this and I have to move this." I already know what it's gonna be.

MR: You got the map. Yeah.

EC: Yeah. And you can go straight in. And I do think going digital first sometimes isn't the best way. And I think that's one of the big benefits of having the career that I've had where, you know, my first year university was pretty much analog and that set me off success. You know, we learned proper old school market techniques. You know, with the blending up and sort of thing and you know, and having to use masking tape to keep your line script.

So I've learned all of those skills. You wouldn't think that looking at some of my designs. I look at some of my sketchnotes and going, "I have no idea how I've got the degree I've got sometimes. Or how I was allowed to teach children how to draw." But then that's kind of one of the things I try and do is go, "Don't get hung up on the way it looks. Just get it down." Sort of thing.

MR: Yeah. Functional, functional, functional.

EC: Yeah.

MR: That's really cool. This is a great story and it's brought back a lot of memories for me as well. So that's encouraging. Let's shift a little bit. I'd love to hear the tools that you like to use. You've hinted at some on the design on the marketing side which you can certainly go into. You can start either analog or digital, whichever way you'd like first.

EC: Well, I think we should start analog because you know, we're saying we should go analog first. I'd like to say I'm a black pen enthusiast. I have a lot of black pens, those listening to the audio, there. I try lots --

MR: A bucket full black pens.

EC: Yeah. Obviously, some of them are different thicknesses and some are like brush tip and normal tip. But doesn't matter which black pen I use, I go back to an actual Uniball finite pen. Just 'cause it's a really simple, nice black pen. And I like it 'cause it's reliable and it's consistent. And usually come in packet of like five 'cause I seem to lose them. I don't how I'll lose them. It's like batteries, you know, they just disappear. But I really like the Uniball high fine pen.

And you can get them in like every supermarket here in the UK. Especially, at the minute it's back-to-school stuff. So, funny enough, I've just bought another packet. I like them as well 'cause they're consistent. It doesn't really matter what paper I use, they come out the same. They don't really bleed and it's just got their nice crispness to it. And then with them, if you think I'm a black pen enthusiast, you still need to see the amount of marker pens I own.

But I have a huge amount of color and marker pens. But for the sketch notes side, I found I was trying to focus too much on the color instead of just giving it a bit of a highlight and a bit of a punch more than anything. And then my brain tweaked them I was like, well just use highlighters sort of thing. So one of the things I really like is, these are the Sharpe highlighters. So the s-not and they come in about20 or so colors

MR: Look like nice pastel colors. If you're listening, they're not the traditional intense crazy colors. It's more like pastel colors.

EC: Yeah. And I think that's why we like 'em because they've got a bit of a punch of a traditional neon sort of highlight. You know, they've got a bit of that punch, but they've got the softness of the pastel sort of very zebra, I think bring out a pastel range. I've got twitch, I've got God knows how many of them as well.

MR: Oh, okay.

EC: But they're kind of very vibrant and they come in a whole range of colors. You wouldn't get that -- you know, there's no neon, real true neon, but them combined, they just give that highlight. And what I try to do is I look at what I'm taking a sketchnote off. So if we go back to -- they're always learning. That's what I use my sketchnotes for is always like watching the webinars and using it to remember what I'm learning. Or when I read books, I try and condense a book I've read into one or two pages of notes.

So one of the things I do is, so I've got quite nicely got to actually a page use those. So I try and use the colors just -- I pick a couple of colors to match maybe the brand of the person that I'm watching. Or it could be to do with the topic because then it helps me remember it and learn it. I'm that design nerd, so I'm kind of thinking he needs to have a nice theme. I can't just rock up with any random color.

MR: Yeah.

EC: So that's kind of how I do. I always have a Uniball pen on me. I've got them in my bags. I've got 'em in the car because they are just so relatively foldable as well. They're really quite cheap. It's only like a few bucks for a pack of three or five, however many they come in.

MR: That's great. Yeah.

EC: And paper-wise, I'm quite particular. So when I'm doing the actual UX design, so when I'm doing wireframes because I really don't want to use color. These are black and white and I know if I use white paper I'm gonna add color 'cause I know what sort of person I am.

MR: Interesting.

EC: Yeah. So I use Kraft brown paper.

MR: Oh wow.

EC: So deliberately you put color on that, it doesn't really show at all. So I've got like a nice sort of spiraled brown and it's quite a nice size as well. So sort of landscape orientation, it's kind of monitor then portrait orientation, you've kind of got more of a mobile style. I've got a couple of these now and they're quite thick as well. So if I wanna use a heavier-duty thicker black pen, they work really well.

MR: They can't bleed.

EC: Yeah. And so I use Kraft, and it forces me not to use color. It forces me to keep -- this is purely about wire framing. This is where the base element's go in the page. And then I use post-it notes to highlight up to like, this is where it's gonna move. In terms of the notebooks, it was funny enough, I was just looking at the sketchnote one the other day.

But I use quite a thick, really thick gram paper. And I like nice notebooks. It's one of my things. I don't like just using generic paper as well. And I think 'cause those sharpies can be quite heavy duty. It's a Sharpie at the end of the day, you know, it's gonna have a bit of a bleed through the page. So I'm quite conscious of having a really heavy gram paper.

And I like dot grid. I can't do the blank paper. 'Cause Even those comic book strips, actually it's on the reverse side of blue graph paper. So I can roughly see the graph through it. So I've got an idea of where the lines are. But I like dot grid. All of my general notebooks are dot paper or grid paper, depending on how people call them. And that's kind of what I like analog-wise, I'm quite traditional. I think. I'm not really into anything fancy.

MR: So for the heavy gram notebook, that looked like a LEUCHTTURM, if I were to guess. I don't know If that's the brand.

EC: No, I'm gonna pronounce this wrong. I already know I'm gonna -- Ottergami

MR: Oh, okay. Ottergami. I haven't heard that. There's a fun shot now. So for bullet journalists. Or bullet journalists and they have quite thick paper.

EC: Yeah, it's really nice quality. From my sustainability side and also, 'cause I am actually a vegan as well, so I'm very conscious about them not having real leather on the covers and things. And it is a bit like your own one, which -- that's how I came across it. 'Cause I was looking for notebooks that weren't real leather covers. But I do like it because it is so heavy duty and it's got that nice quality.

And I think if I'm gonna be writing something I'm gonna look back on, I want it to feel nice. You know, I want that tact. I like the tactileness sort of thing. And I think that's, again, goes back to being old-school print design. You like the feel of the paper and it's got the nice gram effect, et cetera.

MR: Yeah, exactly. Now what about if we switch to digital, assuming that you don't have any other analog tools that you'd like to share? What would be the tool?

EC: Well, I have a lot of analog tools, but I don't think any of them are -- I've got, you know, every type of color pencil going. Digital-wise, 'cause I'm not a Mac user, I am a Windows user, so I've got a Samsung Galaxy Tab. And I use Concepts because it's just a brilliant app.

MR: That's a great tool.

EC: Yeah. The Concepts app. And I would say in the last two years, the Samsung Pen has been really up its game with its sensitivity. It works like my old Apple iPad Pro, what was it called? Yeah, iPad Pro that had the tablet. I had one of the first edition ones and then Procreate stop supporting it, so I sold it. And that's when I was like, well actually it was the last piece of Apple products I had.

So I thought, well, this is the time I'm gonna move to Galaxy Tab. And I wanted something smaller because this is small enough to go into, you know, a small like rucksack. So in a out and about. And I love the Concepts app. Really been looking at using it in the last year or so.

I like the never-ending art board as well, although sometimes it kind of feels like you don't have scale. So I've noticed when I've gone back and looked at sketches I've done or UX wireframes where some look proportionally fine and then I zoom out and then somehow I've managed to do giant boxes and tiny boxes. But because it's vector-based, at least you can start to resize things.

MR: Yeah. You can size it. Yeah.

EC: But sometimes you kinda lose the awareness of where you are 'cause it's obviously a smaller screen 'cause it's a Galaxy Tab rather than like a big iPad Pro. But I do like the Concepts app. I've tried a few and they just didn't seem to have that sensitivity with the Samsung Pen. But equally they didn't have even just a free version of Concepts, the wide range of colors, wide range of pens available and not. So yeah, I do like sketchnoting though, because you can press Undo and you can change the line that you just thought it's a bit dodgy.

MR: Yeah. That's nice.

EC: And it does the smoothing out. I was like, "Oh, I like this. Why can't I do this a real life for a pen and paper."

MR: Yeah, exactly. So the tab I think is more like an A5 size?

EC: It is. To be fair, it's not far off the size of notebooks.

MR: It'd probably be closest to an iPad Mini if someone's used to iPad. It's probably more in that range.

EC: Yeah, it is a nice size. And I got that 'cause I wanted something that was bigger than my phone for actually learning because a lot of learnings now online you can't get books for a lot of things anymore. But I didn't wanna have to keep using my phone. And when I've spent 11 hours of the day at my computer, I don't wanna have to have my computer on an evening. So I bought it originally to be able to read eBooks or do some of the courses I've signed up to.

MR: And do a training. Yeah.

EC: Yeah. And even like your webinar, I think I watched it on my Galaxy Tab or potentially drew it on my Galaxy Tab. I can't remember now. But I use it for that. And then it's like the penny dropped. I was like, "Well, why don't I do some sketch notes on this?" And then I've started to use it more for the wireframes because it's easy then to take that and then put it into likes of Figma. And that's I found rather than having to take pictures and then move them in. So I'm using Concepts more for wireframes than sketchnoting. I think the tactlessness of the notebook for sketchnoting.

MR: Well, that's really cool. We don't have lots and lots of PC-only users or Galaxy Android users. So it's good to have represented because I know there must be more out there. So it's good to hear that. Good feedback. Yeah.

EC: Well I was like -- my computers all the way through university, even all the way up to near enough when I went to teacher training, were all Macs. For those who are watching, you'll see I've got in the background probably you can just see I've got an original iPhone, an iPod on the wall. Still have a better battery life to old iPhone 'cause they still work. And I had the old school, massive Mac, the Blueberry Mac with the big blue colors. So you know that I had one of them. So I've always been Mac from training.

And then it just got more into PC-based because I knew a large portion of my audience were using PCs. The market teams teams were using PCs. It was an easy sell to people to, "Well, we don't wanna put a Mac into the IT system and things." So I got used to using a Windows-based ecosystem. And then gradually as things in my Apple ecosystem died off, they just replaced with a Windows and Android.

MR: Yeah, makes sense.

EC: So I kind of smoothly moved over.

MR: That's pretty cool. Well, thanks for sharing your tools. People always like to have this section so they can learn about new tools and try things out. I know I learn about tools all the time from this section as well, so.

EC: When I walk the dog and listen to the podcast, I'm always like, "Oh, I didn't know that." Or, "Oh, there's another pen I'm gonna -- I think that's another pen I'm gonna buy." And then go back to the Uniball. Hence the tub of nearly 50 black pens that I own.

MR: Wow. Well, let's go to the next portion of the show, which is your three tips. So I always frame it as someone's listening, they're individual thinking, whatever that means to them. Maybe they've gotten into a rut and they need just some encouragement. Like what would be three things you would encourage them to do to kind of get back into a good rhythm?

EC: I think the first one, and this is something that I used to champion a lot when I was teaching and trying to get kids to get out the mindset of. You've just come from, you know, maths or you've come from geography or history or wherever it might be. And you've come and sat in this room, you've gotta get kids credit 'cause they've gotta suddenly switch from one class to another. And I'll just be sitting going, I can't get my head into this mindset. Or it's not perfect or it's whatever it might be.

And I used to say to them at the level they're doing, or the level that most designers are doing, there's no standard. Don't worry about a standard. Try and remember there's no standard. This is not maths. One plus one doesn't equal two. So your standard is not my standard. Your design is not my design. And that's why I actually love sketchnotes 'cause everybody's is completely different. Everyone's styles are different.

And trying to remember that unless you're doing architecture and building regulations, design is quite free. And don't you put that pressure on yourself? So give yourself a break. Remember that you are setting the standard in a way and try and give yourself a break. 'Cause I think we all kind of get a bit too hung up on, "Oh, it needs to be like this." And it's kinda like, no, just, there's no standard to design really. It's, quite freeing.

It's not as free as art. Granted. But that's very expressive. You know, you've got the fine line. You know, we do have some standards, you know, we're not going to the really, really fluid art world, but yeah, try and remember that you are the one giving yourself a hard time. So let up on yourself. There is no standard. So I would say that's probably number one.

The second one is a bit something that I wish I did a lot early on in my career. And I've only started doing in the last, I think five, six years actually after I finished teaching, really, I'm gonna get an example, is I create playbooks 'cause a hybrid of a sketchbook, a scrapbook, important notes. Things that I find I think are really interesting that I want to sort of scrapbook.

And the reason why I wish I started this earlier -- so for those listening, I'm sort of holding up some like cutouts I've done and I've annotated them and things that I've found online or logos and packaging that I like and I cut them out and I sort of stick them in and I write why I like them or why it's worked and so annotating them.

But I also do my sketch notes in it from the books that I've read or the webinars I've attended. And I have one for each year. And the reason I like them is sometimes it's really good to just, if you've got that mental block, is go back and look at something, pick a subject you've read and think it could inspire you.

Or if you think, oh, this is no good, look what you were doing five, six years ago. And it's like, when I look at the thing I designed when I was 15 using Microsoft Paint or whatever it would've been, I'm like, "Oh yeah, I've actually come quite a way since then." Sort of thing. So I wish I did these earlier because it's so interesting to look back on.

But more importantly, I get inspiration every time I look at them because it is personalized to me. It's my journey. It's my type of design and it helps inspire me to look at it and go, "Oh yeah, why didn't I try that?" Or "Oh wait, I forgot about this."

And sometimes it can spark that idea or give you the confidence boost. You remember you can actually do this, right? It's like when I draw badly or -- I wouldn't say badly. It's not a word I like to use. But I draw in a way where I just think, "How do people pay me to do this?" Sort of thing.

I deliberately sometimes go -- and I've got like some really nice hand-drawn, colored in really heavy-duty, 20 hours sort of pencil colors drawings in my playbooks, in my sketchbooks because it's just to remind myself I do actually have that talent. It's just my brain's not using that talent at the minute. It's clearly using it for something else. You know, it's worrying about, "What I'm gonna have from a dinner." So it's nice to look back and it kind of reaffirms where you are, but also gives you that inspiration.

And I would say the third one is probably a classic one is walk the dog. The amount of things I can solve by walking my dog. I take him out for a walk, 45 minutes later I'm either re-inspired, I fixed a problem while either walking the dog. I might think, "Oh, this is a different way to approach it." The dog is brilliant 'cause I talked to him like a crazy dog owner I am, you know, and he doesn't answer back. He has a good go, granted, but he generally doesn't answer back.

And I would say, so take that tea break, go in the garden, walk the dog. Like during a pandemic was harder. So I used to go in the garden and just walk up and down a few times throwing a ball with a dog because as soon as my brain -- it is that adage of, to be creative, you also have to be bored. You have to have that bit where your brain is not thinking about what you're trying to think about. And that's why we have our best ideas in the shower when you're going to sleep because you've suddenly switched off. So I try sometimes a dog, it's four walks a day.

MR: It's a lot I'm sure.

EC: Yeah. Well, it gets to a point where it's like, "Oh, do we have to? Do we have to?" So I think we really underestimate getting away from your desk. Get out to nature, walk the dog. Just, you know, that fresh air is something about it that for me really works to help me get over that struggle.

And it could be any struggle, it could be a design struggle, it could be from the marketing stuff that I work on teams with, saying how should we approach this? So I find it's one of the best things I've -- well say it's nine years in now. It's the best thing I've had really in terms of my tools as well, is very analog tool.

MR: Yeah. That's good. That's good. Reset.

EC: Mm-hmm.

MR: Well, those are great tips. Thanks for sharing those, Elizabeth. Very helpful and encouraging. Making me wanna take my dog for a walk now, which maybe I should do after this 'cause I've been sitting for an hour, so

EC: Well, yeah. One of my friends, she says she plays with the kids. She says she'll go and she'll just build Lego with the kids or she'll go and color in with the kids because it is one of the few friends I've got that's in a relatively similar role. So she gets it as well. And she says sometimes just doing that and drawing it back to a more basic level makes her go, "Ah, that's how I could approach this problem." Or "That's how I could do this logo idea." 'Cause She's very much logo design and she's like, ah, that's -- you know, it's like the penny drops moments 'cause she's doing something related, but at the same time not thinking about it. So I really do think sometimes you have to give yourself 10 minutes to go do something else.

MR: Yeah. Let's your subconscious work for a bit, I guess. You know, so it can kind of churn on things and give you back some ideas.

EC: Yeah.

MR: So Elizabeth, where can we find you? What's the best place to locate you? A website, social media? Where do you hang out?

EC: My website is Below Two, so spelled out T-W-O.co.uk. And that's pretty much all of my social media is the same. So it's Below Two Studio. So whether it be Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, the whole lot, very rare. I've managed to secure it on all of the platforms. Especially in today's world where so many things are taken up. But you can find me there. I'm generally mostly on LinkedIn and Instagram. I've quoted Twitter there, which just start getting called using X, that's the term. But yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, Instagram mainly and my website, which is a key thing.

MR: Okay. That's really great. And you can go check that out everyone. We'll have of course, as always show notes and samples. And if we can get some samples from Elizabeth, we'll link to those as well so we can, she can throw 'em on our website and send us some links and we can see some pictures of her playbooks and some other things that she's talked about, if you're listening.

EC: It'll be great once this has actually come out, the thing I've just done a comic book stuff, we'll actually have all the end results.

MR: Oh.

EC: It's part of a huge exhibition that the entire standard is now gonna be comic book superhero design. So we've done the whole lot to that sort of style now.

MR: Wow. Cool.

EC: So hopefully, I'll have some quite like, literally here's the idea here. Is it now fully?

MR: That would be cool. Yeah, that'd be great.

EC: So hopefully I'll have that.

MR: Great. Well, thanks Elizabeth for all the sharing and teaching you do on Instagram that I've seen and for your generosity and hanging out with us and telling us your story and laughing and having the dog bark and the network flake out and all the things that we've gone through. It's been a joy just to hang out with you.

EC: Yes, thank you very much for having me. It's made a nice start to the bank holiday weekend here.

MR: Well, that's great. That's great. For all those who are listening or watching, this will wrap up another episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast. Until next time, talk to you soon.

In this episode, Jono Hey shares how he visually represents complex ideas in simple ways that are sticky, memorable, and quick to get to grips with. He also talks about building a platform that connects schools with substitute teachers.

Sponsored by Concepts

This episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.

Concepts' vector-based drawing feature gives you the power to adjust your drawings saving hours and hours of rework.

Vectors provide clean, crisp, high-resolution output for your sketchnotes at any size you need s ideal for sketchnoting.

SEARCH in your favorite app store to give it a try.

Running Order

• Intro
• Welcome
• Who is Jono Hey
• Origin Story
• Jono Hey's current work
• Sponsor: Concepts
• Tips
• Tools
• Where to find Jono Hey
• Outro

Links

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Sketchplanations Website
• Sketchplanations the Podcast
• Sketchplanations on Patreon
• Sketchplanations on on Instagram
• Sketchplanations on LinkedIn
• Jono’s Album: Fresh Start

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Moleskine dotted notebooks
• Leuchtturm1917 dotted notebooks
• Uniball Vision Elite pens
• Copic markers
• iPad Pro
• SketchBook Pro

Tips

1. The first draft is always perfect.
2. Keep it simple.
3. Keep going.

Credits

• Producer: Alec Pulianas
• Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer
• Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro

Subscribe to the Sketchnote Army Podcast

You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.

Support the Podcast

To support the creation, production, and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!

Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike and I'm here with Jono Hey. Jono, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you.

Jono Hey: Well, thanks, Mike. It's so good to finally meet you after all these years.

MR: Yeah, it's great. We've connected years and years ago, specifically for a sample or I guess one of your pieces that we included in one of the sketchnote handbooks, sketchnote workbooks because I thought your stuff was really cool, and the way you thought about visualization was really interesting. So that's, I think, how we crossed paths initially, probably 10 years ago, almost.

JH: Yeah, I think it was probably about 10 years ago.

MR: Isn't that crazy?

JH: Yeah. And I came across your work from originally when you did the re-work book. That's for--

MR: That's right.

JH: -- which was also a long time ago.

MR: Yeah. That was more like 15 years ago almost that now. So crazy how time flies. Anyway, so that's how we crossed paths. I've always loved your work, and I'm amazed at your prolific nature and your ability to continuously produce these sketchplanations.

And if you are watching or listening, and you've not heard of, or seen Jono's sketchplanations, they're amazing. He basically visually represents often very complex ideas in simple ways. So you can sort of get the concept of the idea with some notes and such to help, you know, describe it. Is that a fair way to describe what your sketchplanations are?

JH: Yeah, definitely. It's about taking a concept and trying to just represent it in a picture in a way that's sort of sticky and memorable and quick to get to grips with. I think over the years I've definitely started adding a bit more layer of description, which you can take optionally, but you don't have to have it. That's the idea is that you have that surface level. If it's interesting, you can dive in, and if not, carry on, you know.

MR: Yeah. And I'd love to hear sort of the origin story of that and what is driving you to continue, but first, tell us a little bit about what you do and who you are, and then you can jump right into your -- I always love to have people do their own origin story.

So how did you end up doing what you're doing? Did you draw as a kid? Did somehow you snuck through school without it being shaken out of you? Or how did that all begin? So start with who you are, what you do, and then where you came from.

JH: Cool. Yeah, as you said, I'm Jono, and I'm mostly here because of my work for Sketchplanations, which is a weekly newsletter working towards explaining the world one sketch at a time. With the illustration side, I was lucky enough to do some illustrations for Bill Gates's book recently, the --

MR: Oh, good.

JH: -- "How to Prevent the Next Pandemic," which was really cool. The illustrations, Sketchplanations has all been sort of a side project, which I've been doing now for the 10 years or so, that we've crossed paths. In my day job, I run product development. So I've been a UX designer and I run product delivery.

I'm now on my second startup, which has been a really cool and really interesting parallel journey, and it feeds a lot of content and the sorts of things that come into Sketchplanations. You ask the origin story so I will go right back.

MR: Okay, good.

JH: Because I think it makes sense as to why I am doing what I'm doing. And I think if I go back far enough, I always used to quite like drawing, but I was never particularly good at art in the sense that they were always better artists than me, but I was always quite good at the maths and the science side of things.

And so, if I think back to, what's high school in the U.S. or A-levels in the UK, I did a bunch of science and maths-based ones, and then I did art. Art was always the one, which I was very happy to go spend my lunchtime working on my art homework, but of course, I didn't do as well in my art as all the other stuff.

And so, what I ended up doing was design engineering, which is a lovely way to blend the two things together really. So you're trying to draw for a purpose and you're trying to communicate things, come up with ideas, but then express them on paper. But they have to work as well, so you have to have the math and the science bit right.

I don't know who your heroes were growing up, but DaVinci was always one of mine. And it's quite difficult to, you know, get the breadth of what evidently Leonardo da Vinci was able to do, but that for me, when I was growing up, was always ideal, beautifully using his art to express like scientific or engineering concepts, which was cool.

So in many ways, I think that's sort of lives on in what I was still been trying to do. Way back, I was good at science and maths, but I always enjoyed the art and I was always interested also in like creative thinking, and so, when I came out of university, I spent a lot of time working on creativity, really, like design, creativity, how do you come up with new, cool ideas? And I was really interested in how we think I got really into mind maps.

So I use mind maps all the time. When pre preparing for this, and mind maps are brilliant for like visual recording and sketchnoting. I was so interested in it that I went over to UC Berkeley, where I did a Ph.D. studying new product development.

MR: Oh, wow.

JH: That was a really nice combination. So they had a great program there where you have the engineering side, but then you have the business side from the business school there. And then you have sort of industrial design, which was a collaboration with the California College of the Arts.

And so, you bring all of that together and then you want to come up with new products. But again, it's really about communicating ideas, but in a ways that the ideas have to work. Like new products, they have to be feasible and they have to be buildable, you know.

MR: Mm-hmm.

JH: UC Berkeley, I think was such an interesting place because I was also able to go explore, you know, like sociology and research methods. I did some really interesting classes in the language school there with George Lakoff on Metaphor. I was in the Berkeley Institute of Design, and they had a big focus on HCI, which is human-computer interaction.

And so, there was lots of psychology concepts that people were bringing in and were going around the place. And of course, I was involved with software. So it was lots of different influences. And I think you probably see pieces of all of those in the topics that I choose for Sketchplanations

MR: Yeah.

JH: After UC Berkeley, I found a fantastic company called Jump Associates who was actually -- I did a class at Stanford and the professor there works at Jump Associates. They're a growth strategy firm, which was all about helping companies figure out what they should do next, particularly when it came to new products.

But they had some really brilliant ways of working which still influenced me to this day. And what they were really good at, one of the things they were really good at was visual recording 'cause that's what we called it there, but in many ways, it was sketchnoting.

And so, we do a lot of working with clients where you do a workshop, you bring all the right people in the room, and you put provocative questions about, like, the nature of the project. We're trying to track what are the biggest challenges and so on. And then somebody on our team would be up there with a big whiteboard capturing the conversation and trying to get down the key ideas, and so, they didn't get lost.

And I've always had an interest in this, like, the ideas don't get lost in this sort of ether. You know, you had a conversation, some really good ideas, they floated away. Somebody wrote down something, but it wasn't necessarily the good things. And I just saw the power of like, you take a conversation and you put it up real time on the board, and it steers the conversation because it helps people come back to previous concepts that have been raised.

If somebody says, "Oh, the way I think of it is like this and this and this," and you put them up, and then later in the conversation people can see that on the board and they come back to that. And because that was like a core skill there, they really helped people develop with how to capture ideas in real-time on a board.

And even down to really basic things like how to properly hold a whiteboard pen so that you don't end up with like a thin line and then a thick line when you didn't mean to, and the color is even as you go, and what size letters should you be so that people all around the room can always read it wherever they are.

How do you keep your handwriting straight so that it doesn't end up looking like a mess? And we'd often like, take pictures of these at the end and present them and use them as a record of the discussion that we had.

And they were really valuable, I think artifacts, it was from the design process, but really for a purpose. And I think the other thing I think that Jump Associate was really interesting with was, it wasn't just physical things, but a lot of it was like frameworks or models. You are like visualizing abstract things as well.

So like, yeah, the three challenges in this. And then you try and visualize three challenges. You know, it is sort of an abstract way of thinking of things, or like business two by twos and things like that.

So I kept those skills going since Jump Associates. I worked in user experience in design at my first startup, and I was always like sketching user interfaces and like what it be, you know, user journeys, mapping out, and how people are going through your product, that kind of thing. And then back in 2012, I got a Christmas present from my sister, which was a -- they still sell it, it's a lovely book. It's a sketch-a-day journal.

A little green book about that size. If you open it up, there's two spaces for two sketches on each side of the page. So that's four days' worth, and it's literally just draw something a day. And so, I did that, and it was really lovely 'cause, you know, I'd always enjoy drawing, remember being on holidays as a kid and taking a little sketchbook postcards and stuff like that, and sitting outside in the evening and drawing them.

But I didn't find I was doing that art as much during the day anymore. And so, it was really nice just to draw something every day. And I found when I got to the end of that, I was like, "Ah, kind of miss, it seems a bit of a waste to not be drawing anymore." And then I was like, "Okay, well it would be nice also if it helped me in some way."

And so, I had this idea, well, I'll try and explain something because that's what I'm trying to do all day, is like, communicate an idea, communicate a concept. So, I'll explain something every day in a sketch. And I did that for a year, one a day. Halfway through I started posting some, 'cause they look quite nice. And I had little Moleskine what are they called? There was storyboard.

MR: Storyboard, yeah. I was guessing that that was what that you're using.

JH: Yeah. And then they really, they're really lovely. And so it was, it's a very similar format. You know, they're small sketchbooks, you open 'em up, there's four frames every now and then there's a one with three frames on one page. And just using that as like, these are my guides. I had to stay within that and, and do something.

And so I did that. And so, I started posting them and somebody said at one point, "Hey, you should put these online somewhere." And so, I started a little Tumblr page and started putting some on, on Twitter and, and people liked them. And so, I definitely found that I couldn't easily sustain one a day. But when I finished that, I went to one a week -- actually, it went to two a week first.

And I found that just didn't work at all because when there's two a week, you can always pick tomorrow to do one as opposed to today. But when there's one a week, you gotta make it happen. And now I've been doing that for 10 years. Maybe I've learned something.

MR: Wow. Sounds to me like a book opportunity to me, where you could gather, if not all, maybe the best of those sketchplanations and bound those into some kind of a book that people would buy. I would buy that book. I don't know about anybody else, but I think it would be quite nice.

JH: Thank you. Well, you know what? I am actually working on it at the moment.

MR: Oh, good. I'm glad to hear that.

JH: Yeah. After a long time, a publisher got in touch with me, somebody who've been following the newsletter and with a similar idea. And I've been, yeah, a few days a week over the last year trying to assemble everything together and I've been redoing things and checking things and it's coming together hopefully for next April, is the idea.

MR: Oh, great. That would be great. You have to let us know so we can share it with the Sketchnote Army community, so we can definitely get some pre-orders and purchases going for you.

JH: Definitely do that. Thank you.

MR: I know in the publishing business these days, pre-orders are a huge deal. Often publishers give away special tidbits to get you to pre-order. It looks very good on the sales charts. So if we can help in that way, I think the people here would be really your ideal customer for buying that for themselves and others.

JH: Well, I'll definitely take your tips on this. This would be book number one for me. So yeah, all your advice is welcome, and all your help. That'd be brilliant. Thank you.

MR: Yeah. You're so welcome. Well, this is pretty fascinating. It's interesting, our paths in some ways are parallel. Not exactly, but I was never the best artist either. I just was more practical in the work that I did. So I sort of took what art skill I had and sort of applied it to practical things. And so, that just kind of led me on my path. I'm also a user experience designer as well.

And I had a period of time for about three years where we did very similar things to what you talked about with the whiteboard with developers. So we would queue up software features that needed to be added to our software we were building. And we would sit down on Mondays and queue it up, look at what existed in the old software, do we like it? How could we improve it? Okay, let's have a discussion, and I would go to the board and document most of it.

Occasionally, a developer would ask to come up and draw, which always was my highlight of my day. And they would draw concepts, we would annotate it, take a photo, throw it on a SharePoint space, and sometimes the developers would just take the sketches we did and build right off of that. And other times I'd do mockups to kind of move things forward.

So, when you talked about that, I remembered how enjoyable that was for everybody. Really, everybody in that group. Developers, product owners, business analysts, all seemed to really enjoy it because as you say, there were these great ideas floating around in the ether if no one was attending to that to try and --

I had this idea of like, someone catching butterflies with a net. Like if you didn't catch those butterflies and pin them, you know, to the wall they would be lost because, you know, that person themselves maybe didn't even realize how valuable that idea was. You really needed someone to spot it and then capture it. So I think that's a really valuable way to work.

**JH:**Yeah. It's interesting that I have two real contrasting experiences there. Which one was this engineering world. And if you think of like, oh, you know, you want to see how fast this is gonna go when it knocks into that, it's like you draw the diagram, it's all established what the principles are. You don't just explain it with words, you draw it out exactly as it's gonna happen, right?

And then I did some classes in the education department at UC Berkeley, and we were talking about all sorts of really fascinating and difficult topics like reliability and validity and some concepts from sociology and things like that. And we'd sit in these rooms and do the reading beforehand, come in, and then you talk for an hour and lots of interesting points will come up, and everybody would just sort of absorb it, I guess, and scribble the odd word down and then walk off.

And I remember thinking as I left those classes, there was some really good stuff there, but I think everybody's gonna come out with a different view of it, and people are gonna forget some parts and remember others. And it's just a shame you can't get some middle ground a bit where you can talk about them things which are a bit more abstract, but actually help give them shape, give them a form that we can all be sure we're talking about the same thing.

And that happens in product development so often. You talked about software where we all talk about an idea and we all assume that we've got the same idea, but in fact, we don't. And part of what drawing it on the board is, and even just sometimes it's words, right? Trying to put it concretely into words is realizing, "Oh, when you said that, I was thinking of something different."

And it just puts this sort of shared space where you can all look at it and go, "Oh, yeah, now we're all on the same page here. And it was fascinating these discussions in the educator's department, but I'm sure we came across -- we left it with all sorts of different ideas, you know, afterwards.

MR: I used to call that -- I don't know if I got this term from somewhere or what, but I called it the illusion of agreement. So we all thought we agreed, but we all had different ideas in our heads. And if you didn't do something to sort of establish. Often, I would joke around with people like, okay, what we're doing here is we're just, I'm putting things on the board so we have something to argue about, right? To disagree about. Because if you start with something to disagree about, it least you have some starting point, and then you can work toward agreement from there.

So, you know, often it wasn't necessarily disagreement, but it was not uncommon for one person to talk about something and I would draw it on the board and they'd say, "No, no, that's not exactly what I was thinking." And then I'd hand the marker to them and they would come up and draw it and make it clear from their perspective.

And it sort of gave some solidity or some physicality or something to that idea. But then we could say, "Oh, okay, now I see what you're saying, and now let's have the discussion around that." We would build on it. And, you know, often that would be the solution that would work for us. So that was quite enjoyable.

JH: Yeah. The illusion of agreement is a great term. My thesis in the end was about reframing in the design process and how you settle as a design team on the framing of the design problem. And a lot of -- well, you wrote a paper about the how does teams establish a shared frame of things. And some of it is like when you put something out there, the conflicts and the differences become salient, whereas they weren't before.

And exactly that you all leave the meeting thinking that, "Great, we all know what to do", and you all think you've all actually got different ideas in mind about what that is. And when you come back later and you've built the wrong thing, everybody's like, "No, no, that's not what I meant." And so how do you head that off as early as possible? And some of it's making it concrete, and that's what the visuals are useful for.

MR: Yeah. Maybe the biggest risk in that illusion of agreement walking away is you actually build five new things. Well, then which of the five will we choose, right? Or is there overlap enough that they could be merged into one thing so that we're not spending energy in five directions, we redirect toward one direction, and kind of come to an agreement together?

JH: Yeah. Love that. And the sort of thing I still come across in my day job on a regular basis.

MR: Something else that struck me, and this is just something that struck me and relates to my education, is it sounded like Berkeley did lots of cross-training. So there was lots of overlap of departments, or at least for you as a student, you were kind of stepping into a variety of what would seem like unrelated spaces, but yet they are very related.

In my education and history, I went to a technical school and they were really, really adamant at that time about this cross-training. So if you were a designer, and this is like old school print designer, that's when I went to school, you were required to take photography classes because in those days you would work with photographers all the time to, you know, describe to them what you're looking for as a designer, and they would inform you. So you had to understand like, what are the materials that they work with so you could really understand it.

And also, printers. And I found myself working in the printing room and because I was so practical, I would often become almost like a teaching assistant down there because I had some history taking printing classes prior. So I would be in the design classes, sort of being the assistant to the teacher who often wasn't in the darkroom showing how to shoot films or whatever the thing was we were doing.

And so, I became sort of this teacher, but I always loved the cross-training 'cause I felt like I understood more of the holistic job that we were all doing together, even though my part was just one piece of it gave me a better appreciation of those and how they fit together. And it sounds like maybe you're doing something like that at Berkeley.

JH: Yeah. One of the things it is interesting is a difference I think in general between like doing a doctorate in the UK versus often I think in the U.S. Whereas in the UK typically, you might find a research advisor who's got a project idea and you are interested in it too, and it's all sort of settled and you go off and you do that research, it takes three years and then you present it.

In Berkeley, which I really appreciated, it wasn't expected that you come in knowing what it is exactly you wanna do. You're like, "I had an idea of what I was interested in." But essentially you spent the first two years taking classes to basically get you to be, I'd say like getting on for a world expert in each of these areas, really build your knowledge.

But that, I guess, gave you a huge amount of flexibility. And so, yeah, it was brilliant to be able to take classes in the language school. And I remember doing ones on game design and I took some in the information school and the education department and just that sort of breadth of knowledge and you never know which ideas are gonna be the ones coming in to be useful.

And I definitely really appreciated that. Whereas if I, you know, a traditional way, I was like, "Oh, I was in design engineering, I stay in the engineering school." That's where I do all my classes. But actually, I think it broadened my outlook and probably improved the end product is great deal by being able to do all that.

And hopefully, one of the things I think is interesting about sketchplanations is it's, I think, you know, none of us, just because you work in one area doesn't mean that's the only thing you're good at or the only thing you're interested in.

And so, it's nice to be able to go, you know, well here's the thing on wellbeing or healthcare, and then here's the thing about design and here's the thing about, you know, a business tool. And any of us can appreciate all of those. So yeah, I love the idea of being able to take ideas from lots of different places. It was definitely valuable to me.

MR: Well, we have lots of educators who I think listen to the podcast, so at the very least this can be an encouragement to teachers, teachers, if you're listening that doing cross-training with your students is really valuable, even if the students don't realize it in the moment.

You know, I certainly had plenty of colleagues in my university, in my technical school who grumbled that they had to go do photography class or had to do drawing. You know, "I'm a printer, why do I need to do these things?" But ultimately, it gave them a better-rounded experience. So if you're an educator, if you can find ways to sneak in cross-training, Jono and I are big fans of the idea.

JH: Hundred percent.

MR: Well, you sort of led us to what you're doing these days. What are you currently up to now? Are you working on software? Are you working on hardware? And how does you know, your visualization skills sort of fit into the work you're doing today?

JH: Yeah, I mean, I split my time at the moment. So a few days a week, I'm working, say right now on pulling together a book for sketchplanations and still continuing that. In the day-to-day, I lead product development team and -- well, four product development teams.

The company I'm working at is called Zen Educate. And we built a platform that connects schools with substitute teachers. So, oh, you can think about a bit like an Uber or an Airbnb, but for teachers to find work at schools and vice versa.

It is just such a really nice area where you're bringing in different skill sets and you're forced to do that. So you have to have people who know about education, and then you have to have software developers and you have a product manager and you have a designer, and you try and bring all of that expertise together to create something that is gonna provide value for teachers and for schools.

I do less of this specific day-to-day design and things than I used to. But you know, both the companies I've worked on the last 10 years started when they were very small. And I really like that phase 'cause just have to do everything otherwise nothing happens. But it's really nice.

So, you know, you're going out and doing research interviews, but you're also sketching interfaces, you're testing things as before they're delivered, you're writing product releases, you're communicating with, you know, stakeholders internally or the board members, you know, and all sorts of things.

And so, yeah, my job is a mix of all of that at the moment. I think we provide a great service for schools and we actually save. It's more efficient so we save schools money and we can pay teachers more. And we started in the UK, but we've since launched in the U.S. which is really exciting. So yeah, lots to keep me busy on that front too.

MR: That's pretty cool having those two clients, right? You know, schools needing on-demand teachers and then teachers being out there on a bench looking for an opportunity that you're just sort of putting those two things together in a great way. That's pretty cool.

JH: Yeah. And just as an example about where I think of visualization helping in that kind of thing, there's some really -- so it's a marketplace. You've got two sides of a marketplace and you have to balance supply and demand. And, you know, in some ways that's very concrete because you take a specific job that's available, let's say, and a teacher who wants to do it, and you wanna have to connect them properly. But there's also, just how do you think about a marketplace and making this successful?

And so, there's a nice concept called the Amazon flywheel, and there's another one called, I think it was Uber's virtuous cycle. I did sketches of both of those. And they just help you sort of -- you'll see like it is a little cycle like, you know, the more teachers you have on the marketplace, the better the matches are with the jobs, let's say, so the better the experience for schools, which means they put more of jobs available, which means that tracks more teachers. And so, you end up with like a flywheel.

And so, the same is true for Amazon's marketplace. The same is true for the density of drivers on Uber or journeys that you can do. And I just think like, it's interesting how it's easy, it's fine to talk about that, but it's so different when you put like a visualization or something like that, people just get it. You're like, "Oh, yeah, I see how it works." Whereas day to day there's like million little bits of data points, but trying to communicate abstract ways of thinking about these things, is sometimes super valuable. And so, I still like it at that sort of level.

MR: Yeah. And I imagine some people, like a developer, let's say, they're looking at this one little piece, like, I need to deliver this feature, or, but there is this whole flywheel or thing happening and they could see their position within it and why it's important what they're doing, right? So it gives meaning in a lot of ways.

Where if you just were heads down, pounding away on this feature, it wouldn't maybe have the same meaning to you, right? Like, "Hey, I'm part of this flywheel, or our goal is to really get this moving forward and let it have its own momentum."

JH: Yeah. Everybody's a connection to what's the point of what you're doing? There's dude, you should come across Dan Pink has really nice framework autonomy, mastery, purpose about motivation.

And so, I did a sketch of that and I think the purpose side of it is just so like, why am I doing what I'm doing? It's not exciting for me to be just creating this button, but if this button's gonna do this and that's gonna enable this bigger picture thing, then yeah, keeps you getting up every day.

MR: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, this has been really, really interesting and fascinating. We'll have to look around a little bit and if you've got those particular concepts and sketchplanations, maybe we can have some direct links to those so those who are listening or watching can pop 'em up on the screen and take a peek. So we'll work on that for the show notes later.

Let's shift now to your tools. I'm always really fascinated by the tools people use. Sometimes they're pretty common and sometimes I'm surprised. Let's start with analog first. It seems like you do do analog drawing, or at least you used to when I first encountered you. Have you made a shift to digital, or you still feel really good about the pen-on-paper feel, and what pens and paper do you like?

JH: Yeah, I'm always a bit conflicted because, you know, this digital just has these massive advantages. But it still, there's nothing that quite is come close to the feeling of just writing in a notebook. So anyway, I do have it alongside me here.

So I have this kind of daily notebook that I'll always take, and so that's got like my, you know, mixes of to-do lists or here's a UI idea or yeah, here's me sketching out this framework, or here's a mind map for content for this talk. For the analog stuff, so I still do carry around a physical notebook, but my preference are dotted notebooks.

MR: Yes. Yeah.

JH: Yeah, I say I was always interested in credit problem-solving. I just think dotted just solves the problem. Like it basically looks like it's a blank page, which is lovely, but it allows you to structure data and actually like, do things in straight lines. And it helps guide your drawings without getting in the way of the content.

It was, Edward Tufte has this idea of a ghost grid, so there's a grid behind the whole thing which doesn't get in the way, you don't really notice at the end. So anyway, I really like the dotted notebooks. This one is a leach term. I never know how to pronounce it.

MR: Yeah, German company, group they call it.

JH: Good quality journal. But probably most of my ones I've had are the Moleskine. They're about, I don't know, bit bigger than A5. The large ones with a sort of flexible leather cover, and they do some really nice dotted ones as well.

I've tried plain, and plain looks lovely if you're just drawing, but if you're also making lists or structuring stuff and you want things to be in straight lines, the dotted is just so much better. Usually, I like ones with bright colors, that one's black, but you know.

MR: Yeah. I've got my bright-colored LEUCHTTURM is here as well.

JH: Yeah, absolutely.

MR: And I think LEUCHTTURM has done a really great job of finding that right gray level. So as an old printer, I know how tricky it is. They must use some kind of a special color, but it's just dark enough that you see it, but light enough that it fades in the background.

Some dotted notebooks don't do as good a job of this, and the dots are too dark and you know, they become noise. And so, you know, you don't appreciate it until you come across a notebook where they don't pay attention to those details and it just constantly gets in your way. So I think LEUCHTTURM has done a good job with that.

JH: Yeah. If people are giving out free notebooks, normally they're lined ones, I just can't get on with the lined ones.

MR: Yeah. It's not for me either. Not unless I'm writing a journal, but even in a journal I would just use dotted as well because it's got just enough structure. What about pens? It sounds like using Moleskine and LEUCHTTURM primarily.

JH: Yeah. For pens, I'm heavily influenced by what we had at Jump Associates, which I just think works beautifully. I actually can't find them very easily now. But there are some Uniball Vision Elite pens which is my preferred just everyday pens and they do nice sets of colors now, but I honestly just quite like the blacks and the blues.

That's just something about they have just like the right they beautiful clean lines and they're dark and they're bold and they're smooth to write with, and they don't bleed through too much. Yeah, you get the right-thickness ones, but yeah Uniball Vision Elites are the ones I like.

And then I always used to carry -- I sort of have -- I usually have two pens in my pocket, in any one time. But a black and then a highlight color, like a green or a red, and then I would have a Copic marker with me. I was used to carry around like usually a gray or sort of beige Copic marker, just to allow you to give a little background, a little shape to things. And I just think that just made a huge difference.

I think when I was doing a lot of paper stuff, I'd have also have like a bright color Copic marker as well for highlighting stuff, but not so much anymore. But I mean they've strongly influenced because I started analog, all the sketchplanations, they're basically, I keep to a simple color palette and often a bit of just gray in the background and that's, that's the influence of those pens.

MR: Yeah. And I can just imagine, I'm not looking at one of your sketchplanations, but all those things you just said, you know, black with a highlight color and a shadow is sort of like, you know, the recipe for a sketchplanation, and a square, right? Sort of those basic elements, I guess.

JH: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I don't know if a square necessarily, I'm looking around 'cause I have a bunch on my wall.

MR: I see some behind you now. Yeah.

JH: Yeah, yeah. I have a few of my favorite ones. But there is something about just like I think back to the storyboard notebooks, which I do really still really like, they just give you this frame to work in and sometimes the constraint is just really helpful. You like, okay, it's gotta work in here.

MR: And what about digital? Are you using some kind of digital tool? You sound like you were conflicted when you first began, so I suspect that's true.

JH: Yeah, I did. So I don't know when it was like five or six years ago, I moved to an iPad Pro when the iPad Pro and the pencil first came out. I think I still have the sort of initial large iPad Pro, the sort of a three size -- A3, A4 size one.

**MR: ** The big one. Yeah.

JH: Yeah. Which I really -- I mean, they're probably much better now, but it still works. It still works really nicely and I think the pencil's still pretty good.

MR: Yeah.

JH: Yeah, all of the sketchplanations I do now with that, but I know if I'm still just doing it, if I'm sketching a user interface quickly or something, I'll do that in my notebook and take a quick photo and sending Slack or something. And then you said that most people use Procreate. I have Procreate installed. I don't use Procreate.

MR: Interesting.

JH: Yeah. I use something called SketchBook Pro, if you've come across
that.

MR: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, of course.

JH: It's Autodesk one, but you know, the free versions really good and they added a little thing that you can pay for that allows you to do a few extra bits, which is just super useful. I usually think like, you know, that phrase that "The best camera is the one you have with you."

MR: Yeah.

JH: It's kind of like, it doesn't really matter. Like what's more important is that you're able to write stuff down or make a note when you're inspired and that you just get to know your tools.

MR: Yes.

JH: Like, I'm sure I could get really good at Procreate, but I've kind of got the SketchBook Pro does what I want now, and so, you know, maybe one day I'll try something different, but it does what I want. And that's more important, is knowing your tools, I think than which tool you are using.

MR: Yeah, I agree. It's simple and effective and, you know, your fluid, so you know, if you want get yourself out of the way if you're fiddling with tools, that's not a good thing when you're trying to get a concept out because like you say that whatever's floating around in your head and the ether could get lost just as well, right, so you wanna move quick and catch it before it disappears, so.

JH: Yeah. Exactly.

MR: Autodesk's app is a classic. It's been around, I think since the beginning of the iPad. I think they ported it pretty early, so it's been around for quite a long time. And I've run into a few other people that use it. I use Paper by WeTransfer in that way. I just know the tool really deeply and if I need to get a concept out, I just pop it up and it's there and I go with it.

So in a similar way, but I do use Procreate for illustration work. If I know that my work will be scaled or I need modifications, Concepts is great for that 'cause it's vector-based, so gives me that additional level of control. So it really, I've been starting to try and be more specific around what is the task that I want to do, and then I choose the tool to fit it, but Paper is sort of my default.

If I don't have to choose, I'll go there first. And then if I have a specific need, I go to these other tools. And like you, I have to force myself because I would just be comfortable using this one tool. But, you know, illustrations have to be a certain resolution.

Paper it's not set up that way. It's not that kind of a tool. So I needed to move into Procreate and it's been a great tool for that. And same thing with Concepts, when those illustrations need to be scalable it's been a great tool for that. So I feel fortunate.

But it's hard, like when you invest a lot of time in a tool, you know, it's an intentional move to do spend time on another tool because you have to learn all that new stuff and you almost need like a project. You can't just do it fiddling around because there's not enough motivation. You really need a project, I think, to make you motivated to see results. So that's really interesting.

JH: Yeah. I think because sketchplanations is weekly, I never feel like I quite have enough time in a week to transition to something new. So I've never made the switch to try out new things. I was just like, "Right. Well, let's keep going with this one because I know it's gonna work right now."

MR: So that seems like a good fit for that purpose then.

JH: Yeah. I doubt, I mean, you know, any of these tools you see, people can draw beautiful, unbelievable things in all of them. So, you know, if they can do that, surely, surely this one's good enough for me, so.

MR: Yeah. I'm kind of curious, do you ever -- I'm assuming you must have a huge backlog of potential topics that you could draw, or do you struggle every week like, "Oh man, what am I gonna draw? It's Thursday, I better hurry up and pick a topic." And, "Okay. Got it done, Friday, whew. Okay. I hope I have something next week." Does it tend to be one side or the other, or do you have like a huge stack of like, logs waiting for you to pick and burn the fire?

JH: Yeah. Have you ever read the book, I think there was one about Bill Watterson and Calvin and Hobbs and how he drew Calvin and Hobbs.

MR: I haven't read that one. That would be fun.

JH: I forget exactly what it's called, but there's one, it was an extended interview with him about his process from the museum where they have his work. And I think I do it a little bit like he did it which is what he often would do is like, come up with a number of ideas for strips, sometimes draw 'em out just really roughly.

And then sometimes he would go through and ink them, and then later on he would come through and color them, let's say, and say at any one point, he might have three or five of them on the go and like do a day where he's like inking a day when he's coloring them all.

And so, I'm a little bit more like that so I have ones in various stages of being done. So I do, I do have a giant backlog of like, "Oh, that would be a cool sketch one day I should do that." That keeps coming up.

But I also have lots of draft sketches where I've started something or I'm like, oh, actually, you know, one day I put down three ideas or three different sketches and how I might do it. And then one week I might come across and do two of those and then post one of them, you know, that kind of thing.

So I always have this multi-stream approach. And also, I think for me, sometimes I guess it's kind of like this with any art, like you get to the end and it looks totally straightforward, but often I had to get through a lot of thinking in order to get there.

And so, sometimes just like putting an -- even if I pick, I'm gonna do this one this week, and I put that down the Friday before, and my brain can be turning that over through the days, over the next week. And so, I've actually by Wednesday, I've come up with a great example for it, and then I'll draw it on Thursday, you know, that kind of thing.

So yeah, that's kind of my process. But I do have a giant list and people send me great ideas all the time. So, the ideas come in faster than I can draw in for sure.

MR: If you think about it in the plant term, it's like you've got a big bucket of seeds and then you're planting these plants and you're watering them through, you know, constantly. And then when it seems like that one's ready, you pull it forward and finish it up and push it out and another seed comes and gets planted and you keep on watering. And it's sort of like the gardener of sketchplanations.

JH: That's a nice metaphor. Yeah, I like it. That's exactly how I meant to describe it.

MR: There you go. You can have that for free, Jono.

JH: Thank you.

MR: So Jono, tell us some tips you have for us. I like to frame it as someone's listening, they're a visual thinker of some kind, but they maybe feel like they're on hit a plateau. And I like to ask guests to give them encouragement. What would be three tips that you would tell someone like that to encourage them? Could be anything, can be mental tips, it can be practical tips, bring an extra pencil, something like that. So I'll leave it to you, but just three tips would be great.

JH: Yeah, so I gave a little bit of thought to this, and I came up with some of which I think are maybe disarmingly simple, perhaps. So the first one is, I have a concept -- I actually have a mouse mat of it right here, which is, the first draft is always perfect. And I really like this framing because it basically says, your first draft is probably gonna be rubbish, but that's okay 'cause that's the job of the first draft, and that's what makes it perfect.

And so, I guess my experience is there was when I'm stuck, or I'm not sure what to do, I just have to make myself do anything. And actually, I find just doing something is enough to like unblock it. And getting away from this idea that whatever you're gonna do is gonna be great, is just very liberating. And so, this idea of the first draft is always perfect, is a nice way to come to me.

I have another sketch, actually, it's up on my wall, which is called the Doorstep Mile, which is this really nice Scandinavian concept, I think, which is like, getting started can be the hardest part, which is like stepping out of your door. Like it's easy to go for a run once you've got your trainers on and you're outta your door. So you just have to get started. So first draft is always perfect.

I strongly believe like this idea that great ideas come during the hard work and not before it. So like, you don't have to have your great idea and then start work. Usually, all the best ideas I've had of while I'm doing the work. So get started.

The second tip I would have is to keep it simple. And the reason I say that is because I think it's easy to have really high expectations about, you know, what things are gonna turn out like, but actually in many ways, simple stuff is just as helpful as complex stuff. And sometimes it's even more useful.

I'm reminded of some diagrams which have been super helpful at work and in discussions where people literally just boxes and lines with texting. Like anybody can do boxes and lines. Sometimes I find just laying out words, like, if there's a process, I like lay out the words in an order, and I'm like, "Oh, yeah, this one becomes for that one." And I find that is valuable and clarifying to me. And it doesn't have to be like a complex visual in any ways.

And I think the other aspect to keep it simple, I think definitely for me it was, it's easy to get thrown by drawing people. And you'll see obviously, like in sketchplanations, my people are super, super simple, just a little bit more than a stick man.

But there are lots of ways actually to draw really simple people, which just allow you to put a person in there but not get hung up on the drawing of the person. And, you know, like drawing a star, it kind of looks like a person. You can do somebody jumping and that's fine, and that gets the idea across, and it doesn't have to be perfect. So keeping it simple is my second tip.

And my third tip is, keep going. My experience again is that I've done so many drawings where about halfway through they looked pretty rubbish. And I think often, you know, people ask me about, "Oh yeah, how can I learn to draw?" And I very much believe it's easy to start drawing something and it looked rubbish and then just stop and then assume that you couldn't do it or you weren't getting there.

And so often, I mean, partly the nice thing about sketchplanations is it's like clockwork. It's gonna make me do it, so I just keep going. And there's very often times where halfway through it felt like it wasn't working, the drawing wasn't right.

You know, like if you saw all the sketches along the way, sometimes, you know, they're awful, but you keep going at it and you refine this bit and you change this bit and you switch the direction, and then after a while, you get to a point where it looks really good.

And it's so easy to assume that people just come across and do the good thing straight away, but. So my tip is just even when you look at it is to keep going. In my research, there was a guy called Donald Shan who's an architect, and he did a lot of research about how do you teach and learn architecture.

He talked about drawing as a reflexive conversation with the situation, which takes a while to get your head around, but the idea is that you put a line on the page and then you see that line and that line informs your next line.

And so, there's this constant like back and forth and like, "Oh, I put this down and it doesn't quite fit so I moved it over there and I erased this bit and I moved it over there." And you're doing these hundreds of iterations just while you're just still working on it.

But you don't get that if you just stop on your first bit when it didn't come out like you want to. So those are my, my three ideas. So yeah, first draft is always perfect. Keep it really simple. You keep going.

MR: Those are three great tips. And I wholeheartedly believe in each one, and was imagining moments in my experience where I felt the same way. Especially number two, like getting partway into something and thinking, "Oh, this is not going the way I want." I'll just say, well, I'll just keep going a little bit more. Let's tweak that a little bit.

And a lot of times I found that the thing that I thought was going nowhere was a problem halfway through. By the time I get done with it, it's like one of my favorite things because, you know, there was really potential there that I had to unearth that potential to keep working it, working it, working it, until it developed into the thing, like you kind of fell in love with it, which is kind of a fun experience. So definitely believe in that.

JH: I always love the making of things, and like I went to see, it was a random gallery in Washington State where they had a Dr. Zeus exhibition and it had like his sketches before the final books.

And it's just always fascinating seeing people's process and realizing it's probably just as messy and confused as yours is. And it's quite liberating. Whenever we watch films, I'm always more interested in the making of the film than the film itself, not -- you know, I love that stuff.

MR: Yeah. If you happen to be a "Star Wars" fan and watch "Mandalorian," there was really great series. In addition to the show where it talks about how they made it and some of the crazy stuff they went through to achieve these, what at the outset seemed like impossible, "How are we going to do that?" They had some crazy idea and they, through process and everybody being creative, they were able to solve it. And you get to see how they achieved it.

And when you watch the episode, you know, you wouldn't even think of all the hoops that they're jumping through to make that happen, but yet they pulled it off. So, yeah, in the same way, I love that.

JH: Absolutely. I love it.

MR: Yeah. Well, thanks so much for those tips, Jono. Well, this has been really enjoyable chatting with you and getting inside of the way you think and your process, and so forth. Tell us, if someone's listening, how do they find sketch explanations? How do they find you? What's the best place to find you?

JH: Yeah, I mean, it's always a bit of a curse. Sketchplanations is not the easiest word to say or spell, but it does make sense when you think of that sketch explanation. So yeah, I mean, sketchplanations.com, I think I have, you know, pretty much monopoly on if you type that into any search engine, and it should probably correct and point you in the right direction.

If you're struggling with that, you can always put in Joho Hey, and that'll help get you there pretty quick. That's H-E-Y. And then we also started a podcast this year, which was quite fun.

MR: Oh, great.

JH: Yeah. Interesting. Like different angles, obviously, it's all visual, so in some ways, it's mad to do a podcast about something that's visual, but --

MR: Well, that's what you're on now is the podcast about sketchnoting.

JH: Yeah, exactly. But actually, it's been a lot of fun. You like taking a topic and like I say, going a bit deeper into than I can, just in a little quick sketch. And chatting about that, that's been fun. So that's sketchplanations.com/podcast.

MR: Great.

JH: But everything's pretty much there on the sketchplanation site.

MR: Can find you there. Great. Well, we'll definitely link it up. And in the meantime, between us recording now and this is getting published we'll see if we can get links to the things you've mentioned, the visuals that you mentioned in our discussion, and we'll link those up too, so that way if someone's listening and they wanna see what the Amazon flywheel or whatever, I think I've mixed that up, but yeah, the concept, they can pick it up to have peek, which would be great.

JH: Perfect.

MR: Well, thanks Jono. I'm really impressed with your reliability and your ability to continue going after 10 years. Some people would very easily be bored or would drive them mad, and it seems like you just keep on leaning into it and enjoying it.

That's really an encouraging thing to see, and I appreciate it. I think it's a great thing for the world, and I speak for all the other fans of your work. Thank you for the work you're doing. It's really valuable.

JH: Thank you, Mike. Yeah, I mean, I always consider it -- honestly, it's like the attention economy, right? People look at lots of places they can spend their attention, and it's a privilege to have a place where you can send something out and people will pay attention to it. So that's one of the things that keeps me going is that take that opportunity seriously.

And, you know, I also think a bit like you -- with this podcast, it's helped me out a huge deal as well. Like, it's not completely like selfless. I'm not just doing this for everybody else. Like I've got better a whole host of things as a result of doing this project.

The people I really had to thank is my wife and family for allowing me to go off on Saturdays from time to time and finish some sketches when I should be helping out around the house or, you know, having fun, but there you go. Yeah.

MR: There you go. Well, thanks so much, Jono. It's been a pleasure. And for those who are listening or watching, this is another episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast. Until the next episode, talk to you soon.

JH: Thanks, Mike.

In this episode, Ingrid describes the evolution of her visual thinking journey which now plays a crucial role in assisting both creative professionals and business owners in understanding their client's experiences through Big Picture storyboarding.

Sponsored by Concepts

This episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.

Concepts' vector-based drawing feature gives you the power to adjust your drawings saving hours and hours of rework.

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Running Order

• Intro
• Welcome
• Who is Ingrid Lill
• Origin Story
• Ingrid Lill's current work
• Sponsor: Concepts
• Tips
• Tools
• Where to find Ingrid Lill
• Outro

Links

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Mike Rohde’s Big Idea Sketchiest with Ingrid
• Donald Miller's book - Building a StoryBrand
• Tim Urban's book - Wait But Why?
• Website
• Membership site
• LinkedIn
• Youtube

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Concepts
• iPad Pro
• Adobe Illustrator
• Wacom Cintiq
• Procreate
• Neuland flexible tip marker
• Neuland art markers
• Black fineliner pen
• Ink tins
• Pencils
• Waterbrush
• Watercolor
• A3 Smooth paper

Tips

1. Message first. Use your drawing to communicate.
2. Keep it simple.
3. Experiment. Use your art on your everyday use.

Credits

• Producer: Alec Pulianas
• Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer
• Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro

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Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike, and I'm here with Ingrid Lill. Ingrid, it's so good to have you on the show. Thanks for coming.

Ingrid Lill: Thank you, Mike for having me. You're one of my heroes, one of the first ones who taught me how to sketch note.

MR: Oh, thank you. That's so nice of you. Well, you know, probably we'll get into it a little bit is some of the work that we did together, but I think before we get into that discussion, I would love for you to sort of set the context. Who are you and what do you do with the work that you do?

IL: My name is Ingrid Lill. I'm originally from Germany. I've been living in Denmark for 20 years on the countryside. And I—should I tell my whole story already now?

MR: Sure. That was my next question is how did you end up in the place where you are? Maybe start—

IL: Maybe first, what I'm doing now.

MR: Yeah.

IL: I am a communication designer turn business coach with a pencil. I am helping coaches, consultants, and creatives, and whoever needs to do that, clarify their message through visual thinking, and I do that on several levels.

MR: Cool.

IL: Yeah.

MR: And you've done that with me. So we can talk about that in the future. I would love to hear now, how did you end up in that place? You talked about being a communication designer. It sounds like from our discussions before, what you did wasn't so far away from what I did when I came out of university, which was graphic design.

IL: That's true.

MR: Yeah.

IL: That's true, graphic design, yeah, yeah.

MR: Really old-school graphic design with pens and—

IL: Really old school.

MR: —rulers and all that old stuff.

IL: Yeah, yeah. I mean, as a child, I drew, and as many people who are drawing and want to also make money, I studied graphic design. And I had drawing and painting at the side as an artist and made graphic design and all this visual communication stuff to make money.

When I started out on it, when I graduated, there were no computers, so we did actually hand-drawn layouts which was fun, but that disappeared when computers came on the scene. And then for many years, all the drawing was really only hobby and computer was it. And I was also happy for it because I didn't really like the manual graphic design work.

Yeah, and then I worked as a graphic designer and an art director, and several jobs in this thing. Also, on my own, had my own business. And at some point, I got tired of it. I was tired of having this divide between the really creative me on one side and the job, the making money on the other side. So I wanted to bring it together. And when I heard about, or when I saw the first graphic facilitation things on the internet, I thought, "Huh, what is that?" It was like a revelation.

And I started investigating, and it was a totally new way of drawing for me. Before, drawing was art, and then I found out drawing can be communication. I've never done my own illustrations when I was working as a graphic designer because I thought I'm not good enough for it or something, whatever I thought.

But this kind of drawing, which was so simple that I thought, I can do that. And so, I learned that. And I also knew if I wanted to get out and make a business, build a business that is more me and more fun and more creative, I needed to draw, I needed to dare to be visible with it.

And I started posting drawings on Facebook. And I remember the first time I posted something, a drawing I did was in some thread a discussion on Facebook. And I did a little drawing and I uploaded it, and my heart was pounding, and I thought, "Huh." I don't why.

MR: What did I do?

IL: What did I do? Yeah, yeah. But nobody even noticed. It was just, I had a point to make and I did a drawing that illustrated that point. It was not about that the drawing had to be beautiful. And that was kind of the—how do you say that? I crossed the boundary with that. Drawing is useful, can be useful, and it can also be fun and all other kinds of stuff, but it doesn't have to be. It just has to convey a message. And that's where all my—

MR: Functional.

IL: Yeah, functional, but also expressing your personality in a way it always does. And that's what all my work now is revolving around. I did also some graphic recording here, locally in Denmark. But what happened then was when I posted my drawings on Facebook, people liked them. I was actually telling my story about finding out what to do next. People liked it, and then I started giving drawing classes, and my business evolved in other directions.

MR: Something interesting I thought of when you were talking about, you saw a graphic record or you saw a facilitation, and up to that point you thought, "Well, I never used illustration in my graphic design work 'cause I didn't think I was good enough." I thought the same thing. I always thought of myself as a graphic designer.

And for people that don't understand that about that time, if I'm thinking it's about the right time, that was like the golden age, the peak of illustration where people could make a living doing illustration work. Like many people. If you were a good enough artist, you could make a living. And it was really great quality stuff.

So when we say that, when Ingrid and I say that we weren't good enough, it's because we were up against the best illustrators in the entire world were at their peak, and we really weren't good enough to compete at that in that game, in the game that they were playing, which was, you know, stuff that people are using like AI to do now, or mid-journey or something like—

IL: Airbrush stuff. Oh God.

MR: Right, right. So there was very, very specific skills, and because there wasn't really computer capability, it was all analog stuff, which is really hard to do, and therefore it costs a lot and only the best organizations could afford to do that. So there was like this whole—when you say, "Oh, I just wasn't good enough." And you think, well, you know, in that context, there really was amazing work being done, and we really weren't good enough to play that game.

So what we realized, I think you and I was, well, what if we play a different game? What if we play a game where we just do our simple drawing to communicate and it's functional? And that was the thing that blew Ingrid's mind. Am I right in kind of guessing at that?

IL: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But also, what didn't occur to me back then was that I could make my own game. That I could make a business out of the drawings that I'm capable of doing. Maybe it would've been possible, probably but it didn't occur to me. I thought I needed to follow some mainstream something. And only when I became older and thought, now it's enough of trying to follow other people's ideas, now I'm making my own rules for myself.

MR: Yeah. So now let's step into the work that you and I did, which is representative of the kind of work you're doing for your clients. So about, I dunno, it was about two months ago or something like that. We're talking in August, so it was about two months ago maybe. Ingrid reached out to me and invited me to do a session with her over Zoom where she would talk with me about what I wanted to do with whatever I wanted to. So I chose, well, I've got these two books and I'm trying to figure out like, what's the next thing? Where do I go next?

So basically, Ingrid walked through with me and started going back into my history and asking me questions, and then visualizing this journey and starting to make sense of like what was in my head.

So in a sense, she was sketchnoting my thinking, but it was more than this. It wasn't so much just recording what I said. She was also facilitating by guiding me and asking questions, probing questions, and then visualizing it and sort of making sense of it, in the moment so I could see it all unfolding on the screen as she worked.

And then eventually, we finished that session, and then she kind of fixed up some things and added a little bit of color, and then there is a finished piece. Well, I'll put a link in the show notes for you so you could see what this looks like, including there's a recording of the session that you can watch that Ingrid has shared. So you can watch it happen and then see the final output.

As a visual thinker to go through that experience is really fascinating because it's sort of dawned on me a little bit what other people often feel like when I do visualizations of what they're saying. I think I kind of do something kind of similar, maybe in a different venue in my user experience design work where I'm extracting their thinking and trying to make sense of it. But it's the same kind of activity.

So talk to me like, when did you come to that specific expression of the work that you're doing? Is that a pretty recent thing? How long have you been doing that?

IL: No, that's several years. It's not recent. It's evolving. And the thing that you have been on is my very new big idea sketch cast which is my idea or at the start of a YouTube channel that I'm trying, and I'm interviewing interesting people. So this was only a little thing. Normally when I do with people, it's much longer.

MR: Yeah.

IL: There were several things coming together. One was that I needed to build my business, so I wanted to build my business, and I had to learn how to do that. Before, as a graphic designer, I was only doing stuff that was coming to me anyway. I showed my portfolio and didn't really think so much about my message. And then when I wanted to have my business more as an expression of—or I wanted to direct it in a certain direction, which is more drawing, more me, more creative, I studied more marketing.

And I read Donald Miller's "Building a StoryBrand." That had a big influence on me, and I thought, "This is it. He's right." I knew he is right, but still, I couldn't wrap my head around it for my own business. And then I heard—I don't know if it was—I think it was him who said, "If you can paint a picture of it, your message isn't clear enough." And that kind of flipped a switch, and I thought, "I can paint that picture. I need to draw it. I need to draw this process."

And so, that was the inspiration for this. I call it brand storyboarding and I draw the customer's journey. So if you have a website—if you're my client, it's not about it's not about you, it's about your clients. I draw how your clients feel before and after they have worked with you, and you're the guide. And then I added, with time, my own spin on it and other stuff. Yeah, that's how this started. Then I tried it out with some people and it worked, and I refined it.

MR: That's always good.

IL: And then it happened that I found many, or some people don't know yet what they want to sell theoretically. In a StoryBrand, they already have a working product, but some people who come to me, don't know that yet. And then I do a superpower diagram, which is also visual, which is overlapping circles. So I have several things, but this brand storyboarding, which is the before, after, and the bridge in between, that's the core thing that I'm doing.

MR: Interesting. That's a really fascinating way to look at it because I think people do relate to stories and they think of themselves in a story, but not as the hero, but as the guide, right? That's the story, I guess process where you think about "Star Wars," right? Luke is the focus, but Yoda, or you know, Obi-Wan Kenobi, they're the guides that help Luke achieve, you know, his goal, right? And you're sort of casting people who you work with in the Yoda/Obi-Wan Kenobi role as guides, because then, you know, your customers are the Luke Skywalkers in a sense, right?

IL: Mm-hmm. Exactly. So it's a little bit meta and it really helps me to have a drawing of it, so I can always go back—I don't even know if I'm a visual thinker. It's very spatial for me, this process, that I know exactly what is happening where, and I can always go back to it. And when we figure out the messaging, then I can go back to the guy with a problem to the hero and say, "Does this guy, we really want to hear that in this situation here."

And another interesting question is how did he end up in this problem? That's a philosophical problem. Whose fault is it? And what is wrong with society that this could happen? So that is helping to get deeper into the whole story.

MR: Right. Kind of like a root cause.

IL: Yeah.

MR: Looking at the root cause.

IL: Which is also a tip often a good headline for the website.

MR: And so, you've been doing this for a while. How do your clients react? I know how I reacted. I enjoyed the process and it's now a map that I can use. I can pull it up, and I was telling you before we started that my thought is in the fall when I start thinking about what I'm gonna do next, but that's gonna be one of the maps that I bring up and sort of think about what does it tell me? So How do your other clients like it and how are they using it?

IL: One said, "It's part therapy, part magic, and all clarity." That was very nice.

MR: Yeah.

IL: And how do they use it? Some put it on their website, but that's not the point of it. It's more about having the clarity. Then the people who come to me who are creative and who maybe also draw themselves, I always encourage them to do their own thing. I have a template, and so, they can use it and then should do their own drawings and their own illustrations. But yeah, some people put it on their websites or on their LinkedIn headers, so.

MR: I would think a good place to put it would be on the wall.

IL: Yeah, yeah.

MR: That I was hanging on the wall right here, so I can look at it every day and remember like, what am I doing here? Like, what's my purpose?

IL: I don't know if they're doing that. Maybe they say it, but then I don't see it.

MR: Right. You can't verify. Yeah.

IL: I see it if they have it in their LinkedIn header, but what is also happening, as a graphic element, and I'm now the graphic designer's talking, there's a lot of stuff on it. So to use it on the website can be tricky because it's a lot of words and a lot of drawings. What I'm doing when I have been doing websites based on the storyboards, is I extracted several elements from it and made separate drawings from it.

MR: Almost like a series of drawings that are connected. Sort of serves the same purpose, but it's not all in a single canvas, in that sense.

IL: Yeah. And it tends to look to look better. Yeah.

MR: I suppose the beauty of that too is you could take a piece of the story and zoom into detail on that piece of the story, right? If you do it in a series, you could start from the beginning and end up at the end and have detail on each piece, I suppose.

IL: Yeah. And what you can use it for—I have done that now with somebody. We do your storyboard, and then I asked her, "And now tell me your story." And she looked at the storyboard and told me the whole thing, and she could just go through it, and then you have a structure for it. It's a picture to find the right words and to find the right structure so you always know where you are in your brand story when you talk about it.

That's the basic thing. People tend to get, or I also, tend to get confused if we just talk about it without structure, and it's so clear on the left is the bad stuff on the right is the good stuff. And don't mix it up and don't talk about both in one sentence unless it's under LinkedIn headline.

MR: I could see that also being a really helpful, almost like a filtering mechanism where it says, "Okay, I've been offered—" Let's say you're running a company, your own company, or you're doing a thing and someone comes to you and says, Hey, I'd like you to do this thing for me. And you could think about it and say, "Well, where does this fit on my map?"

And if it fits in the old stuff, then it's real easy to say, "No, it doesn't fit what I do." If it goes over in the area where I'm heading to, then it's something you should consider taking, right? Or maybe the answer then is to come back to them and say, "Well, you're asking me to do this thing, which is what I used to do, but I found it wasn't effective for whatever reason. How would you feel about doing this new thing, which I'm doing, and let's fit it into there where I found that much more effective."

So it could also be an opportunity to, I not only identify but then convert someone or guide someone to a more effective thing that you're doing now. So someone wouldn't even have thought to come to you and ask for that thing. Then it gives you this opportunity to shift them to the new—

IL: That's true. That's true. I don't actually do illustrations anymore because it doesn't fit into my own plan. But what I'm doing sometimes is working on the messaging and the illustrations together with my clients. So we get into a Zoom call, and then I draw while we're talking and I do the illustrations. If they're happy with them, how they look like messy and sketchy, then everything is fine. If not, then—but so far they have been happy.

MR: So here's a question. You've done it with these on Zoom, so, you know, the assumption is somebody remote or not in the same physical place. Have you done this with someone in person where you're both on the same board?

IL: Yes.

MR: And then what is that experience like? Do you have them drawing as well and putting information on the same thing? Or do you act as sort of the scribe for them? How does that work? And it must depend on the person, I'm sure.

IL: Yeah. I haven't done so many of those, but I have. Now, the latest was on my holiday in Italy. I did one with my host. And I am acting as a scribe because I'm so used to it, although she's also drawing. But it would distract from the flow if I say, "And now you—" Then I would have to tell her where to draw and stuff. I didn't do that.

MR: That makes sense.

IL: If you're used to drawing digital, it can be tricky to go back to analog, and then you want to move something.

MR: No "Undo," yeah.

IL: No "Undo," and then I use scissors and scotch tape to put some somewhere else. And that also works. I mean, it's, it's messier.

MR: So the last question around this is you do it for individuals. Have you ever done it for a team of people where it's many people giving you feedback? Does that get confusing? Is it possible that's something that you've ever done?

IL: I've done it. It's possible. It's best done if everybody has their own—I did it in during the pandemic when everybody was at several places. And then there was no problem, I could hear everybody. It was a nonprofit organization about their website, and they needed to get onto the same page, although they were in different locations, and I was drawing the story. We were doing that together. It works well.

What I did last week was talking with a group of people in one place where they all were looking at the big screen, and then it can be problematic because I need to hear what they're saying. So they need to talk into the microphone. It's mostly technical problems, but otherwise, I love working with several people because it makes so much sense to bring them together and have them agree on whatever it is.

I did one session with management assistants at a conference celebrating their superpowers. So they were telling me what it is, they're doing, and then I was drawing the situations. That was just a celebratory thing, which was nice. And the last one that I did was about how to solve problems, and they came with ideas and I visualized them. I love working with teams.

MR: Cool. That's good.

IL: But mostly it's for—

MR: Individuals.

IL: Individuals right now.

MR: Interesting.

IL: It might change.

MR: So, I always ask this at this point, and that is, is there something exciting that you are getting ready to start working on now that you can talk about? Any new project or maybe a new direction or something?

IL: Not a new direction, but I have had these courses all the time, doing just as a, I wouldn't say hobby, but a little side thing, and my one-to-one work was the bulk of my business, which is still is, but now I am designing a—making it—because I have many courses by now, and it was getting too complicated, so now it's only one prize and one membership, and it's such a lovely group, and I decided to make a membership out of it instead of courses.

And that's something I'm excited about. We meet every Tuesday and such lovely people. I always look forward to it, and we draw together, we work on our messaging together, and yeah, that's a next thing that I'm working on.

MR: Kind of a diversification of, you know, the work that you're doing and doing something more. I know membership happen-

IL: I'm teaching my methodology there, the brand storyboarding, and all the visual—there's so many things. Visual frameworks is also very, very useful. Is what you're doing a pyramid, or is it a flywheel, or is it a a linear thing? Like my brand storyboarding? Is a A, B, C thing.

MR: Yeah.

IL: So I have been analyzing that, and there's something about finding your style which is also interesting. If you only can draw a stickman, how can you use them to convey your message? Like, for example, Tim Urban. You know him? "Wait But Why" who has these ugly drawings and is so popular and he is doing the wildest best job in communicating the stories. He's one of my heroes too.

MR: He's kind of leaning into his own, you know, limitations and making them work for him, right?

IL: Yes. Yes.

MR: I think that's what I love a lot about, when I see different sketch noters, at a certain point you can sort of identify, oh, that's a Diana Soriat. Oh, that's Nadine Rosa. Oh, that's Ben Crothers. Oh, that's, you know—they have a style that you can almost immediately identify just by looking at the work that they do, which is really interesting.

IL: Yeah. Yeah. And I was always convinced that I don't have a style. I thought I just don't draw well enough. But these shortcomings are the style—

MR: Yes.

IL: - in a way.

MR: Exactly. Exactly. They make your style you. That's for sure.

IL: Yeah. Yeah.

MR: So let's do a little shift now. I would love to hear about the tools that you use, and I think actually in many cases, I start with analog and then I go digital because the answer is pretty standard. But I think in your case, I'm going to go the opposite direction because—

IL: Oh, really?

MR: Yeah. You're so heavily focused on your digital work. I would love to hear the digital first and then talk about analog, like markers.

IL: Okay.

MR: We'll just do that for fun.

IL: Yeah. Okay. My analog favorite tool is Concepts on the iPad.

MR: Mh-mm.

IL: Yeah. Because it's vector if anybody knows what that is. You can move stuff around, you can scale it, you don't have to worry about resolution, and you have an infinite canvas. And that is just perfect for my work. I find it perfect for simple illustrations. If you work more painterly then Procreate is better, but otherwise, I'm very much in love with Concepts and it's getting better and better. So that's what I love using on the iPad.

Otherwise, I'm often using Adobe Illustrator, although I don't love it because I've used it for so many years. I have an old Cintiq that I bought long before the iPad was. A Wacom Cintiq that I can draw on. But I wouldn't buy that anymore. But now that I have it, I'm still using it.

MR: Just use it. And for those who don't know, a Cintiq is basically, it's like a tablet screen that you can draw on. It comes with a high-resolution pen with a tip, and I think an eraser. I had one of these a long time ago, it's got huge bulky cables that you plug into your machine. It's not portable at all. It's really meant for illustrators at a desk.

Pre-iPad, the Cintiq was amazing. Everybody wanted one. And once the iPad came out, I think that probably killed their business or much of it, unless you had a specific need for a desktop tool like that, which some do.

IL: But it still works. I bought it maybe 15 years ago or something like that.

MR: Still going.

IL: And it's still working. I just had to get an adapter for this old DVI back.

MR: Oh, yeah.

IL: Yeah, very old. Very old.

MR: Interesting.

IL: But it still works.

MR: Oh, that's good. That's good. That's been a good investment then. Your system is pretty—I think that when you did my work, you did use the Cintiq and Illustrator. You have the way you process stuff.

IL: It's not portable. It's plugged in here. Everything is just working, and that's why I'm using it.

MR: Yeah. Exactly. Great. Are there any tools—

IL: So that was digital.

MR: Okay. Got it. So now let's switch over to analog. What do you use in your analog side?

IL: When it's just functional drawings, then I use Neuland pens and markers. I like best the Neuland flexible tip one. That is—oh, no, I don't have one here. Light blue and a flexible tip. And it's the fine—yes, exactly. This one. And for shading, I use art markers, Neuland. You have them there? No.

MR: Yep. I think so. Somewhere here. Yeah. I think they have the flex--they have almost like a brush nib.

IL: They have a brush nip. Yeah. My two favorite ones for that is the light gray. I think it's 102 shade and yellow. These are the two shade. So that's functional graphic facilitation drawings, and I don't use too many colors with it because it has to be fast and—

MR: Simplify. Yeah.

IL: Yeah. And for fun, I'm using also a black fine liner and ink tins, pencils, and a water brush.

MR: So you use some—

IL: I love watercolor.

MR: Do you have like a watercolor book that you use for that? Or are you doing it out in nature?

IL: Yeah, I do it everywhere.

MR: Okay, you have like a little—

IL: I don't even use—sometimes also A3 bigger ones.

MR: Oh, really? Okay.

IL: Yeah. And I don't use—I mean, I love watercolor paper, but I don't use it that much because when I then photograph it, then I have the paper structures, yeah, the texture so I'm using smooth paper.

MR: Okay. Well, if you know what you're doing, then that works well.

IL: Yeah. So I love that. Watercolor is my favorite look for drawing. It's fun. There's this messiness and I like it if it's expressive.

MR: Have you ever used—

IL: That's—what?

MR: That's your tool set. I was wondering, have you ever used Procreate or Paper with their watercolor tools? And how do you feel about those?

IL:
I'm using Procreate for another thing that I'm doing that is very fun. And that is projecting drawings on houses.

MR: Uh-huh.

IL: I'm doing that at city festivals and stuff. I got hired to do that. And so, people come by and I draw them, and they get sometimes very big projected onto a facade. I'm using Procreate for that because the presentation mode is working best with that. And I'm using some light pens there.

MR: Uh.

IL: Yeah. I found them. They are pre-installed called Light Pens and they have wonderful effects, so you don't have to do much. It looks just great.

MR: Oh, cool.

IL: And then I do portraits of people with some light effects around them.

MR: Ah, nice. Well, we'll have to see if you can send us some samples of this so we can put links in the show notes so people could see.

IL: Yeah, it's called Illuminations.dk.

MR: Ah, okay. Illuminations.

IL: Yeah. I sent you the link.

MR: Great. Great. Well, we'll definitely have links to everything we can get from Ingrid so you can take a look at her work and see the breadth of the things that she's up to.

IL: Yeah. I've had it for many years, so it's there.

MR: Some opportunity for inspiration, I think for someone to think, "Oh, I'd never thought about that. Maybe I could do that in my town."

IL: Yeah.

MR: That'd be fun.

IL: Mm-hmm.

MR: Well, let's shift to—this is the part where I like to have people talk about tips, and I like to have three tips that you would give someone. And I frame it as imagine someone's listening, they're individual thinking. Obviously, if they've made it this far into the podcast, they're somehow interested in visual thinking, but maybe they feel like they've hit a plateau, they need some inspiration. What would be three tips that you would give that person to encourage them or maybe change their perspective?

IL: Three things. Message first. Don't worry about how it looks to start with and just say something with your drawing. If there's something you want to say, then make a little drawing out of it. And it doesn't have to be grand at all. It doesn't have to look great. Just have it say something.

And that then works in two directions. When it doesn't quite say what you want, then you maybe develop your drawing, but it can also be that when you see it on paper, then your message maybe evolves from there. So it's not only about drawing, it's also about the storytelling. What is it exactly you want to say? And that's why it's so useful. Yeah.

MR: That's a good one. I like that.

IL: Otherwise tips. Keep it simple. Keep it simple. Don't try to make art. Keep it simple in every way possible. Use only one color. I use black lines and one color. That always looks good. Or shading, and one color. And that way it doesn't go wrong. And especially if it's light and bright colors, that's a secret.

MR: Good contrast with black, I think, right? yeah.

IL: Yes.

MR: I tend to lean toward Aqua. Aqua is my favorite contrast color. A bright aqua with black. Anyway.

IL: I remember I copied that from you back then.

MR: Good. Good, good, good.

IL: Yeah. But I switched. When I'm only using one color, I always use, nowadays yellow.

MR: Yellow, yeah.

IL: And if I have two colors, I use gray and red, but that's also just—

MR: The gray, I suspect would probably be your shadowing and such, right? Little shadows.

IL: Yes.

MR: Yeah. What about a third tip? What would be the last one for you?

IL: Experiment. Maybe try watercolor and several apps and use it in your every day. I think that's something—and either in work or to communicate that. That's it. Use it to communicate. That is the whole difference between making art. If you're just drawing to make something pretty, you don't have a direction. And if you use it to—for example, make a drawing for somebody and say, "Thank you." And just a little smiley and write a bubble—

MR: Just a little something. Yeah.

IL: Yes. That gives a different dimension on it. That makes it easier to draw. And also you get nice feedback and nobody will say, "Oh, that looks terrible," because you have a nice message with it.

MR: I have a little something here that my friend William, he wrote a book called "The Conquering Creative," and he sent me—it's so bright you can't see it. Yeah.

IL: Yeah. No, no, no, no. I see it. Yeah, yeah.

MR: It's like a little note. It's a little note with a drawing. Really nice for them. And I've set it up on my table here. I look at it every day just because it's such a nice sentiment.

IL: Yeah, exactly.

MR: Well, this is really great. It's been so fun to have you talk about your process. Talk about where's the best place to go see your work. Is there one place or a couple places that would be a good place to start?

IL: I have a website called lilbranding.com. And from there I link to my new membership site called visualminds.org. where there are all the courses. I do a webinar every month, a free webinar idea. It used to be called Little Branding Cafe, but maybe I go away and call it now Visual Brand Visual Minds Idea Workshop, where people come with their ideas and challenges, and then I draw it. It's like what we did, a mini session, for free. So I do that.

MR: Like a challenge for you, right? Yeah.

IL: Yeah. And then it's usually very nice because people also come with advice and with their ideas in the chat. So that's a fun thing, and I try to do that every month. On my website, there's a button to sign up for that.

MR: So lillbranding would probably be the best place to start, and everything, link from there. Yeah.

IL: Mm-hmm. lilbranding.com.

MR: That sounds great.

**IL:**And right now I'm mostly on LinkedIn. I try to post regularly there. Now with big idea sketch cast, I'm also starting on YouTube, and maybe I will also go back to Instagram at some point, but I didn't have so much time.

MR: Yeah. You have to choose your battles, right? You have to pick the places where it makes most sense.

IL: Yeah.

MR: I would think that your focus on LinkedIn makes sense in the context of the work you do, to me.

IL: On business. Yeah.

MR: Cool. Well, thanks so much for being on the show, and thanks for all the work you're doing. I'm so thankful for you being in the community and sharing your work and being a teacher. And the kind opportunity you gave me to kind of work through my things and talk with me through the stuff that I was thinking about at the time, it was just so generous.

I really love your attitude and your welcoming nature, and you're so calm and relaxed. It's just nice to have another person like you in the community. Thank you for all you do.

IL: Well, thank you for inviting me and for doing the session with me. It's an honor because you were one of the first people who—where I learned sketchnoting. I took a workshop a few years ago, and yeah. So thank you for that.

MR: You're so welcome. Well, everyone, this is another episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast wrapped up. So until the next episode, we'll talk to y'all soon.

In this episode, Dr. Bryan Vartabedian shares how he is creating a child-centered, family-friendly healthcare experience using visuals, to achieve better healthcare outcomes and a positive experience for all involved.

Dr. Vartabedian is Chief Pediatrics Officer at Texas Children's Hospital Austin, he is also a full-time faculty member at Baylor College of Medicinea and is professor of the practice at Rice University as cofounder of the Medical Futures Lab.

Dr. Vartabedian is the author of Looking Out for Number Two – A Slightly Irreverent Guide to Poo, Gas and Other Things That Come Out of Your Baby (HarperWave, 2017) and Colic Solved – The Essential Guide to Infant Reflux and the Care of Your Screaming, Difficult-to-Soothe Baby (Ballantine/Random House, 2007).

Sponsored by Concepts

This episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.

Concepts’ infinite canvas lets you sketchnote in a defined area while still enjoying infinite space around it — to write a quick note, scribble an idea, or keep pre-drawn visual elements handy for when you need them most.

The infinite canvas lets you stretch out and work without worrying if you’ll run out of space. When combined with powerful vector drawing that offers high-resolution output and complete brush and stroke control — you have a tool that’s perfect for sketchnoting.

Concepts is a powerful, flexible tool that’s ideal for sketchnoting.

SEARCH “Concepts” in your favorite app store to give it a try.

Running Order

• Intro
• Welcome
• Who is Dr. Vartabedian
• Origin Story
• Dr. Vartabedian's current work
• Sponsor: Concepts
• Tips
• Tools
• Where to find Dr. Vartabedian
• Outro

Links

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Dr. Vartabedian on LinkedIn
• Dr. Vartabedian on X
• 33 Charts Newsletter
• Rob Dimeo’s Scientific Sketchnoting
• 33 Charts Sketchnotes
• The Sketchnote Workbook

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• EXPO Low-Odor Markers
• Heavy grade notebook
• Wide nib fountain pens
• Signo Uniball 1.0mm gel pen

Tips

1. Be Intentional.
2. Look for a role model.
3. Keep it simple, keep it clean.

Credits

• Producer: Alec Pulianas
• Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer
• Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro

Subscribe to the Sketchnote Army Podcast

You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.

Support the Podcast

To support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!

Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike here, and I'm here with my friend Dr. Bryan Vartabedian. Dr. Vartabedian, it's so good to have you on the show.

Bryan Vartabedian: It's great to be here. I think we've been planning this for a number of years, and it never really happened, right?

MR: Yes. Yeah, well, we're both pretty busy people.

BV: Right.

MR: You being a physician and leadership certainly, you know, demands your time for very important things. Probably more important than Sketchnote podcasts many times. But, you know, sooner or later we figured we'd catch you, and it's worked out. So I'm really happy to have you here.

BV: Great to be here.

MR: So, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

BV: By training. I'm a pediatric gastroenterologist. Spent most of my career as a full-time clinician. Over the past couple of years, I've gotten into medical leadership and I helped Texas Children's here in Houston build a couple of their community hospitals, and they recruited me to open our new Austin flagship hospital in Northwest Austin. So I'm merging into medical leadership and it's been kind of fun, a little different.

MR: Cool. And I know that Austin is growing leaps and bounds, so I imagine the demand in Austin for those services has got to be pretty significant, I would imagine.

BV: Yeah.

MR: That's good.

BV: Yeah, big tech explosion going on there. And so, a lot of demand for pediatric services and so we're also offering women's services there too. So high risk kinds of women's services.

MR: wow.

BV: It's a beautiful hospital up in Cedar Park in Northwest Austin, if anyone listening wants to know.

MR: I don't know that I've been in that region, but I've been to some other regions around Austin so I'll have to look on a map when we're all done. So you've been doing that. I'm really curious now, like — so we talked a little bit, I warned you that we're gonna do, they call it the superhero origin story. Like, how did you get to the place where you are. We know where you're now, but how did you get here?

And more importantly, for this audience, how did visual thinking using your whiteboard to explain very complex topics to patients is what I remember we talked about in my book 10 years ago. How did you end up integrating that into your practice? 'Cause it doesn't seem like that's something — I mean, you know, the big joke is "Doctor's handwriting are impossible to read," and it sounds like your handwriting is quite legible. So how did you end up in that place? I'd love to hear that story and—

BV: Mike, it's a good question because I think I have been using large whiteboards in my exam rooms, I guess now for over 20 years. And it started with these little whiteboards, these little tiny whiteboards that they used to have in exam rooms that would sort of tell the nurses — you've seen these in like hospital rooms?

MR: Yeah, yeah.

BV: The nurse's name, like who the assistant is and what time the lunch trays are coming in or whatever. And so I used to try to — I found myself sort of sketching pictures on these little tiny boards. And it was sort of unsatisfying 'cause I was so constrained.

And maybe it was around Y2K, I had the manager invest in some larger boards and larger dry erase boards, which really expanded my ability to kind of develop a kind of an intentional use of graphics in the exam room with families.

And I just sort of fell into it. And the real tipping point, you know, around the time smartphones were kind of new, and I noticed mothers would hold their phones up and take pictures of what I had drawn.

And it was kind of at that moment, and the remarks that I got from families about how images, and even just bullet lists and arrows and things were so instrumental in helping them understand what was going on with their child. As you can understand, you know, physiology — you know, anatomy can be tricky to describe. A gallstone in a gallbladder.

MR: Yeah.

BV: Or a poop back up in the colon. When you make a picture of that, it really, really is a lot easier for someone to understand. Even beyond pictures, you know, even just bullet lists, a bullet list with arrows or two bullet lists with an arrow going between the two.

Something as simple as that for a young mother with an eight-week-old child who's exhausted, if you try to explain some of this stuff without any supporting media to help them even remember what the five things in the list are, it's impossible. So I don't even know how people practice medicine without this kind of visual.

MR: I think back to like when I've had x-rays done, like you could show me the x-ray and you could explain to me how it works, but it still doesn't make sense to me because I'm not practiced in understanding how to interpret that.

So you almost really need, like, what you're talking about. And, you know, I'm looking at the Sketchnote Workbook sample that we have here. You're talking about a gastroparesis likely—

BV: Gastroparesis, yeah.

MR: — you were sort of drawing this symbol, and we'll put a link to this in the show notes so you can see what I'm talking about. You almost need — so there's like the situation and there's a conceptual component to it where you're explaining the concept of what's happening, why it's happening, and how we're going to address it in this simple way. Because even showing pictures like X-rays are not gonna be helpful to, again, a mother who's tired and has this eight-week-old who's crying because they hurt, you know?

BV: Yeah, absolutely. And you know what's so interesting is that we — are you in Wisconsin?

MR: Yes. Yeah. You remembered. Yeah.

BV: Yeah. So we use the biggest EHR program I think in the world called Epic, Colorado, Wisconsin.

MR: Yeah.

BV: Big Wisconsin company. And, you know, I think our hospital paid 15 million to implement it. And it has some amazing abilities, but something very, very interesting, and it's funny, has happened, I'll go through a 30-minute consult with a child who's not growing or whatever, and I'll make a note, make my impression docs. Have a thing called the impression, which is what we think is going on. And that's often we refer to when we go back in the notes, what was I thinking back then?

But I've had parents, I've gone through the chart. You know, a patient comes back two months later, I look at my note and my note maybe isn't that great? Then the mom pulls out her phone and shows me the sketch note that I did on the board. And within seven seconds I can see like everything that we discussed without even, — you know, more than seven seconds, I can just tell. So it's so interesting that a visual can be a better way to document kind of what I was thinking, what I was doing even more than, you know, a hundred million dollars software package.

MR: Yeah. I've had this theory that it's something to do with the mapping or the use of space and the mapping ability of a visual. So you're not only working with words, but you're always putting them in context to each other. So there's more implied and even explicit relationships that you can draw but because it's using the space where typing and text gets crunched into this text, even a list, right. Like it's got its limitations.

So it'd be interesting to see, you know, does Epic allow you to upload your pictures? That might be an interesting way to solve that problem, right? Well, while the mother is taking a picture, you are too, right?

BV: So it does, it absolutely does. And I've yet to pull the trigger on that. There is a very interesting thing that's come up, which is, what about liability? When I write on a whiteboard, does that become part of subject to what's called legal discovery. Let's say I made a mistake with a diagnosis, could a mama pull out my whiteboard picture and use that in a court of law?

And probably, honestly, so it's probably the good if our hospital attorneys are listening, they're like, "You need to get those in the chart immediately." But I think it's always bothered me a little bit that I do these images and they're honestly very powerful, but I think they do probably carry — I haven't gotten in trouble yet, but I do think they can and should be part of the medical record.

MR: Yeah.

BV: You know, you were talking about, I don't know, giving context maybe to what we're discussing. One of the things that happens when I have these whiteboards and once I launch into a discussion with a family, these visuals become the center of the discussion, and it becomes really powerful with a family that doesn't speak English.

If I have a migrant family that speaks Spanish, maybe not super educated, and, you know, I draw a simple picture of a stomach or a colon or a liver with red hash marks to mean inflammation, it's almost universal.

And we gather around the board —I've even had patients participate in the sketch noting to sort of add things that are missing. And especially, it's really powerful with kids who are probably pre-teen and older who can really kind of add to it or correct what I've put up in terms of symptoms and that sort of thing.

But the point being that it kind of becomes this center, and even when I have a translator, the translators know me and they go to the board and they're pointing. And so, it just all kind of works, you know.

MR: There's some collaborative nature to that. I know in the work that I do, when we collaborate on boards together, it's much richer than if it's just me preaching to the other people. I invite people to come up to the board and it becomes much more valuable because then everybody's really adding to it and adding dimension, because you can't know or see everything, right?

You can't feel what the patient's feeling. So you have to rely on their ability to describe to you, and maybe they don't even think about it until they start writing, and that might reveal something they couldn't verbalize, right?

BV: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the past 10, 15 years we've been seeing this rise of participatory medicine where patients are more empowered with what — you start with the web and all that. It used to be the doctor was a priest and the priesthood and all that sort of thing. Now people are more —- there's more participatory.

And there's also, there's a movement called shared decision-making in medicine where patients participate in deciding on the plan in a collaborative way. And when we put four or five options listed one through five on the right side of the board, which is where I always put them, we can negotiate that a little bit. And it just lends to weighing things when you can see them written down.

MR: I would imagine too that the idea of a collaborative to whatever degree with the patient would also mean their buy-in to actually, so if there's a part that you do and then there's a part they have to do.

Medications, physical therapy, I don't know, variety of things that they are responsible for, that if they feel like they've had a hand in making that choice, they're gonna be more likely to actually fulfill their part of it, which means a better outcome, right?

BV: Yep. There's some evidence to support that, but I can just tell you I see that firsthand and yeah, for sure, once they're involved in it, they definitely are more invested for sure.

MR: Yeah, I know I am. I can only speak for me, I guess, but that's pretty cool.

BV: It's been a fun journey and we've had interest from — the docs of the Mayo Clinic have called me and it's like, "How do you do this?" And I think we even kicked around maybe a decade ago. I thought I should make like a white paper to teach doctors how to do this, and I never did it.

But something that's sort of akin to sketch notes for clinicians, you know because I think I do have a methodical way that I do it, a way that I use the geography of the board to optimize the space and, you know, what do I use bullets for? Where do I put the plan? And so on and so forth.

MR: Almost like a language.

BV: Yeah, but I thought of formalizing it, which I haven't yet, but I probably should.

MR: I have some potential inspiration. My friend and colleague, Rob Dimeo is a physicist. He started using it in his practice as a physicist and found it really valuable, even though he had to modify the way he did it. He wrote a paper that basically explains how he uses sketch notes in a scientific setting.

It might be a really interesting reference to start from and see how he structured it, and then maybe produce something along the same lines could be interesting. So we'll put that in the show notes too, and I'll make sure you get that.

BV: I don't just use visual thinking in the exam room, you know, in the spirit of Austin Kleon, who's sort of a cartoonist here in Austin, Texas, I keep a journal and I do a lot of my thinking and kind of visual thinking, not as beautiful as you do. But when I'm sorting through ideas, I use a lot of the sketch notes elements to sort of help me understand how I'm thinking about things from basic, you know, brainstorming to mind mapping to everything.

MR: That's really great to hear that's used privately as well in your thinking.

BV: It's maybe that's how I started doing it in the exam room too because this is kind of — and you said this just a moment ago. I don't know what I think until I write it down sometimes. I can't tell all of an idea, but it's like, until I put it into some sort of construct. There's also, you know, different media stimulate me to be creative in different ways. For example, I do a lot of writing and I type I use an app called Ulysses. It's kind of like writing—

MR: Yeah, I use that too.

BV: — app. But there are times when I'm stuck and if I take to a white sheet of paper with your sketch notes elements or just let myself go free things come out that would never come out on a keyboard.

MR: Yeah. I use the same tool and I run into the same challenges when I do workshops. Sometimes I just need to take a notebook and go to the cafe and get coffee and dump on the page, and they're not beautiful, but I get so much information then what I do is I'll take that more mapped visualization, then I'll come back and then I can write again. It sort of opens up the, detail that I got stuck on when I'm trying to type. My typing fingers don't work as effectively as my visualization fingers, I guess.

BV: I see.

MR: If that makes sense. Yeah. How did you end up — so when I look at the work that you do, it seems like you got quite good handle on visualization. Were you trained in any way? Did you just naturally do this? Did you draw when you were a little kid? Where did these basic skills come from?

BV: I did a lot of art when I was very young. So it's interesting you should say that. I never thought about it, but I did. And honestly, with what I do on the whiteboard, and I have other images too, the elements of what I do are pretty simple.

MR: Yes.

BV: And almost like what you outlined, it's got — and this is the reason why I think anyone can do this. Any doc can do this. And in a minute, I'll get into what some docs do and what they do wrong when they try to do this, but like writing, I think maybe in the book there's a picture of an esophagus and a stomach, and the esophagus is two lines going down. The greater curvature of the stomach is a big curve, and the lesser curvature is a little curve, and anyone can do that.

Red hash marks are a inflammation universal sign. And a little round circle is an ulcer. And, you know, so I'm kind of a minimalist in terms of what I do on the whiteboard. I try to use basic elements. I try not to overdo it. I try to write it with the understanding that the mama's gonna take a picture of it, and I want it to be clean enough and legible enough so that when she goes home to dad over dinner, she can point and she can do the teaching.

MR: Yeah.

BV: One of the mistakes I've seen is some of my colleagues start getting very you know, hyper graphic and hyperkinetic and very, very busy, which can be kind of natural for some people, but the end result can kind of be hampered, I think, on some level. So I try to keep it intentionally on the clean, maybe in the way that you would do a sketch note at a meeting.

MR: Right. Doing something clean and simple is actually harder than doing it messy because you don't have to really think, when I say this thing what is it conveying? Is it necessary? Those kind of questions you have to ask. I guess the other thing about leaving it open and clean is if you're doing this collaborative work, I'm looking at the sample here, you've got some stuff drawn in black, and then you've got a a movement shape in green. It looks like it's moving out of the stomach. And then you have Prevacid is one of the choices versus Bentyl.

BV: Oh, yeah, yeah.

MR: Indicate that Prevacid in that context that 15 milligrams is better, and you use a red marker to sort of circle that.

BV: Right.

MR: So you've got this language that it's really simple, but you're using this language to annotate. And if you pack that full of stuff, not gonna have any room to really do that annotation and still have it clean and understandable. You would think.

BV: Yeah. And I try not to overdo the colors either. I tend to stick to two or three typically because it's the colors aren't that important but it can add an element that's helpful. It's funny, Mike, I sometimes tell my colleagues about this, and they say, "Oh, I do that, and I do it on the butcher paper, on the exam room table."

You've seen the doc sketch with the pen on the paper, it's kind of a primitive kind of sketch noting, but my problem with that is it's not intentional. It's not intended to create a product at the end for the family. It tends to be, you know, scratched and scribbly. It's very hard to read.

I think it's better than nothing maybe, but again, I think of the whiteboard, or even if you don't have a whiteboard, you can take a large oversized notebook and do that. If you're a doc listening, you can use a large oversize notebook with a Sharpie or a nice one-millimeter gel pen and get a good result.

MR: Something that could be photographed. I could imagine some physicians might like to carry that book around with them from room to room. Maybe they don't wanna be leaving it on a board or erasing, that maybe carrying it's better for them. That could be—

BV: I carried a whiteboard around with me in the hospital for a while, believe it or not. Yeah, it was sort of a trademark. But it became difficult because you'd forget it half the time, so.

MR: Yeah. I know there's some startups that have happened. I don't know where they're at now, but there were these books, they were whiteboard inside, but you would fold it up and had a strap like a Moleskine notebook. You could get them in different sizes, like quite big. So you could literally carry it around, had a little clip for the marker so you could pop it open and do like a whiteboard drawing on the spot, which was kind of a cool idea.

BV: You know, I've been tempted to use Procreate or something to sort of do these visuals on a pad, and then share digitally with a family. I just never quite get into that because I like the size and the grandeur of a large 5 ft whiteboard and the — you know what I'm saying?

MR: Yeah. I think probably there's something about the whiteboard and the simple tools that makes it more approachable if you do wanna have family involvement. Drawing on your iPad or drawing on your notepad might feel like they're invading, whereas a whiteboard feels more neutral or something.

BV: Yep.

MR: And it's more common. One of the things I discovered when I started teaching Sketchnoting is I got fancy notebooks and pens and all this stuff, and I found out that actually, it was really intimidating for students to work with these really fancy tools.

So now, when I do workshops, I just have them order a ream of paper and some flair pens and we're good. It sort of drops the level of the tool to the point that it almost is forgettable. You leave behind the paper or the pen and like, I'll just get another one. It's so simple. So I imagine that's the same thing.

BV: And Kleon jokes — he's a cartoonist, again, I'll bring him up, but he's always joking, people email him and ask him what pen he uses, you know, as if, if they bought the same pen, they'd be just as talented. It drives him crazy because that's not the point, you know. Everyone's got their own favorite gel pen or the whatever.

MR: You have to adapt it to your needs, right? That's part of the game. That's really interesting. So we sort of are stumbling into tools. So maybe we should just go there. Before we go there, I'd love to hear, is there something current that you're doing? Obviously, you sound like you've moved to a new location. Are you thinking about how you might use visualization in this new position? Or maybe start sharing these concepts with physicians there something new that you're doing that you might wanna talk about?

BV: Yeah. Of course, the first order of business is to get whiteboards in our new clinics in Austin. So I've got that rolling. I have done workshops for my faculty locally here through the years and they love that. And as I suggested, people — they kind of do this on their own, but they've never done it with that intentionality of using it to create a product.

So I do wanna pull it to Austin with me. I need to create some collateral material that teach people how to do this on the web kind of like you've done with workshops. And so, I would love to do that, but we're building this $700 million hospital and I gotta hire 200 doctors and—

MR: Little time-constrained, Bryan.

BV: Yeah, time-constrained. Time constrained. But my reputation precedes me 'cause everyone asks like, "You're gonna have the whiteboards?" And I'm like, "Oh yeah. Oh yeah."

MR: Maybe we should cook up some kind of a weekend workshop where we'll record it with you and I'll be your host.

BV: That'd be fun.

MR: And you could get your whiteboard out and show us your practice and we'll record it, and then you can share it with whoever wants to learn your techniques. That'd be fun.

BV: You know what's so interesting, Mike, is that since, you know, one of the great things about the internet, not like the internet's new or something, but there emerged this population of physician artists, and there are — I can, you know, point you to a bunch of illustrators and cartoonists who are, I mean, real professional cartoonists who are physicians who obviously with the emergence of the web, they became discoverable. Right before the web, no one, you know, how do you—

MR: How would you know? Yeah.

BV: How would you know there's a guide like sketching and so there's some real talent out there and what's amazing, we think of docs as sort of these narrow people, but there's a whole population of docs doing very interesting things with illustration and with graphics and cartoons. And so, it is kind of cool to sort of follow these people and see what they do.

MR: And you are part of that community, in your own way, doing it in a different way.

BV: Yeah, it is. What I do is very practical. You know, I'm doing it for a purpose and for an endpoint as a — well, I guess they are too, but you know, it's very different.

MR: Their purpose is different, right?

BV: Yes.

MR: It might be more like medical illustration, which I'm aware of what it's explaining through medical illustration, which is a kind of a different, you know, practice, but you do need that skill to understand what something really is. If you misrepresent that, that could be pretty dangerous.

Well, you know it sounds like your tools are pretty simple. I'm guessing it's whiteboards, and do you have specific markers that you prefer to use? Is there a certain color, certain brand, any of that kind of thing that you could share?

BV: We use EXPO low odor. The odors of some of the whiteboards can be pretty strong, and for kids with reactive airway disease and other airway problems, it can be an issue. So we try to keep use the low odor. In my personal work, I have a thing for fountain pens, and so I use a nice heavy-grade notebook with wide nib pens. And so, I enjoy doing that. They require a little maintenance. Beyond that, I do a one-millimeter Signo Uniball, which is my favorite gel.

MR: Nice broad tip. I like the one-millimeters as well. Kind of juicy. I say juicy, I like it juicy, so.

BV: Yeah. Kind of slippery and all that sort of thing.

MR: Yeah, exactly.

BV: And I'll even practice on a notebook. Sometimes I'll be stuck in an exam room trying to figure out how do I express a concept of, you know, gallbladder motility maybe, and I'll just take out a sheet in my notebook and just start scribbling and come up with some real simple representations. And that's how I come up with what I use.

MR: That's how you build sort of your library at the visual library that you use, right?

BV: Yeah. I use probably 10 or 20 of the same kind of images suited to what's going on with the kid, and, you know, you mix and match them, but yeah.

MR: That's a very simple tool set. And, you know, I neglected to ask this. So how do the kids react when they see this? Does that change your relationship with them? Do they feel more like they can enter the discussion when they see this kind of work?

BV: Yeah, certainly for the teenagers, they definitely participate sort of on that intellectual level. What's so interesting is with a four-year-old who may not be engaged in the conversation that I'm having with the mama, when I go to the board, they light up and they see the colors.

Oftentimes, I'll give them a marker and let them go to the lower part of the board and goof off and make — I've had kids try to copy what I'm doing, so it's kind of fun and cute. But yeah, they do.

Kids are very drawn to pictures. And so, one of the funny things I'll do if I have a reluctant three-year-old, it works great with three-year-olds, who doesn't want to be examined, I'll have mom pull up their shirt and I'll say, "That whiteboard so that I can draw a picture of your belly button."

So I look at their belly button like I'm studying it, and they'll make sort of a swirly figure on the board, and they just go nuts and they love it. And you get immediate buy-in. 'cause they see the thing and they look at their belly button and they say, "Oh, that's my belly button."

MR: That could be a good trick for other visual thinkers who need to get the attention of little kids.

BV: Right. So it's kind of fun. I may use it in a lot of different elements, so.

MR: So this is a point in the podcast where we typically will do tips. I like to frame it that imagine someone's listening, they're visual thinking, whatever that means to them, and maybe they've hit a plateau or they just need a little inspiration. What would be three things you might encourage someone to do to help them break out of that rut or just to have a little inspiration?

BV: Yeah. You know, I think that we talked about docs writing on butcher paper. You know, I might challenge people to sort of take it up a notch. Obviously, putting up a whiteboard as sort of a little bit of a challenge for a lot of people in clinics and it's wall space and that sort of thing.

So again, a large pad can do the trick and maybe take that step to try to be more intentional with the educational material you're using. And you gotta kind of just jump in and try. So I would say, you know, be intentional. That maybe be one tip.

The second tip might be look for a role model. I mean, you can look at the pictures that were in sketch notes, and I think I've got some online. I need an Instagram page, is what I need. But, you know, you can look up medical sketch notes, some of my blog posts I put on there. I just get a role model and see how people do it and what they do. And that's another thing to kind of get you unstuck. You wanted three, right?

MR: If you got 'em three would be great.

BV: So yeah, keep it simple. Keep it simple, keep it clean. I think that I'm a minimalist and I think families, again, you want to think about what you're creating for families when they go away and have fun with it. I mean, to me, I've had more fun in medicine doing this than anything else. You know, it's been a little bit of a side gig for me, and it's also great for families and makes it more enjoyable for me.

MR: That's fun. And it serves the purpose and it communicates.

BV: Yeah.

MR: And in the best case scenarios, it integrates the patients with you which means better outcomes, which everybody's driving for, right?

BV: Absolutely. Absolutely. Maybe that's the golden ring, is to try to connect whiteboards with disease outcomes, which if I had the right study design and the right person helping me coordinate it, I think we could do it. But so that might be a great project to aspire to.

MR: That's the next thing after you get this Austin clinic all set up and rolling.

BV: Yeah. And come down and visit. We'll give a tour.

MR: Yeah. Maybe I can do a little teaching. I can teach some basics.

BV: Yeah. We could do a live podcast from one of the exam rooms.

MR: There we go. That sounds good. I will take you up on that. Austin's one of my favorite cities, so wouldn't be hard to convince me to come. Probably in the springtime though.

BV: We'll get some barbecue. We'll get some barbecue.

MR: Probably in the springtime.

BV: Yeah.

MR: Well, Bryan, this has been really great to have you on the show. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and sort of the way you approach things. Of course, we're gonna find a variety of things. I've got some things up here I can share in the show notes, but I would love to hear where are the places that you hang out most. Do you have social media that you hang out? It looks like 33 charts.com is your site and your blog. Are there any other places we should go to?

BV: So I have a newsletter at 33 charts.substack.com, so it's the 33charts.substack.

MR: Great.

BV: I write a lot about — not a lot on visual thinking, which I should do, but a lot on technology and medicine and change and humans and how humans use technology. But you can find me there, 33 charts. I occasionally post there. People can reach out to me. You can find my contact, I think on my—

MR: On that site. Yeah. On the site or on the substack shoe. Great. Well, thanks for making time.

BV: Awesome. It's been great.

MR: Yeah. This is a lot of fun.

BV: It's great finally meeting you. Yeah.

MR: Yeah, same here. And I wish you the best in your next venture, and for everyone listening, it's another episode of the Sketchnote Army podcast in the Can. So, until next time, we'll talk to you soon.

BV: Take care.

Hey, It’s Mike Rohde, and I’m here to announce season 14 of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, which is launching on Tuesday, October 31st, 2023.

This season we’re featuring 9 amazing guests, including:

1. Dr. Bryan Vartabedian
2. Ingrid Lill
3. Jono Hey
4. Elizabeth Chesney
5. Luke Kelvington
6. Lena Pehrs
7. Rev Andy Gray
8. Gary Kopervas
9. Ashton Rodenheiser

…and of course the fan favorite All The Tips episode for Season 14

You are going to love every episode!

Special thanks to our sponsor, Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.

Watch this space on Tuesday, October 31st for episode 1!

SEARCH ”Concepts” in your favorite app store for infinite, flexible sketching.

Learn more: Concepts App

Credits

• Producer: Alec Pulianas
• Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer
• Esther Odoro: Shownotes and transcripts

Subscribe to the Sketchnote Army Podcast

You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.

Support the Podcast

To support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!

In this final episode of The Sketchnote Army Podcast season 13, we’ve gathered all the tips from 9 fantastic visual thinkers to inspire you!

Sponsored by Concepts

This episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.

Concepts' vector-based drawing feature gives you the power to adjust your drawings — any time you like. You can nudge the curve of a line, swap out one brush for another, or change stroke thickness and color at any stage of your drawing — saving hours and hours of rework.

Vectors provide clean, crisp, high-resolution output for your sketchnotes at any size you need — large or small. Never worry about fuzzy sketchnotes again.

Concepts is a powerful, flexible tool that’s ideal for sketchnoting.

SEARCH “Concepts” in your favorite app store to give it a try.

Running Order

• Intro
• Katrin Wietek
• Filippo "Sketchy" Buzzini
• Eric Bakey
• Maria Coryell-Martin
• Julia Knyupa
• Ty Hatch
• Mawusi Amoaku
• Edmund Gröpl
• Natalie Taylor
• Outro

Links

• Katrin's Wietek
• Filippo "Sketchy" Buzzini
• Eric Bakey
• Maria Coryell-Martin
• Julia's Knyupa
• Ty Hatch
• Mawusi Amoaku
• Edmund Gröpl
• Natalie Taylor

Katrin’s Tips

• Pick a project you are really excited about.
• Don't compare yourself to others
• Don't overcomplicate things. Don't overcomplicate sketchnoting.
• Don't overvalue talent.

Filippo’s Tips

1. Barter your services.
2. Ask your colleagues, connect, share, and give.
3. Prepare your title ahead.
4. Use Post-it notes.

Eric’s Tips

1. What problem are you trying to solve, who is it for, and what is the value of solving that problem?
2. Where are you right now and where do you want to go?
3. Be useful, resourceful, and know your five-mile famous world.

Maria’s Tips

1. Use a timer and set yourself a very small amount of time to do something.
2. Give yourself the opportunity to play with color, what you see, and don't worry about composition.
3. Paying attention to the world and just letting yourself start with notes just to start that attention.
4. Trust the process.
5. Practice not perfection.

Julia’s Tips

1. Fake it till you make it.
2. Work-life balance. Just continue learning every day, getting inspiration from everywhere, from your colleagues, traveling, and following people from different industries.
3. Authenticity is the most important value nowadays so allow yourself to be yourself and be very kind o yourself.

Ty’s Tips

1. Everybody is creative in their own way, and that's okay.
2. Enjoy what you do. You can like a range of different things, and that's okay.
3. Set boundaries for the things that are really important to you, in your life that are not work-related. Set those boundaries, talk about them, and live your life in a way that reflects your priorities.

Mawusi’s Tips

1. Continue feeding your mind.
2. Even if you go digital, keep drawing by hand.
3. Don't overthink it. Just do it.
4. Be open to trying something new.
5. Listen to other sketchnoters.
6. Share your work.
7. Experience with other layouts, find out what works for you.
8. Collaborate with your colleagues.
9. Ask for feedback.
10. Be intentional and tell someone your goal.
11. Don't give up. Be patient.

Edmund’s Tips

1. Benefit from self-organized learning groups.
2. Attend a LernOS sketchnoting circle.
3. Zettelkasten with Obsidian is your second brain for sketchnoting.
4. Take useful notes!

Natalie’s Tips

1. Invest and improve in what you love.
2. Recognize what is your strength. Focus on your strength as you try and improve your weaknesses.
3. Share your work.
4. Write down your ideas.
5. Get involved with the community.

Credits

• Producer: Alec Pulianas
• Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer
• Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro

Subscribe to the Sketchnote Army Podcast

You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.

Support the Podcast

To support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!

In this episode, Natalie Taylor shares how she slowly built her sketchnoting skills and is now sharing her work through her channels.

Sponsored by Concepts

This episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.

Concepts' vector-based drawing feature gives you the power to adjust your drawings — any time you like. You can nudge the curve of a line, swap out one brush for another, or change stroke thickness and color at any stage of your drawing — saving hours and hours of rework.

Vectors provide clean, crisp, high-resolution output for your sketchnotes at any size you need — large or small. Never worry about fuzzy sketchnotes again.

Concepts is a powerful, flexible tool that’s ideal for sketchnoting.

SEARCH “Concepts” in your favorite app store to give it a try.

Running Order

• Intro
• Welcome
• Who is Natalie?
• Origin Story
• Natalie's current work
• Sponsor: Concepts
• Tips
• Tools
• Where to find Natalie
• Outro

Links

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Website

• Instagram

• Sylvia Duckworth

• The Sketchbook Handbook by Mike Rohde

• Doug Neill's YouTube channel

  Tools

  Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Brush pens - Crawford & Black

• Sharpie gel pens

• Staedtler two-end marker pens

• Crawford and Black Sketchbook

• iPad Pro

• Apple pencil

• Procreate

• Evernote

• Noteshelf

Tips

1. Invest and improve in what you love.
2. Recognize what is your strength. Focus on your strength as you try and improve your weaknesses.
3. Share your work.
4. Write down your ideas.
5. Get involved with the community.

Credits

• Producer: Alec Pulianas
• Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer
• Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro

Subscribe to the Sketchnote Army Podcast

You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.

Support the Podcast

To support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!

Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike and I'm here with my friend, Natalie Taylor. Natalie, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you.

Natalie Taylor: Thanks, Mike. It's so good to meet you, and thank you so much for inviting me on to the show.

MR: It's good to have you and I love your accent. We mentioned this before we started recording. Your British accent into the north, which I picked up. It's fun to hear. I don't hear it all the time, so I will enjoy that as we have a discussion. Tell us about who you are and what you do.

NT: I am Natalie. I'm from the Northeast, as you've mentioned, in a small seaside town. Full-time, professionally wise. I'm a market manager at a brilliant university here in the Northeast, and I'm an avid sketch noter on the side in my spare time.

MR: That's great. We'll definitely dive into the sketchnoting details. That's what this is all about for all the crazy fans of sketchnoting who are willing to listen to a podcast or watch a YouTube video and learn. I think that's what it's all about. I'm really curious, so we know what you're doing now. Obviously, you've got some skills in marketing. How did you end up where you're at?

Maybe particularly, from a visual thinking perspective, were there things that happened when you were a little girl that directed you, or maybe in your college years or, school years that guided you to where you are now? What would be those key moments if you were to give me an origin story, I like to call it? Like a superhero origin story for Natalie Taylor.

NT: I love that. I love the Avengers origin story. That's what it always makes me think of.

MR: Yes.

NT: Looking back, it's interesting when I've listened to the podcast, I've listened to so many episodes and I notice a lot of people tend to describe that they've always been very artistic and very into doodling and drawing. For me, I used to think that I wasn't very creative, but looking back, I've always been quite creative, but more in the writing sense. I have always doodled, but I wouldn't sit and draw and do these kind of detailed drawings. It would be very basic, like smiley face, love, heart, and flowers.

I would say it's quite a recent thing that I've got into sketchnoting. I say recently it's probably 9 or 10 years that I've been into presenting information in that way. Yeah, it's interesting 'cause I didn't have that artistic background if that makes sense.

University, I studied media and communications, which at the time, it got given a bad rap a lot of the time as a degree that isn't sometimes as respected as some degrees. But looking back at that, that was very creative and a lot of the tools that I used in that degree are tools that I still use now. Things like Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, even setting up a website, creating a magazine.

It was all creative and using graphics in that way. Like you mentioned, my professional background is in marketing and communications, so I've been in that for around 11 years-ish. It's a little long-winded way into how I got into sketchnoting but when I finished university, I wasn't quite sure what to do.

It was just based around what jobs I was looking at the time and I thought, oh, PR and marketing obviously sounds quite fun and that's creative. It was creating leaflets and a lot of design work I suppose. That is kind of in the artistic realm. It was for the local fire brigades that was creating a lot of leaflets and newsletters for the local community about fire safety.

That's how I got into marketing and having quite a creative role professionally. But it wasn't until my next role, 'cause that was a one-year temporary contract that I learned about sketch noting. I was working at a very, very small startup in the ed tech field.

They had this brilliant software, which was the result of academic research all about collaborative learning. It started on this amazing technology. I dunno if you've ever seen the huge tabletops. When they were around, it was around 5,000 pounds, I think one of these tables.

MR: I've seen the Microsoft Surface table, the original surface, years and years ago. Something like that.

NT: Yeah, exactly. Similar to that. I think it worked on that and the Promethean giant tables. It was for this very specific hardware and then it adapted to be for iPads. But when I say small startup, it was me and the director, they were the directors, but not working full-time and then a computer programmer. I was doing everything marketing and communications and trying to raise the profile of this small startup company.

It's part of that getting involved, building up the Twitter following, and finding things that people would find interesting. I don't think I've actually mentioned, but basically, the target audience was teachers and educators. It was when I started going on basically education Twitter that I came across Sylvia Duckworth.

MR: Oh, yeah.

NT: Who's sketch notes I absolutely love. That was my first experience of sketch notes and I would just look at them and be like, "Wow, these are absolutely brilliant. And they're just conveying the message she wants to converse so well that I thought I'd absolutely love to give this a go." I did find it really, really hard to get to grips with how to actually start.

At the time I would just share her sketch notes with our Twitter followers 'cause they would find them really interesting. Then as part of that role, there was also the Bett show in London. This is a very international education technology conference, and we would go along to that. We didn't have our own stand but would be on hardware stalls and demonstrate in how the hardware could be used with our software.

MR: Got it.

NT: Then there was just snippets of time I had to go and watch some of the keynote speakers so I remember trying to take in—Sylvia had put some advice out on how to do sketch notes, but I had at the time a little iPad mini and I didn't have a stylus. I remember just trying to do sketch notes just with my finger on the iPad Mini which was really hard.

MR: Yeah. Frustrating.

NT: Yes.

MR: I've tried that. I can relate.

NT: I bet you, yeah. It's so tricky. Sylvia shared guidance on tools and things. I clicked on the links and it was this stylus that wasn't available in the UK and I just couldn't find an alternative so I tried doing them with my finger. Then I think I just become a little bit disillusioned with it 'cause I just thought mine are never gonna be anything that I could present to anyone or that people would find interesting.

As time went on, I just practiced in my own time. Then I went to Japan on holiday, and they're obviously known for stationery and technology so I got a stylist there. I just played around with it on the flight home on Procreate. I'm still, to this day, not sure why I didn't ever think of trying analog and just getting paper and pens. I think maybe I did try, but just with felt tips and biros, and then I just was a bit like, "Oh, these aren't very visually appealing."

MR: Just didn't fit, right?

NT: Yeah, exactly. Gradually, I just built up and just practiced. With this stylus, I did start doing some—It would take me hours 'cause I would do a lot of tweaks afterwards and start tweaking around. I suggested to my manager, but again, 'cause we were such a small business, I had to have a lot of different hats on, so I couldn't just explore sketch noting, but I said, you know, these are really kind of intriguing teachers. So, occasionally I would start one and then do a lot of it in my own time, but I started doing almost as a marketing technique.

Essentially, what the software was, was like card sorting activities. You might have one on a particular moment in history and then students would have to work with them and match them up and group them together. It was all about how it demonstrated their thinking and how they'd come to a conclusion. I would just do things like 17 reasons to create your own card sort or you know, the top 10 things about collaborative learning.

I'd develop the confidence to write using the stylus and it looked quite nice, but still the drawing was just not something that I was very competent in. I would sometimes get free icon libraries and just put them in instead of actually drawing them myself.

They were really successful actually at getting the message across as to what the software was, and Sylvia's work in sketch note and hers was still something I aspired towards, but I became more confident to share them on our channels.

MR: It's interesting that you had, I guess an inspiration, Sylvia, right? Doing this work, so you knew, it's nice when you see that. Even if you feel like I can't quite achieve it, I have a focusing point and I'm gonna go for that. You're trying all these techniques, you're buying an iPad, you're trying to use your finger, you're trying analog and it doesn't fit, and then you find a stylus in Japan. You keep on moving.

There was something about you that's pretty dedicated. You were gonna get there somehow. You didn't know how you're gonna get there and you kept on fighting through it even though a lot of people might have given up and it seems like you didn't. Why do you think that was that you didn't give up? That's really fascinating to me.

NT: When you've said it like that, I suppose I was quite determined. The main reason is that I just enjoyed it so much. Like I said, I couldn't dedicate much time in the professional day to it, even though there were marketing tools, but I might do the baseline in maybe an hour, and then that weekend I would spend a few hours of my own time doing it purely because I just really enjoyed it.

Sylvia's sketch notes, a lot of them were based towards educators, but a lot of them were quite general. Some of them she did were around mental health, which is something else that I'm really passionate about. That mental health sketch notes are probably one of the biggest things I do now since I'm not in that role anymore.

The sketch notes that I do have completely changed. That's how I first started learning them. I think the reason why I stuck with it is because I saw how impactful Sylvia's were on me. I remember printing off a couple before and keeping them up. She did one on the iceberg effect, things that you see on the surface versus what's actually going on underneath, and I just found them really inspirational.

MR: I'm sort of putting pieces together. On the one hand, you enjoyed it, so I there's one component. I find, like when you have multiple components that you're more likely to stay driven. You had the enjoyment part of it. You had enough success that you thought maybe I could do some portion of it. You talked about you like the writing, but then you would use icons so that is part of it too.

But then on top of it, you could see the effectiveness of the sketch notes she did from a marketing perspective. You know what works in marketing, it's obviously impacting you. You're starting to see it probably in other places. Like this is an opportunity and I can see how it could work, but there was still a gap of getting to where you could do them to communicate and that just took time, right?

NT: Exactly. Exactly.

MR: That's interesting.

NT: I think it must have been around two years ago that I came across your book, Sketching Army, and that completely revolutionized the whole thing again.

MR: Oh, wow.

NT: I just came across this whole community that I didn't know existed. I knew Sylvia had a sketch noting book, but it was specifically for educators. I'd been beavering a way of doing these things in my own time, but without much guidance or training. I think I did find Doug Neill's YouTube channel.

MR: He's Great. Yeah, Doug is great.

NT: Yeah, absolutely brilliant. I did a lot of his tools. I remember there was simple tips on how to practice so he had, I think I call it the dictionary game. Basically, you get a dictionary, open it to a random page and sketch note a word.

MR: That's a good one.

NT: Yeah. That really helped just gradually dipping my toes in. It's only been the last couple of years that I've actually shared them on my own channel and done them on things that I'm directly passionate about.

MR: Cool. It's been a progression, right? You've been slowly building up your skills and now you're at the point where you are doing your own sketch notes and you're sharing them on your channel, and you've built those skills up through practice.

That reminds me to say to people who are new to this, they'll come to me when I do little workshops and say, "How can I do this?" Like, "Well, it's not easy, but it's still fun. You can have success to a certain degree, but to get better at it, you're gonna have to practice. I don't know how to tell you that there's a substitute, there's no magic pill you can take. There's no, can't jump in a time machine. You just have to do it."

What I'd identify in your story is this idea of overlapping. I keep coming across this when I can do one thing that overlaps with something else that I like that's more successful. If I can layer in a third thing, the success rate goes up, the more I can integrate several parts of my life or my interests.

If you're a gardener, let's say, if you're passionate about gardening, well, planning your garden like as a sketch note might be really fun on multiple levels so you're more likely to do it and really get into it and maybe build a technique that you could then maybe you could actually teach other people how you approach that, right?

NT: Yeah.

MR: That's pretty cool, and I see that in your story. That's really fun and it's really satisfying for me to hear someone who's dedicated and committed to following the passion and multiple passions to arrive where you are, which is really cool.

NT: Thank you. I do absolutely love sketch noting. I think that's the main thing is that I just really enjoy it and I would see some sketch notes and think—when I discovered the community on Instagram and looked at your sketch notes and sketch notes in the book, it was a case of, "Wow, these are absolutely fantastic. I might not be there now, but I can keep practicing the exercises in your book and Doug's channel."

I've got another book that's just purely doodling different objects. When I had to self- isolate with COVID over last new year, I think it was, I spent hours just doodling and practicing.

MR: Well, that's good. You probably accelerated your skills there. Like taking a bad situation and making it into something worthwhile, right?

NT: Yeah.

MR: I got COVID, and all I got was better at drawing, or whatever.

NT: Yeah. It's a nice positive spin on something not good.

MR: Yeah, exactly. You make the best out of what you've got.

NT: Yeah.

MR: This is really fascinating. I love hearing the origin story, my favorite part of the podcast because I think it's interesting for me to hear it, but I can imagine there's people listening, I don't even know who they are, who feel like, "Oh, you know, I'm a marketing manager, I can't sketch note, but Natalie's a marketing manager and she's sketch notes and that's her story. She really had to work at it, and it took a long time. Well, I could do that."

You can relate to people because there's such a variety. We try to find such a variety of people that hopefully it inspires anybody who listens that they can do it. It takes work like anything worthwhile, it's gonna take work. You said you're a writer, like the only way you get better at writing, is to write. There's no substitute, and reading, of course. Reading to get inspired by like, "Wow, look how they turned that phrase or the way they structured that thing. I wanna copy that."

NT: Exactly.

MR: It's definitely a form of—imitation is really important. Imitating, what other people doing, but then—I think that Natalie or Austin Kleon often talks about this idea that copying is helpful because as much as you try to copy that other person, you're not gonna get an exact copy. Eventually, your personality's gonna come through on it and you're gonna add your own little tweaks and twists and it becomes your own without you really realizing it. There is definitely a benefit to copying people to get better and figure out where you're going. That's very helpful.

NT: Yeah. Definitely.

MR: For you, Sylvia Duckworth, I guess is probably one of those key figures that you were trying not so much to copy, but to emulate and to follow and produce something on the level of Sylvia that would communicate the way you saw it impacted you, which is really, really fun to hear.

NT: Yeah, exactly. I really love her work.

MR: I'm really curious about what is some exciting sketchnoting-related project that you're working on. You mentioned mental health sketch notes, is where you're at. Is there one that you're doing now or a series or something maybe that's coming up that you're excited about that you could share with us?

NT: Yes. In general, I love doing sketch notes on mental health. I think that came about with if I was having a particular struggle, I would just Google that struggle. It might be overthinking, for example, which is one of my more popular sketch notes, and I'd just put into Google ways to stop overthinking.

Rather than just read that article and come away with maybe a point that I was gonna try that week and then forget about, I would start sketch noting that and sketch note podcast and books to actually learn from that. Then the bonus is that then helping other people. I've got a project coming up with a lead in mental health psychology publication that I'm gonna do a collaborative post with, and that's gonna be on four ways on how to be kind to yourself.

MR: Oh, wow.

NT: It's in the similar realm to the overthinking one that I've done. What's interesting is sometimes, I've noticed my friends who are very supportive and family, they'll come up with ideas and say, "Have you thought about doing this?" One thing that I'm doing at the moment is baby sketch notes.

I've got quite a few friends who are having babies at the moment. One of my friends said, "Have you thought about doing a baby sketch note about the day they were born?" I took that idea and thought of different ways to make it a bit more interesting. It's like what song is number one at the time, the horoscope, the Chinese zodiac, and actually, getting those printed and framed for friends and people who'd like them.

That's a very recent thing that I've started to do. I've recently done some work with an ADHD podcast who they thought it would be really interesting to sketch note one of their podcast episodes. That's been fascinating as well because I did the sketch note and my style, it is a little bit more wordy than some people's and there can be a lot going on.

When she shared it on her channel, there was a lot of really positive feedback of those people saying—I remember one comment that said something like, "I'd absolutely love a whole book like illustrated in this way on ADHD because it's exactly how my brain works."

But then there was a few comments that said the complete opposite in that it's just too overwhelming and there's too much to take in, so it's interesting how it works in that way. For some people it resonates and some people it just doesn't work for them in completely opposite extremes.

MR: Right. I've got kids that have ADHD, and the two boys that have it, the way they react to it is quite different. They have different experiences. I think within ADHD, you could have someone with ADHD who thinks, "This is amazing, this is the way I think." Then somebody else who's got a slight variation of it would be overwhelming to them. Just people, in general, that can't maybe get into it. I think that's the nature of just humans.

NT: Yeah, exactly.

MR: If I go to my Amazon page and look at the reviews, there's quite a few good reviews, but there's some bad ones too. I'm a fan of Seth Godin, and he says, "Once you release your book into the world, you just stop looking at the reviews because the book now belongs to the public and you can't really do anything. It belongs to them. Looking at reviews doesn't do you any good." So, I don't.

NT: That's really good. Well done on the self-discipline there. 'Cause yeah, I can imagine it's tempted to rake through them and then you've got to try and train your brain to focus on the positive ones, I guess.

MR: It was probably harder at the beginning when there was very few 'cause I felt like we had a technical issue with the Kindle version that a lot of people complained about. If you look way back in the—all the one-star reviews are Kindle failures which we had no control over. It just must have been so a technical accident. We eventually sorted it out and got it solved, but in the meantime, there's all these one-star reviews, which you can't really remove.

That feeling like you have to answer like what happened over and over again, and there's nothing you can do, but at some point, you just kinda let it go. The book's been around for 10 years, so that's more important than if there's enough good reviews on the book. In some ways, maybe that's the same thing when you do a sketch note, there's just gonna be people that don't relate to it and it doesn't work for them and that's okay.

NT: Yeah. That's very true.

MR: It's better to focus on the ones who it does resonate with because they will appreciate it and then you can make them the audience that you are thinking about as you're doing your work. Those people will really like it, and if someone else doesn't, there's plenty more on social media to look at. You don't have to look at my thing.

NT: Exactly. They're also different on them with sketch noting styles. I find it fascinating and I don't think you necessarily—I mean, I didn't kind of set out with a style in. Especially, probably the last year, I think a particular style, but when I look back at the ones when I started sketch note and maybe seven, eight years ago on my little iPad they're just completely different.
I use all wild colors and whereas now they're quite toned back and I'll just use one color, but that's kind of learning as you go. The podcast has been absolutely amazing, hearing about different techniques and tools and tips. That's really, really helped.

MR: I just happened to pop up Instagram here and head it up so I could be aware of your stuff. I happen to look at six reasons to visit Maple and Doe, which I assume is a little shop that you like. It's just really straightforward and simple and fun. There's six really simple.

I think the thing too that sketchnoting does, just by the nature of how it works, is you typically have everything on one page. You don't have to look through multiple pages. You can just get everything on a page and look through it. I can definitely see, if I scan back through your stuff, as you keep on improving, you keep on trying new things and that's really good to see.

It does make sense now that you tell me that your background is in writing and that's a real strong thing for you. Me too, for my book, I wrote the whole manuscript before I drew a single thing. I think in words too. Sometimes I have to remind myself, "Okay, you can draw something, Mike." I can do like lettering and text and still have fun with the layouts and stuff and just little images sprinkled in and that's okay.

It's nice that there's that variation. You could be really visual and do lots of drawings and very little text on one side and then on the other side you could be very textual with just drawings as little sprinkles, and anywhere in between there, which it's great that the sketch note community is so varied that everybody can come at it and express it in their way, which is great to see.

NT: Exactly. That's really interesting that you said that you've have tended to think more in text form as well, and visuals and illustrations are brilliant. I would never have thought that it come from the other way around, if that makes sense.

MR: It surprises people. A lot of times for me to solve a problem, I might write out the problem first. Then it enters into my verbal side, to quote Doug Niell. Then once I understand it verbally, because that's how I was trained as a kid, then I can engage the visual side of me, which I probably did more drawing before I knew how to write and read. Those then kick in and layer on top of it. It's pretty fun.

Well, that sounds like a really fun project. I can't wait to see when it comes out. As later on in the show we'll send you to Natalie's social media connection so you can go follow her work and see when those pop up. Let's shift into tools. Now that I see some of your work, I would love to hear, what are your favorite pens? Do you have favorite notebooks? Then, of course, second would be your digital tools, how you use digital tools.

NT: I mentioned earlier, I got into sketch noting via the digital side. It was only through the podcast and when I ordered your book that I realized a lot of people start off on analog. I was still doing them digitally even though I knew that, 'cause I couldn't get my head around how—'cause I'd started digitally, I couldn't get my head around how you would know how everything would fit onto one page.

I'd start off and then I'd make it a lot smaller and push it to one corner. I was like, "I can't do that on a piece of paper." It was on a whim that I was out trying to find some trainers, I couldn't find any. I went into this shop called The Works that we have in the UK. I think they have it in the U.S., but it's not as much of a big thing in the U.S. I don't think. It's books, stationary. It tends to have things really good discount. I got this little—I know you won't be able to see it if you're just listening, but just like a really small one. Small little sketchbook.

MR: That's a square sketchbook with a hard cover and spiral binding, I guess, is the word.

NT: Yeah, exactly. It's got slightly thicker than printer paper. I thought I could just start doing some little mini-ones. At the same time, I picked up some brush pens, and I started writing with the brush pens and they were absolutely brilliant. I thought actually I could start doing that.

I don't think the sketchbooks got a particular name. The brush pens that I first started using are called Crawford & Black really cheap in The Works here in the UK. Then as I progressed with the paper side, I found this old sketchbook that I'd had—like I said, I've not called myself an artist. I wouldn't sit and drawing a sketchbook, but I kept holding onto this book. I think I was thinking I might use it as a scrapbook. I'd had it for years.

That's very similar to the one I've just mentioned, but it's much bigger and it's also square, so it lends itself really well to Instagram post. For the actual pens, just a few months ago, Sharpie gel pens, their 0.7. Yeah. I found they're really good for doing a lot of the actual words on the sketch notes. Then Staedtler, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right.

Staedtler brush pens. I got them in lots of different colors. I use the thick side of that to do titles. Then I'll use the Sharpie gel pen to do the actual text and little drawings. I've got a bigger pencil case, but then I've got like a tiny really thin one that keeps maybe three or four pens. I'll try and keep that tiny one and then my little sketchbook in my bag wherever I go. I've got it in my bags.

MR: Rough and ready in your go-bag, which is cool.

NT: Yeah.

MR: That sketchbook is the one you have with you, right?

NT: Exactly.

MR: That's good. You mentioned the Sharpie gel pens. I've been really impressed with those as well. We have them in the States and tried them in the past and really like the ink that they've manufactured is really smooth and dark. Seems to dry pretty quickly. I've been really impressed with the, I think it's labeled the S-gel here. I don't know if that's the same there, but it's Sharpie gel.

NT: Yeah, it is.

MR: If you're listening and you haven't tried the Sharpie gel pens, give it a try. They of course make alcohol-based permanent markers of all kinds that you can pick up, but they will bleed through most paper unless it's thick. They do have a alcohol scent to them. That's something you consider. The gel would be scentless. I think if I'm right, the gel pens are also water resistant at least or maybe waterproof, I'm not sure.

I think once it goes on the page, if it gets wet, it's not gonna wash away like say a regular felt tip marker that's not permanent. I think both those are permanent markers. That's interesting you mentioned the Staedtler brush pens. It's the two-sided, right? So, there's two ends, right?

NT: Exactly. Yeah. I forgot to say that.

MR: Those are nice pens. I've seen those around. I've not tried them much. I need to go to the Office supply store and load up on some new things.

NT: Yeah. That's the thing with this podcast, you're just like, "Oh, I wanna try that and I wanna try that."

MR: Spending your money. Spending your money.

NT: Exactly.

MR: Talk a little bit about your digital. You said you started with digital. You hinted at Procreate. Is that the tool that you still use? Have you found any other tools and then tell us about this Japanese stylus or have you upgraded to an Apple pencil, or what's your digital status?

NT: With digital, I don't think I mentioned earlier, but a huge part of the sketch note journey for me and starting to share sketch notes was getting an iPad Pro 'cause I did find it very difficult with this stylus I had, it was a stylus that has a little plastic circle on the end.

MR: Oh, I know. I had this one, yeah. I know which one you're talking about.

NT: It wasn't very precise. I found it quite difficult. It was the second main COVID lockdown and had a lot of time on my hands. I was sketch noting more, but they just took quite a while and the surface was quite small in the iPad mini.

My manager in my previous role nominated our team for this special award thing. We won that so we each got a 300-pound voucher to use on a variety of—you could just spend it on clothes, holidays, et cetera. I thought, "Oh, this might be my excuse to get an iPad Pro because I'd wanted one for so long.

MR: Covered a good part of it, right?

NT: Exactly. It was COVID and I wasn't going on holiday, I'd managed to save a little bit of money because obviously, we weren't going anywhere. That was a big part of it, but when I chatted with friends and family about, "Oh, shall I get this iPad Pro?" I made a pact with myself. If I was going to do that, then I would have to share some of the sketch notes. I made a little pack with myself to do that.

It was when I started sharing the sketch notes that I think I must've started using #sketchnote and I'd click on that, and I think that's when I came across your work, Sketch Army. Obviously, I came across things like the Visual Jam, Sketch Effect, Sketch Academy, all of these things, and I was like, wow.

Yeah, it's called still Procreate. Again, I thought if I'm getting the iPad Pro, I'm gonna get the proper pencil. One thing that I do use, because I don't use an Apple phone, I don't have an iPhone, but I love my iPad. I wanted somewhere of things transferring across easy. I use a combination of Evernote and Noteshelf.

You can get Noteshelf only of the iPad, I think, but then Evernote you can sync it so that anything you do on Noteshelf syncs. Ofter, 'cause I use sketch notes and I don't necessarily share, but in kind of planning and productivity and so, I'll sometimes plan my day out in sketch note form. I have done that on my iPad. I want it on my phone so I've got it when I'm going around and I can't really drag the iPad around.

MR: Then that syncs over. Now it's on your phone wherever you are or on your desktop I suppose, if you've got Evernote there.

NT: Yeah, exactly.

MR: That's a smart idea. I think there's lots of these integrations that often to get overlooked that could make the connection between, like, I like this tool but I wanna use it this way. There's likely some kind of connection or there's a way to do it, I suppose. That's pretty cool.

NT: Yeah, definitely.

MR: It'd be interesting to see, and I haven't explored Evernote for a long time, if Evernote's in improved their drawing tools in that you could technically draw on Evernote on the iPad. I suspect there must be an iPad app of Evernote, but I don't know what kind of drawing capabilities it has. Maybe it doesn't have very good ones and it would be more frustrating. Helpful, right?

NT: I can't remember why I didn't just use Evernote as the actual tool 'cause I use Noteshelf and it syncs to Evernote. I think it's 'cause NoteShelf was like a one-off fee of maybe 10 pounds and maybe—

MR: Yeah, it has a subscription.

NT: Whereas Evernote has a subscription, but you can use the free version to sync.

MR: Got it.

NT: It does have some nice tools. I'm not sure why I haven't really used it more.

MR: I know Noteshelf's really powerful. It's a tool. I think that's what I use to present from when I editing presentations.

NT: Oh really?

MR: Because I can move the pages around, I can present, and then the way I teach sketch noting, is I like to draw right on the presentation. The cool thing is when I'm done then I can just export that to a PDF and send it to the students and it's all bundled up. It's the thing they saw, it matches the recording if they see the recording, and it's a really convenient tool. I find Noteshelf really great.

NT: That's brilliant. Yeah, it's really good.

MR: I did not know that it synced with Evernote. I'm not an Evernote user, but that's really good information to know in case I run into it Evernote user, and tools are pretty helpful. I think all those note-taking tools, their tools have gotten a lot better. That's really great.

NT: Definitely. When I listen to the podcast and people recommend new tools and Concepts as the sponsor, I always wanna try these things, which sometimes I just don't get the time to sit and explore. I think especially 'cause doing it analog is quite new for me. That's an avenue I'm exploring.

I think one of the other reasons I started to explore analog is because Procreate had an update and the pens just became too complicated and it just wasn't working. Now I've found the right brush again on Procreate, so I'm doing a mixture. There's a nice feature where you can favorite the brush thickness, which is really, really useful.

MR: I've used that too. Very useful. Now we're getting nerdy, but on the Procreate size control, if you press and hold in a certain location, you can lock it and a little mark will appear there and then you can jump from mark to mark.

NT: When I come across that, I thought, this is amazing 'cause I'll have one for the headers and one for the sub-headers or even just the little doodles. It's so much easy 'cause before, I think that's why I was making some things massive, something small and I just lost track of what was meant to be what.

MR: Then you're using the same brush and you're just changing the size of it. You just touch the size you want and away you go, which is nice.

NT: Exactly.

MR: Cool. Well, now we're at the point where we talk about tips. The way I frame it is someone's listening, they're a visual thinker of some level, whatever that might mean to them, and they're excited, they like the community, they like doing sketchnoting, but they feel maybe they're stagnating or they're in a plateau or just need a little inspiration. It's wintertime here in the north so maybe they just need a little inspiration like spring is coming, whatever, but what would be three things you would tell that person to encourage them?

NT: I'm not sure if I've got four or not.

MR: Or you can do more than three if you wish. That's fine.

NT: I certainly thought of lots of tips. The first thing I would say in line with, I'm not saying everyone needs an iPad Pro but just investing in what you love. If you love sketch noting and it is investing and that might be in time or courses. That's really helped me is just dedicating a bit of time and sometimes money to get a really good course and it can really elevate your sketch notes to the next level.

It'll just get you back into it again. Often the course is a collaborative so you meet different people as well, which is helpful and learn from others. That's one thing I would say. But then equally, as much as it's invest and improve, I wanted to say recognize what your strengths are.

For some people, they might be held back because there's the comparison thing, like what we were discussing earlier and you see some sketch notes that are very visual and these amazing illustrations that I love looking at. I've had to reframe that 'cause I've had sometimes, moments of lack of confidence thinking, "Oh, mine are quite wordy. I'm never gonna be a natural illustrator."

I've had to think, "Well, my strength might be more in the sense of listening to a podcast and picking out the key points. That's something that I do in my professional role as a market manager is I might have to take it an academic paper and try and present it in a nice way.

That's something that I've had to think is, what are my strengths are. I would say to people focus on your strengths as well as try and improve your weaknesses 'cause everyone's sketch notes are different.

MR: That's a great tip. I love that one.

NT: Thank you. Another tip is to share your work. I know it's not for everyone, but if you are sometimes stuck in a rut, it can help to share your work and break that barrier. 'Cause I kept my sketch note secret for years, the ones that I did on mental health and things. Some of them that I've shared I did maybe four years ago and just didn't post, but that can really help get you work out there and get feedback. Also, if you're sharing them on social media, it helps to connect you with people.

MR: I suppose you could even frame that as maybe sharing, doesn't have to be with the world, but maybe it's a small group. If there's some chat or something where you can share that work. That's considered sharing. If it's two tens of your best friends, you're still announcing to your friends and they can give you feedback.

NT: Exactly, and that's actually what I did first. I just started sending them—During COVID, I'd send them in WhatsApp group chats and people are like, "Oh wow. How have you not shared these before?" It's kind of like deeping your toes in it first.

MR: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You go to the friendly audience first because social media cannot always be friendly, right?

NT: No, exactly. That's very true.

MR: Interesting.

NT: Another one is just to write down your ideas. Sometimes I find if you're out and about and you're out in nature or you're away for the weekend, I think you sometimes get inspiration for sketch notes, but if you don't write them down and I'll keep them in—I've got Google Keeps, I'll just keep a little ideas list and just throw them in there. It means that when I am sat at home with my sketchbook or some time and my iPad Pro, I can actually bring that idea to life rather than thinking, "What was that again?" That's been really helpful.

MR: Some kind of reference. Some kind of a spark. That's Good.

NT: Exactly. I dunno whether I'm onto fifth tip now, I'm not sure.

MR: I only count them later.

NT: One is just get involved with the community as well. That's a tip that I would recommend. There's been a few that I've been involved with lately, monthly hangouts and your layouts workshop. I think that's just really helpful, and again, it's learning from people. You might get tips that you've not thought of that might take 10 minutes. I think one of your previous guests, I think it was Reverend Geek, said he had a 30-day challenge where he would just sketch out a word for 30 days, but sometimes he'd get those ideas from other people and communities that you're part of.

MR: We have that. If you want an easy one, Sketchnote Army has a Slack channel you can join.

NT: Oh, really?

MR: Yep. Every day there's someone in one of the channels who posts the prompt and you can be challenged to draw it in. They challenge you to draw it in 30 seconds or something, so it builds your thinking skills. We have that channel.

Also, probably the other benefit of that channel is any kind of events that happen. Lai Chee Chui, who's one of the members, she's like a hawk. She finds every of cool event and she publishes it in the events announcements channel. You'll find out about workshops or the Visual Jam we'll post in there so you get a sense of like what's coming, which is great.

NT: How brilliant. That sounds great. Yeah. I'd love to join that. Thank you.

MR: If you go to sketchnotearmy.com/slack, should take you to the page and you can sign up for free. It's all free. We just—

NT: Brilliant. I'm just writing that down.

MR: We don't save any of the back channel 'cause we're just doing the free one, but it's more spur of the moment, the interaction between people in the community, which is pretty cool. Anybody that's listening, including Natalie are welcomed to sign up and hang out in there, there's a really cool bunch of people in there.

Your public sharing could be in the Slack channel with friendly sketch noters who will give you encouragement, which we aim to have our community be an encouraging community. I think that's a good place to start if you wanted to follow that tip that Natalie just gave.

NT: Brilliant.

MR: I'll be sure to count up the tips and I'll give them numbers to them in the show notes. Of course, we'll have show notes for all the things we've talked about. We're near the end of the podcast. Can you believe it? Like, suddenly this time has just flown by.

NT: It has.

MR: I would love for you to share what's the best places to go. Are there certain social media where you hang out? Is there a website we can go to to find out all the work that you're up to?

NT: The main place that I share my sketch notes is Instagram and that's @natalierobertat. I also use LinkedIn, but that's Natalie R. Taylor. I did set up an actual LinkedIn page, but I just tend to not post on that end. I don't actually post my schedule notes very much on LinkedIn, but I do use it. I set up a Twitter, but again, I've posted it a few times and not really used it a lot. So, I would say Instagram.

MR: Okay. Got it. We'll make sure we put a link to that. I'm on your page now and it looks like you've got a campsite bio page with some specific things that you'd like people to check out first. That's nice that you got an extended list of things for people to dig into. That's really good and you can see her work there.

Well, Natalie, this has been so much fun. Thank you for joining us on the show and sharing your experience and encouraging people. I think it's, again, another great episode that will encourage somebody out there who we can't even imagine right now who's listening to this episode and being inspired and trying something out, which is what this is all about. Thank you for making time to be here.

NT: Thank you so much for having me. I've absolutely loved it and I love the idea that it could help someone, so thank you for saying that.

MR: I think so. I think it definitely will help someone. I'm often surprised, I think I do these podcasts and often you don't really hear much back and that's okay, I don't do it for that reason. But occasionally I'll talk to someone and say, I've listened to every one of your episodes. It's happened like four or five times recently. All the effort that you put into it, you think like, "Is anybody listening to this?"

I see people downloading it, but you don't hear anything, and then suddenly four or five people say, I listen to every episode. Like, wow, okay, well I guess we're gonna keep doing that. It's really encouraging and it's definitely gonna be encouraging to someone and many people potentially. That's really great to hear.

NT: Thank you. I've absolutely loved listening to the podcast when I discovered it and it was lockdown as well, so I'll go for these long walks and I've listening to maybe two, three a day just thinking, I was like, "Wow, there's eight or nine series of this?"

MR: You're like a super fan, Natalie.

NT: Yeah, I am. They we're kinda packed into a certain time. I think I'm up to date now. There might be a few I've missed.

MR: It's quite a back catalog. Well, thank you so much and I think for everyone who's listening, that's another episode of the "Sketch Note Army Podcast." Until the next episode, we'll see you soon.

In this episode, Edmund Gröpl, a retired engineer, discovers how life is often circular. He shares his in-depth knowledge of Zettelkasten (card file in German) and how he links sketchnotes using Obsidian. Edmund shares how he is integrating Zettlekasten and sketchnotes in a new book.

Sponsored by Concepts

This episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.

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SEARCH “Concepts” in your favorite app store to give it a try.

Running Order

• Intro
• Welcome
• Who is Edmund?
• Origin Story
• Edmund's current work
• Sponsor: Concepts
• Tips
• Tools
• Where to find Edmund
• Outro

Links

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

Edmund on Linkedin

Edmund on Instagram

Edmund on Twitter

Edmund’s eBook

Linktree

Book: Zettelkasten by Niklas Luhmann

How To Take Smart Notes

The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roan

Writing Useful Books by Rob Fitzpatrick

The Sketchnote Handbook by Mike Rohde

The Sketchnote Army Podcast

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

Neuland markers

Staedtler markers

iPad Pro

Apple Pencil

Concepts

Miro

Obsidian

PowerBI

Tips

1. Benefit from self-organized learning groups.
2. Attend a LernOS sketchnoting circle.
3. Zettelkasten with Obsidian is your second brain for sketchnoting.
4. Take useful notes!

Credits

• Producer: Alec Pulianas
• Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer
• Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro

Subscribe to the Sketchnote Army Podcast

You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.

Support the Podcast

To support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!

Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike, and I'm here with my friend Edmund Gropl. Edmund, how are you?

Edmund Gropl: Hello, Mike. Nice to see you. And I put one sentence on paper. Thank you so much for having me.

MR: You're so welcome. I'm glad to have you. I'm excited because I know that you're really into this intersection between Zettelkasten and sketch notes. I'm really curious to hear in the section where we talk about current projects, where you're at with that. Because I think one of the things that I struggle with is I produce lots of sketch notes, but the challenge I find is organizing them in a logical way.

I think your episode, your interview with us may be really helpful for me to think about how do I do that in a good way. I've got some fits and starts. I'm really personally looking forward to learning and getting some ideas from you. Before we get to that, let's start first with who you are and what you do.

EG: Hello, my name is Edmund. I'm here from Germany, living in the Frankfurt area. To make it short, I'm a husband, I'm a father, and I'm a grandfather.

MR: Congratulations.

EG: Thank you. Thank you very much. Husband since 41 years, father then 33 years, and a grandfather since 10 months.

MR: Wow.

EG: Both three are really exciting.

MR: Well, then congratulations to you for setting an example for us for consistency and reliability, and loyalty. It's always good to see those qualities in people because we need that. We need those models and examples to follow. Talk to us a little bit about, you mentioned to me that you were an engineer. I don't know much more about that. Why don't you talk a little bit about your time as an engineer and your specialty and what was interesting to you in the work that you did?

EG: If you're in business, it's very important to talk about your profession, about being an engineer. Since two years, I'm retired, and therefore I have a lot of time and I have my head free thinking for my own, not for the company, not for the customers. It's exciting, what is changing. Is it the same as I did years ago as an engineer, or is there's some new stuff?

What I didn't expect that it's a really new phase in life, redefining yourself, and you are not a retired engineer. You are your person as your own. If I look at my hobbies, I love swimming, climbing, drawing, going outside, and so, and these are my hobbies. and it's all the stuff I mostly liked when I was a child.

MR: Interesting.

EG: Yes. It was climbing on trees. it was playing outside, it was swimming in the gym with my parents, it was drawing, not mathematics, and all the other stuff which came important to me afterwards. That's back to the roots and life seems to be a little bit like a mirror to see what was at the beginning comes back at the end.

MR: Rediscovering childhood in a way.

EG: Yeah. I didn't read it in a book, and it was not a plan. I had no idea what I would do as a retired engineer, but that was it. In the last years, I was working for a big company as a data scientist. I came here from Darmstadt near Frankfurt, and here it was the time when I came as a young man studying software and systems engineering.

Therefore, my head is all full with these engineering tools and concepts and methods and all this way of thinking. Sketchnoting was for me, very surprising to get in contact with all the other guys worldwide. Artists, illustrators’ facilitators, and so on and so on. It was really an enrichment of my life to have contact with different people with different professions and so on.

That's in short to say about my life. It was one year ago. Do you remember, Mike? It was in March last year. There was a session from you in the internet about sketchnoting, in March 3rd or so?

MR: Interesting. It's not one that comes to mind.

EG: Eventbrite was the platform where you announced it.

MR: It must have been interesting. That must have been—oh, that's a good question. We'll have to look and see. On the top of my head, I don't remember. The reason is there's been so many events that I've been doing that it's not surprising that I don't remember what it was.

EG: I was really happy that I could watch your presentation about sketchnoting, about drawing, and all this stuff. Real life, it was Mike, personally. It was not a book, it was you in person. There were a lot of visitors in your presentation. There was this chat by, near all these pictures, and there was one of the participants from New York City. Her name was—there was only a short form, Caroline New York City and she posted Zettelkasten and Sonke Ahrens.

I thought, okay, it was a session for Mike Rohde, it's about sketchnoting, there's some new stuff about sketchnoting. I have a whole bunch of literature about sketchnoting. I think all the books of all sketchnoters worldwide in different languages are on my bookshelf. I said, okay, Zettelkasten, it must be amazing. I bought this book, let me show you. It's a Kindle book, "How to Take Smart Notes."

MR: Interesting.

EG: Yes. Sketchnotes, smart notes, smart sketch notes. I started reading, and I was disappointed.

MR: It was all text.

EG: Yes. It's only text. The whole book is full of text. No sketchnotes at all.

MR: Interesting.

EG: And it was about note-taking. Then this boring stuff at the beginning, because only text, I said, okay, if it's not said what is the best way for note-taking, and I translate it in what is the best way for sketchnote taking or taking sketchnotes. I read all this book about note-taking with a sketchnote metaphor in mind, and that was an amazing book.

This book from Sonke Ahrens it's not written from an engineer or from a writer, it's a German sociologist as well as this Niklas Luhmann. Let me say in short, who invented this Zettlekasten method.

Sonke Ahrens explained it in his own language, and it's an amazing stuff. It's worth reading twice or three times this book. It's about 250 pages. What I learned reading one book about sketchnoting is not okay. I read the book, I'm now a sketchnoter.

It needs a lot of practice. With the note-taking, it's the same as taking sketchnotes, it needs a lot of practice, but you need to know a lot of principles behind, and I say hidden principles. In the first moment, you couldn't see these principles.

Mike, I looked at your book first. It was amazing, the sketchnotes, the ideas, but it needs maybe one or two years, I came back to your book and say, okay, now I understand it. You have no chance to understand it from the beginning. With note-taking, it's nearly the same.

That is my hobby since one year. Since your online session about sketchnoting. To mix it a little bit up to say, okay, that's Sonke Ahrens and that's the Mike Rohde, put it together and that's my hobby since nearly one year. 362 days is my Zettlekasten hobby.

MR: I had no idea that a workshop that I was teaching had sparked you along this path. That's really exciting to hear. That's pretty cool.

I know we're gonna talk more about what Zettelkasten is, how you've overlapped it or integrated it with sketchnoting, but I think I wanna go back. We've gone back one year to last March.

Now, let's go back to when you were a kid, and as you grew up in school and as you went to university, and as you worked in business as an engineer. I'm really curious, what were the moments in time, because you talked about when you were a kid, you liked drawing and now here you are again at the end drawing again in retirement years.

What was it that kept drawing alive? Or maybe it didn't stay alive and it had to be resurrected later. Talk about your path from a little boy to now. What were those key moments that brought you to where you are now?

EG: It's not drawing as a child, as a senior citizen, or so. It's at school first. I loved drawing most. Then they said, "Drawing is for small children. You are growing up and the really intelligent and clever ones, they can write and they can calculate. Drawing is only for the small ones."

But that was at the beginning of the school, but in mathematics, there are also some specialties where you can draw with a pencil, with a ruler, with a circle. It's not freehand drawing, but it's visual. I learned in mathematics also in physics, that all the visual stuff was for me, easy to understand.

For example, I'm really good in mathematics and physics and chemistry, for example. There was a lot of stuff I had to learn by heart that was not my idea. The visualization of elements, it was a little bit boring. Mathematics and physics was much more exciting too. In physics, to draw the experiments from the teacher on the sheet of paper and to say, okay, that's the motor, that's the battery and have it with symbols and the wires you can draw.

This physical stuff was the way I learned. That was also a reason for becoming an engineer. Engineering is also stuff with drawings there. There are concepts, there are diagrams, all this visual stuff, and that helps a lot. Coming in my professional life, after I was a systems engineer from university, I had to communicate with others, with the colleagues, with my boss, with the customers.

Then my drawings were these engineer drawings. I would not like to explain it too much in words. I will draw this system. We want to sell you this system that solves your problem, and so on. Or this process diagrams, flow diagrams and all this stuff. That was all visual. Therefore, I'm sure there are different styles of thinking maybe we are all born with. If you're more visual thinker, it's easier to become an engineer or an architect, and it's easier than to become a lawyer or something like this.

MR: I know the physicist that I've spoken with Rob Dimeo and others who talk about physics is really dependent on visuals, and so, they find it a real natural companion to sketchnoting, which is pretty interesting that you mentioned it as well.

EG: That's the side when I came to sketchnoting—and let me show you one book, I think one of my first sketch noting book was from Dan Roam.

MR: "The Back of the Napkin." Yep. Great book.

EG: It was a lot about the concepts itself. And I understand the concepts with a mind of an engineer, but years later, after Dan Roam, that was your book, I had a sketchnoting workshop over five days learning sketchnoting from a guy from Berlin, if I remember, Dick Hanaman.

MR: Dick Hanaman. Okay.

EG: Dick Hanaman from Berlin, he's giving sketchnoting workshops.

MR: Great.

EG: That was one of the books he recommended. With this book and with this workshop, I learned the stuff behind it, what does it mean to draw a line in this or in this way, why are there thicker and thinner lines, how to focus the attention on a special part of the drawing, and that was not in this book. Then came the book of Mike Rohde. I was happy to understand after years what drawing really means. I was working for a big company with more than 200,000 employees.

MR: Oh, wow.

EG: There's an internal platform or an internal community of self-organized learning. If you have some interesting stuff in engineering, in whatever, in the internet, you can post that you will held a session via Zoom or a special tool to show others, oh, there's interesting stuff for you about databases, proclaiming, and so on. And I offered Sketchnoting sessions, and it was two weeks after my first sketchnoting workshop and I held this session with 400 colleagues.

MR: No pressure. Edmund, no pressure.

EG: It was a feeling like flying in the air.

MR: Wow.

EG: I was able to draw a sticky man and write my name on paper. It was not only one session, it was repeatable. Week after week. That was really a nice feeling to say, oh, that's the right direction, and therefore I banned all my PowerPoint from my presentations, used the flip chart with the Neuland markers. It is the only ones I can use because I can use them for drawing and for writing. If the paper is white, the pen is black. What we had in the company before was you can't use this stuff. I always had my own Neuland markers with me.

MR: Me too.

EG: And the corporate material or markers most times they were old, two or three years old.

MR: Dry.

EG: Dry. You have to throw them away. That was it all with Neuland. Also, as an engineer, drawing on a whiteboard, it was the same with the dry markers years before, but with the Neuland markers for the whiteboard, I was the king. If we had a meeting, blah, blah, blah, this and this. Then Edmund uses his Neuland marker, went to the whiteboard, and explained how it works.

MR: What we just talk about, Edmund would visualize it for you.

EG: Yeah. It was amazing. It was all I think a little bit by excellent. It was not planned in my career.

MR: Organic, maybe a good way to describe it, which is always good because you follow it because it's interesting. You didn't follow it because somebody told you to, or you had to because of your job. You did it because you were interested and you came to love it, it seems like.

EG: Most of the stuff by accident, and what was the term I got from the internet? Serendipity. To be open to see things you wouldn't expect. As I told you, it was the same with Zettelkasten. It was, you were sketchnoting session in the internet.

MR: That's funny.

EG: The girl from New York said, Zettlekasten and Sonke Ahrens. Really cool stuff.

MR: You just never know what's going to send you in the new direction.

EG: Yeah.

MR: Which is great. That's a great thing about life, right, if you're open to it. Which I would argue that people that stay in the sketch note community are very open and interested and curious people, I think by nature. Probably something else you share in common when you go to an event with other sketch noters, everybody's curious and loves to learn and loves to share. Those combination of things seem consistent to me. That makes a great community because there's just endless things you can learn about and endless things to do, which is exciting.

EG: It's really my experience learning and talking with sketch noters, it's just another family. It's not the engineering style. It's another mindset. And I love it. They are from different professions. That's a big difference to my typical work as an engineer or as a data scientist.

MR: You also have the international component, so not only are they from different walks of life and different interests, but they're also from different countries. Even then you have another perspective change, right? Even in countries in Europe as well as the United States and around the world, everyone has a little bit different view on things so you can learn some new things from those people from other places. At least that's what I've experienced. My life is so much richer because of the community for sure.

EG: In this community, I really love this sharing mindset and this lifelong learning. And being curious, there's new stuff. There's a new app for drawing, could you please tell me a little bit about it? For these digital tools, they freely give away a digital brush set.

MR: Right. Yeah, it's a great community, and we're glad you're part of it. Thank you for your contributions for sure. Speaking of contributions, I'd like to hear a little bit more about Zettelkasten, how it integrates or overlaps with sketchnoting.

Probably, the best place to be would be to give us some history. Where did the term Zettelkasten—it seems to me like a German word from what I've done. Maybe take it from there and give us a backstory. Obviously, we know how you came across it. How do you then apply the Zettelkasten idea with sketchnoting?

EG: You are right. Zettlekasten is a German word, and I think if you translate it right, it's a slip box. Typically, a slip box is a wooden box, small ones with a lot of note cards. This German, this Niklas Luhmann, this professor from Germany, a sociologist from Germany from the last century. He had a wooden Zettleksten with about 90,000 notes he'd taken in his life.

MR: Wow. He must have had more than one box for that.

EG: Yeah. It's a small format, and there's only written down his idea he got while reading a book while reading an article. Not reading in the internet. That wasn't invented at that time. When he was ready with creating this note card, he put it in a Zettelkasten.

MR: A slip box. Yep.

EG: In the slip box, yes. But you would say, okay, what's the way coming back to this Zettel or to this note card some days, weeks, or months or years later? That was the system we all know if you're familiar with the internet, he put a number on top of his note card, an identificater, an ID. It was written the date and the time when he created this note. And whenever he put some ideas on paper, he linked this note with another ID of another note card.

For example, if you would say ideas not art, and put it only here on this note card, then he should put a link to the note card of Mike Rohde, with a Mike Rohde Id and maybe a must be an ID from this book.

MR: Got it.

EG: Then he put it in his Zettelkasten. Later on, if he was working on an idea, he want to write an article, or was writing a book yet idea, okay, there are some note cards. They're important for this stuff. I got them from my Zettelkasten. With these two or three cards, there are a lot of connections to the other note cards in the Zettelkasten.

MR: Then you pull those note cards, right?

EG: He put this on his desk, rearrange it a little bit.

MR: Card sorting. Yeah.

EG: Card sorting and say, okay, all the ideas are on the table. It's an easy stuff for writing. He was never sitting with a blank sheet of paper. Always starts with his notes. Note cards he captured days, months, or years ago. Niklas Luhman, it is said he was very productive in his life. I'm not good in remembering numbers, about 400 articles and 90 books. It's unbelievable for a lifetime.

MR: Wow. The thing that makes me wonder is there must have been some kind of index. When you do the ID on the card, you must have to also—I think about the bullet journal. When you put entries into your book, you're supposed to add that to the index so that you can find it later.

Is there an index component to this as well? Or do you have to just rifle through your slips? How would you know by the ID whether it's the thing you need, you'd almost need some organizing structure where you would say things about this are these numbers and things about that, or something. Tell me about that.

EG: You have different types of notes in your Zettelkasten. The main part of the Zettelkasten are so-called permanent notes. Let me say there's a phrase to call them atomic notes because on one Zettel, there's only one idea. There's not an article or a story. One idea. Okay. And there are other types of notes. For example, structure notes and structure notes says, okay, that's my topic. That's about—

MR: Gardening. Let's say.

EG: It's about gardening. On this structure notes, you say in gardening, you need tools plants and whatever, soil and you put a list of important stuff for gardening. What are the 10 most important tools for gardening? Put it on this paper. And link it with a note card you already have in your Zettelkasten.

MR: Got it. There is some manual, identification and crosslinking and such that you would do. That makes sense.

EG: In book writing, it's an index. This structure notes are indexes and there are table of content. You have some structures like the structures in a mind map. In outlining of an article, for example, you have some main ideas, some sub ideas, and so. These structures are on special cards, but on the structure notes, they are only structure information, no content. The ideas are on separate permanent notes, and you have the structure notes.

MR: In the physical box of cards, box of slips, I would assume, maybe in the back is where all the content notes are or the idea notes. And maybe in the front is where the indexes and structure notes live. You would maybe first go to the front part of the box to look for topics and say, "Okay, I need card number, this, and card number that and this."

And based on that, then you'd go in the back and pull those because they would be in some order, then you could pull 'em all out and then lay them out and do what you will, and then return it all back to the box, assuming you didn't add some notes. If you added notes, then those would go in. Indexes would be updated and the new slips would be put maybe in the back, I suppose.

EG: Yeah. These are the main types of notes. How to create the note, if I'm reading a book and I'm note-taking, I use my Zettels, and if there's important information on page 56, I put my idea with this important idea from the book on the literature note card. Literature note card only means it's the content I read in the book with my own words. It has an unique identifier, and with a digital tool, it would be a title.

You don't need these numbers anymore. From a hindsight, you have to order and to sort them ad you have no search function. Today, you only have the title, you have the content in your own words, and you have a link to the source. Literature note—

MR: Easily do with these tools that exist now, right? Linking is easier.

EG: Yes, the only must with the literature note is to have a backlink to the source itself.

MR: The book itself and the page number itself.

EG: The book also to the author. And the literature note is not a permanent note. Maybe on the same day or little bit later, you will take you a literature note, look at it and say, "Okay, are there any connections in my mind, which may be important?"

Maybe it's a phrase from your book, Mike to focus attention in your sketch note. And you said, okay, there's a connection to attention, and there are a lot of note cards, they are connected to attention. You put this on your—if you are started to link your literature note with other already existing permanent notes, then you transform this literature note to a permanent note. And the literature note vanish.

MR: Doesn't need to be kept yet.

EG: Yeah. With a linking to other notes, you have two possibilities. One is the link, like a hyperlink in the internet and the other possibility to link to other concepts, ideas, or whatever is tagging as you do it in Instagram, in Twitter, and—.

MR: The hashtag.

EG: —whatever. It's all the stuff we already know, but did it on paper. We are really lucky to have the computers and you have modern tools for this idea of note-taking. My favorite tool is called Obsidian. It's one of the favorite tools from a lot of writers. Starting with a steep curve in, if you ask at Google trends about Obsidian, it's a very slow line and rising high in the last month or years.

It's a really great community. It's a little bit this sharing style, like the sketch noters. If you are in an Obsidian community with other guys using this tool and using the Zettelkasten method, and you ask a question, you are sure there's an answer within a few minutes. They really help each other. What is behind as I said to you in the beginning using sketchnoting seems to be easy, but you need a lot of experience.

MR: It's a learning curve. Yeah, for sure.

EG: It's not so steep learning curve. The same is with notetaking. It seems to be easy, as I told you, only a few types of notes. Use it on paper or use it on the PC with Obsidian tool, but it's really learning, learning, learning. In my professional life, most part, I need a lot of time in my business for note taking, with sketch notes without sketch notes.

What, for me, was fascinating. If you have a note card, you can draw on it. There's no need. Like Niklas Luhmann, I think he wasn't a visual thinker. I do not know him personally, but only writing text or note cards. He couldn't have read your book in this time.

MR: Yeah. Yeah.

EG: There was no drawing at all. Unbelievable. But today, I think use a note card, put your drawings on it, and you have a mixture of sketch noting and note-taking with a Zettelkasten method integrated in the Obsidian tool.

MR: Tell us a little bit how you do that, because that's the part where—I've got a text editing tool. I use Ulysses for writing. It can do some linking, but it's not optimized like Obsidian is, which I've considered, but for now, it's been great for writing. I use folders and structures.

It also does tagging, so I could do some of it, but I'm really curious to see like bringing in the visuals into Obsidian. I would guess that you could attach images. You could do a drawing, take a photo and attach it to one of these cards and then use your linking and tagging to make sense of how it fits in the greater whole. Talk to us a little bit about how you make that work.

EG: It's a little bit like linking a drawing to a note card. It's like building a webpage, there's the written stuff, and then there's a link to a jpeg or PNG or whatever file. For me, that's the same for drawing. I typically us my iPad with the Concepts app. I can export it in this—

MR: It's an image.

EG: Yeah. It's an image at the special formats. Then they are linked in the Zettelkasten tool. I can reuse. Also, it's only a link to the image. There's one place, they are all images. It's big box with thousands of images. And there's one link to one note. If I use the same image in another note, there's only a link to this image.

MR: One link. Got it.

EG: One link and one—you say you have a tool using folders.

MR: Right.

EG: I was trained my whole life working with folders. I'm not sure if it's a German invention to put all stuff in folders. I had these folders before the PC was invented. In the living room, wherever you look, there were folders with different Zettels here. And it was a nice feeling putting all the stuff in the folders. It looks pretty. When I had the idea, coming back to an idea, which was the right folder, where did I put it in? and I lost a lot of time my life for searching.

MR: Searching for things.

EG: The most confusing thing was this folder structure with sub-folders and sub-sub-folders. It was this tree-like structure, and you never which branch and which leaf and couldn't find it. What was really hard for me, learning the Zettelkasten method there, I would say no folders. All these permanent notes are in one folder. That's a crazy feeling. If you do it at the beginning and you'll say, okay are there the right links? Do I have a link to the source? Do I have a link to the author?

And then you put it in this box, in this permanent note box, and it vanishes, and it's gone. From your life, you have no experience, is there a chance to get it back? Although I knew it's easy to get it back. There's a perfect search function, full text searching in this tool. You can look at the links. You have a craft view. You have a crafted representation of this network. You can filter this craft view, and it's really easy with all these tools coming back to an idea. But using folders the whole life—

MR: It's very comforting

EG: It's a brainwash to put something in this black hole.

MR: Like putting it in the sea.

EG: I will never get it back.

MR: Interesting. Well, I suppose, if I were to think of the one thing that's close to folders in this method would be tagging. You could have multiple tags. In a way, you're marking it in a folder, but it can be in more than one folder. That's the beauty of tagging where with a folder, there's only one, and if you can't find that folder, it's lost.

I guess now with tools like Ulysses as an example, I can do searches and find things. Ideally, and probably the way I would go about it is probably use tagging to start tagging. Then I guess the challenge around tagging that I've seen in my lifetime is being consistent with tagging. Because maybe one tag is icon and then you accidentally say icons and now you have two tags.

So, forming a manageable set of tags is probably a challenge because if the tags get out of control, then you could potentially have more processing stuff. You probably have to be disciplined about tagging, I suppose. To have a pretty structured tagging organization otherwise could get outta control, just like folders could.

EG: It's really important point you talked about, this tagging and what you need at most at the beginning of working with a Zettelkasten, to have some kind of architecture for your text. What is important, what needs to be tagged in which way and not to have an idea of all the text from A to Z, but you have this taking architecture.

For example, I have texts about hashtag type. And in Obsidian you have not only one level of tagging, but two levels of tagging. You can say hashtag type slash note slash sketchnote.

MR: So, modify in a way.

EG: Slash book. It's not about the content of the note, but it's more a little bit like metadata. If you come back, for example, oh I'm not sure what it was, but it was from a book, and then I could use this hashtag-type book. And then I have a list of books, and then I say, okay, but only the last two weeks. Then the list is very short and say, "Okay, that it was."

You can find things and have no—you wouldn't be able to have a prompt, a search phrase. In Google, for example, you need some phrases to find the stuff. With your tagging architecture, you can search for stuff where you have forgotten the phrase.

MR: So, probably tags for someone who, like you and me, have been trained to use folders for our whole lives, and that's a comfort for us. Probably the bridging mechanism to Zettelkasten might be tagging and then linking as well. Because in a way, tagging becomes like your representation of what the folder means. It's a metadata. It's the thing that defines the category.

EG: In my architecture, I have for example, this taking of types, and as a process engineer, one of my jobs in the past, there was input, computation, and output. Then I have the tech input, and I can say it's from the internet, it's from the book, it's from YouTube. Sometimes, I only have an idea where it comes from. And other texts are about output to say, okay, I put it to Twitter, to LinkedIn, to Instagram or whatever. That's not about the content of the note, but only where it comes from, where it goes to.

In this architecture, there several metadata sets I can extend at the end. The list of output, it's infinity to extend it, but this main structure it's very important to have it at the beginning, but when you have hundreds or thousands of notes and you have to change all this text, it's not so much fun.

In Obsidian, there's a plugin. There's a plugin, if you say icon or icons, you can say, please change all text icons to icon, and that's makes it easy.

MR: Yeah. Interesting. Is there so you think the Sonke Ahren's book is a good place for someone to start who's maybe interested. Are there other resources you might recommend? Are there classes or YouTube videos or something that might be helpful to get people started on this? Secondarily, once they've established the base, is that a Zettelkasten structure then is there reference for how to integrate visuals into it?

Because it sounds like a lot of what I've seen is more text oriented, like linking and writing and so forth, it's all text, and there's not so much emphasis on integrating images. I think for sketch and visual thinkers, having that additional information would be useful. In addition, like once you set up the structure, then how do we integrate images into it would be helpful.

Some of the things you've hinted at like there's a big folder that has all the images in it, and then you just link to it. And I suppose that's part of the whole box, right? So, you have one folder that's got all the text and it's all linked together, and then one box with images or something, and then you link them together.

EG: I have one folder. The folder is called visuals. They're all my images. I have a folder, as I said, a permanent notes. They're all this permanent notes stuff. Other stuff, for example, I collect a lot of PDF files. Maybe I have books in PDF format or table of content from a book I have on paper in PDF, and all this stuff of value in my assets folder and I can link them easily.

MR: All between each other.

EG: Some of the sketch notes I have in PDF formats from others.

MR: I see.

EG: Assets for example, are the sketch notes from others I collected as an example, as a source of inspiration. In the visuals, I have these drawings from myself. As Niklas Luhmann did writing it down with your own words, it's drawing with your own pencil.

MR: Yeah, same thing. Just a visual interpretation.

EG: There's no difference. Therefore, the only difficulty with this book of Sonke Ahren, believe me, there are no pictures.

MR: Yeah. Exactly.

EG: Most of the sketch noters can draw, and therefore, it should be possible.

MR: Now, I know that you offer, as part of your show notes that you pre-sent to me, there's something about an e-book. Is the e-book address using Zettelkasten for visuals and sketch notes? Is that what the book is about?

EG: Yes. My idea was using the Mike Rohde book and using the book from Sonke Ahrens, put it together, but not to repeat it. But to say, what does it mean if you put it together? I give a lot of hints and advices how to structure the folders, how to use the architecture for the tagging.

MR: That sounds like exactly—

EG: That's more important. If it's more, oh, sketchnoting, then there's a link maybe to your book or maybe a link to a YouTube video. All the details are links to the internet, to some Zettelkasten videos or to sketchnote videos, or other material. And it's one overview. It's a book, would say a structure note with a lot of sketch notes and with links to all this stuff you need to put together.

MR: Got it.

EG: It's a book full of references.

MR: So basically, if someone is listening to this and getting excited about the idea of, say, picking up Obsidian, which by the way is free for personal use, sets up Zettelkasten so that they can manage their sketch notes. That this would be the next step would be to get the book that you've created in order to structure it and start working with it and integrating it. Would that be the right way to think about it?

EG: And the idea of my book is not writing it and publishing it in two or three years. I'm fascinated from this idea learning in public and publishing all the stuff. If I'm sitting here at the weekend writing a chapter in this book, then it's published in a pre-published version. I published already 15 versions. Most, it's one more chapter, some more links, and so on. It's growing and growing. What is really nice, the sketch noters and the Zettelkasten community, they all help me writing this book.

MR: Oh, great.

EG: I don't understand this sketch note. What do you mean with a sentence? I got feedback and okay, it's not printed this book. It's a PDF. It's on GitHub. It's freely available and all this feedback, there's an update and I can improve it. I earned my money as an IT engineer with HR projects. And we put running software to a customer a few days after he agreed with us the contract, and we were improving and improving. Today, it's possible also with books.

MR: It's a mindset. It's a living book in a lot of ways. It's almost like software documentation, right? As you build the tool, like pieces are removed and replaced or depreciated, or things or features are added. In software, you have to document this stuff so that it's tracked, and you can go back in time and look at the old version and see, oh, that's right. We had that feature, and because of this and that, we removed it. It's no longer in the documentation.

I suppose, in this case, you're doing more adding, but I suspect at some point maybe something would disappear or whatever, and you might have to replace it or something. Like a link, say somebody website in five years goes away, you might have to find a new link to that or something.

EG: With Zettelkasten, I started in March '22, with your even bright workshop.

MR: That's funny.

EG: And then I started writing the book because the idea is not to take notes and to put all these Zettels, as I said in this box. It's a black hole. What do you need? That's very important for all who want to start with the Zettelkasten. You need the goal. What do you want to do with all these ideas in this box?

MR: Right. How's it gonna be applied?

EG: That's not the final destination. That's an asset. As a proof of concept, I have to write a book. Otherwise, all these ideas would vanish in this Zettelkasten box. And they're beautifully linked, nicely teched, but it doesn't make any sense. What I found in the internet, I think nearly as great as the sketch noting book from Mike Rohde, as great as Sonke Ahrens Zettelkasten it's about "Writing Useful Books." It's from Rob Fitzpatrick. You see, it's full of highlighted text, every page full of nuggets.

Yes, yes, yes, the idea that non-fiction books are problem-solving books. You need to know the problems of your potential readers and to show them on the first page, which problem are you looking at, and how you can help them. And if you read the table of contents, there are a lot of promises from the author, how he could help you to solve your problem. And then, this as very short in writing, as you see, it's a small book.

MR: Yeah. It's quite thin.

EG: Quite thin, but full of value. Other books 500, 600 pages. I stopped in the middle of the book. I had no time in life to read it to the end. And that's the third book in my project, using the contents here of these right useful books to get the Zettels out of the Zettelkasten to create project notes, to create consistent chapters and sub-chapters, and to deliver result from all this syncing behind.

MR: I think the other challenge too, that it's important to have a purpose would be if you just did the Zettlekasten just to do it without a purpose in mind, it would just go into an ocean. I think eventually your motivation to maintain it because it takes work to do the linking and all this, even if you get into a rhythm, it takes work. Just like sketchnoting, it takes more work to do sketch notes 'cause you have to really think about it and you're analyzing. So, it takes effort.

Unless you have a purpose for it, eventually you're gonna, "Uh, I don't want to put a link, I'm tired, I don't wanna write a link, or I don't wanna do a tag." Then the next thing you know, then you're not adding thing. You know what I mean? It's like, would degrade ‘cause you didn't have a purpose for it.

By having a purpose, like in your case, writing a book, it meant that you had something that you were doing. And now everything that goes into your Zettelkasten is likely for future additions of the book, or maybe now some new project that the Zettelkasten serves a purpose for, I would guess.

EG: As a process engineer, in my Zettelkasten, I measure the input, I measure the output, I can measure the productivity, the relation between output and input, and I can see is it working. Is the process working? Are there some bottlenecks in the Zettelkasten? What takes the most of my valuable time? Is there connection between the idea at the input to the book at the output? Is it a little bit complicated or is it directly connected? How long does it take to get one idea in and one idea out? If I take this book, it's from 2012. If I would use one concept to improve my output, that 10 years between your idea, your shared to my idea, I shared.

MR: The application.

EG: Yes. And my idea is to shorten it a little bit. Reading a book, reading another book, connected and having an output and an output of value to solve a problem of my readers. That's more than note taking.

MR: It's another level up.

EG: It's a philosophy that connects really the organizational part with the Zettelkasten, the visual part with the sketch notes and the value part from "Creating Useful Books" from Rob Fitzpatrick.

MR: Overlap of three things.

EG: Combining three things and say, okay. That's for me, it makes sense. It's not only a machine, I'm focused on the wheels, didn't have a look at the motor, but I want tto build this car, and it's really working. You can use it.

MR: Well, this is great. Thank you, Edmund. And you know, if you've been listening to this discussion, you're getting ideas in the end of the show, of course, have contact information for Edmund so you can reach out directly, but we'll also have links to his book and the other books that he's mentioned so you can do your own work and download obsidian and those kind of things, and try it out. I think this has been very helpful. I'm hoping that it will inspire some people to maybe organize their sketch notes using this method. That would be great.

EG: I hope it solves one or another problem from all these guys taking notes their whole life, being a student, being a professional. And so, take their notes, but having ideas to improve this process. Taking sketch notes, not only the written stuff. Remember the old stuff, finding back to old ideas, combining with news, and having the chance to give the ideas a chance. They can meet in a Zettelkasten although they came from very different sources.

MR: Right. The opportunities are pretty great there. Well, this has been interesting. Let's shift a little bit now. We'll talk a little bit about tools now. Let's start with analog tools and then we'll talk about digital tools. You've hinted at some of these things already, but let's go more in detail. Starting with analog

EG: I already mentioned it I only used this Neuland and the reasons I gave you.

MR: They're all there.

EG: The only Markers, they really work in a professional context. That are my fine liners on paper. Is it?

MR: Yeah. The little guys. Yes. Staedtler,

EG: It's Staedtler. I think it's from Germany, but it's a way. The Neuland markers they also sell the Staedtler stuff.

MR: Yes.

EG: It's the same is only a branded Neuland on it. But it's the same. Perfect quality for me. That was my life before I got an iPad.

MR: Tell us about how the iPad changed you. You mentioned that you've made a shift from one application to another. I'd love to hear not only what those two tools were, but then the rationale for switching and what led you to the new tool that you're using now.

EG: With my iPad, I looked at the internet and to all the sketch notes and they told me there's only one tool you can use, it's Procreate. I had a lot of experience with Photoshop in the past, and it was not so difficult to understand how to use the Procreate tool. But I struggled a little bit with my canvas. Is it designed for a letter format or for a large poster? It is pixel-based the Procreate and enlarging your drawing means there is all this—

MR: The jackety edges.

EG: Yeah. It's not so nice. The Procreate, if you say, okay, I'm not sure which format is the best, I plan for the highest resolution and can reduce it if I need. But then the fights were getting bigger and bigger. With a Concept app, it's a vector-based format. I can resize as I like it. At the beginning, at the end, and the canvas is infinite. If there's not enough place, there's place for an extra drawing and I put it together.

What I learned is, it's very easy to handle an object library in the Concepts app. Most of my life, I was working with PowerPoint. PowerPoint means use it as a tool putting different visual objects together. This PowerPoint style of working I can use with a Concepts app. If I drawing a house or a special icon, some eggs are very easy, a square or triangle. I can put it on the surface as well.

But if it's a little bit more complicated, a stopwatch or so with some details, it costs me a few minutes to do it well. Then I can go to the library, put it together, and it's all my shape. It looks like freshly drawn from Edmund. It's not a library I bought.

MR: You made it yourself.

EG: I can say from Microsoft. I would say, okay, there are a lot of visuals, but they are not from me. And it makes it very personal to use my own icons, my own drawings. What I have to learn is to write my name with nice letters. And that's not so easy, it takes me most of the time to learn this architect's handwriting.

It's all in Concepts. It's now not so difficult to, produce nicely looking stuff. Not only for me but also for others. Also, I'm not an illustrator. I'm not a professional artist. And graceful enough, that was the phrase I got from Mauro Toselli.

He said, "The sketch notes must be graceful enough, not more." There's no need for, but if they're really ugly, someone would say, okay, it's hard to read. I do not really understand. Is it a horse or a dog or so? It must be graceful enough. That's possible very easily with pre-drawn objects I use most times.

MR: Interesting.

EG: Therefore, if you say there's a better tool, okay, I will have a look at it, but at the moment, I'm pretty happy with my Concepts app.

MR: That's good. That's good. We'd like to hear that. It's always about finding what fits the way you work. Some people, Procreate just works the way they like to, and they don't have these challenges of sizing in vectors, and it works fine for them, which is great. But if you have other needs, it's great that there are other software out there that can do what you need to do. It's important that we have variety, and we definitely. We are very lucky that the iPad has lots of options available to us.

EG: It's the same iPad, it's the same pencil, and everyone can use the tool which fits to his own personal styles.

MR: Yeah, I still use the app Paper, by WeTransfer, which hasn't really changed too much, but I've become pretty fluent with it, so I can work really quickly. If I do illustrations, I have to move to another tool like Procreate or Concepts. But for really super quick ideas, for me, it's just really efficient.

I've learned that in my career when I'm faced with a heavy deadline, it's wise for me to choose a tool that I'm fluent in because I'm speedier in that tool than if I tried the perfect tool for it, but I don't have familiarity with it yet. That's a lesson I've learned

EG: As I learned in my profession, whatever tool you are using, you have to use it really professionally, and you have—it's not only starting with the tool and being very fluent or very efficient, you must know your tool very well.

MR: Yes. Yep. Well, that's great to hear. Really simple tool set both on the analog and digital side. Let's shift a little bit more, and let's talk about your tips. The three tips that you might share. I always frame this, imagine someone's listening, they are visual thinker, whatever that means to them. And they're excited about the space, just like we talked about our excitement about the community, but maybe they've hit a plateau or they just feel they need a little bit of inspiration. What would be three things that Edmund would tell them to kind of encourage them and break them out of maybe being stuck?

EG: Starting with sketch notes, that was always the question, how to find a personal motivation going on improving your skills. One of the motivation as I showed you are books. I love it to learn from books. But what is even better learning from other people? With my company where there's self-organized learning groups, we're growing up. I learned this self-organized learning groups are the best to improve yourself.

One of your podcasts Mike, there's a team about LernOS. They had a 12-week journey, different stuff. There's also a learning journey for sketch notes, and you have self-organized meetings every week and having a Zoom meeting or so, sharing my report or whatever.

It's little bit like there are some examples, some exercises you can do together, but you can do as a homework for the next meeting. That's the way I like to learn. It's better than sitting with a blank sheet of paper at home and reading the book and—

MR: Struggling. Yeah.

EG: Struggling.

MR: That, by the way was for those listening is season eight was an episode with Karl Damke and Raffaelina Rossetti.

EG: Rossetti. Raffaelina Rossetti is her name. Yeah.

MR: You can learn about that movement there in the podcast.

EG: There's a link to the internet also where the Sketchnoting Guide is, and so, and it's amazing stuff. Getting the right people for the sketchnoting Circle. That's my next advice. Typically, they are distributed around the world. That's not your neighbor, the sketch noter, or the other neighbor on the other side of the street. They're somewhere in this internet universe.

Some years ago, I found this Sketchnote Army Slack platform you established, Mike. And there's one folder with announcement of LernOS sketchnoting groups, and that's sub organized to find others. They're interested to have on Friday afternoon five o'clock or so, the next 12-week we want to join this sketch noting journey. And they're from different countries, different professions, different skills in drawing that's not only the beginners or the specialists. It's like these schools and former times they are the small and the older, the grownup children, and they help each other.

MR: The one-room schoolhouse, we would say in the United States. Back in the days.

EG: This one-room schoolhouse you have in the Slack rooms. You find all these people and it's this mindset sharing things, learning together, and so, you would never find them in real life.

MR: Yeah. That's two points. That's number two.

EG: Two points. The last one, I want to repeat, Zettelkasten is my second brain. Zettelkasten it's also your second brain. You have a lot of experience in note-taking, different tools, but looking at this concept to get a step higher in efficiency, in effective note taking, and making things easier than they are.

MR: Great. Well, those are three great tips. Thanks so much for sharing those. And definitely, encourage you to do all those things, both the LernOS and explore Zettelkasten. So Edmund, what's the best way for people to reach out if they have questions about Zettelkasten and sketchnoting or something else, what's the best place to go?

EG: Mike, you said you are sharing some links about me.

MR: Yes. We'll definitely share links.

EG: It's very easy because I look at my posts nearly every day in LinkedIn. In Instagram, you'll see some of the sketch notes, the newer ones. Most of them are sketch notes before they are published in the ebook. On Twitter, there's a chance for communication very fast. Is it one year ago, Mike we had this discussion about sketch note manifesto?

MR: Yes. That's been around. I think Mauro has been talking about this for years.

EG: Yes. That was an idea from him and I mixed it a little bit up with atrial development. Then we had a discussion about it. That's the style of communicating and Twitter. And yeah. I also have this in your link list a Linktree. Yeah. All the other stuff are from Masterton or from the forums about Zettelkasten. There's a Zettelkasten forum and Obsidian forum. Also, there are new ideas I discussed with others, and they also get the feedback. I'm learning with all these guys.

MR: I'll look on the Link tree. You have several links here, LinkedIn, Instagram, medium, Pinterest, Masterdom, and on Twitter, and eBook.

EG: On all platforms, there are links to the GitHub platform. There's the PDF file of the actual version of this e-book, "How to Take Useful Notes."

MR: Yeah, I see it here. We've got links for all these things, everyone. So we'll put 'em in the show notes so you can see and jump and look at all these things that Edmund has been talking about. Especially, if you really want to get into this Zettelkasten with Obsidian and using your sketch notes, making a way to organize 'em.

I'm inspired, I'm gonna do some looking at this because I think there's an opportunity for me to level up, like all the work I've done and make some sense of it. It might be interesting to see, looking back over it what connections there are. Maybe it's a big job though, Edmund. I don't know. That could be a lifetime just organizing all this junk I've made.

EG: I will tell you the story. Maybe I published the story about the new situation before Mike Rohde's podcast and afterwards. Or is it worth a sketch note to say, that was my life before and that was the life after?

MR: Yeah. Well, as a process engineer, you're gonna wanna know what's the input, which is doing the podcast. And the output is, are you suddenly getting more downloads of your book? And questions about doing Zettelkasting with sketch notes. That would be ideal because you're a pioneer in this space. I think Chris Wilson is another person in the space that's explored, we talked about in his interview, he was starting to play with Obsidian.

EG: I listened to this podcast from him. It was the first time I saw some sketch noter using the Zettelkasten.

MR: You two need to get together and do a workshop for everybody, so you can sort of walk them through. That could be interesting

EG: If you know a female sketch noter from Denmark, Ingrid LiLL.

MR: Oh yeah, of course. Yeah.

EG: He is also starting with the Zettelkasten.

MR: Oh, there you go. Now you have three people to your merry band, so you can maybe do some kind of a teaching.

EG: It's a very small community.

MR: That's okay. Sketchnoting community is small, but getting bigger every day. So you have to start somewhere, Edmund, you have to start somewhere.

EG: It's the 1% of the sketch noters using Zettelkasten.

MR: Yeah, exactly. That's okay. If it works for you, then you can do it

EG: All things I believe ever starting small.

MR: Yes. The best things start small. Well, Edmund—go ahead.

EG: No, no.

MR: I was just gonna say thank you so much for your participation. I see you on LinkedIn and Instagram and Twitter. You're always so kind and you have such kind words, and I just love that. You could have easily retired and just gone to Majorca and like, just enjoyed your life and not done any of this work, but yet you choose curiosity and sharing and giving, and I really appreciate that and I admire that. So, thank you for giving back to the community and making it a better place. That's so much what we need.

EG: Thank you for having me.

MR: You're so welcome.

EG: It was really fun. Also, the story in the beginning you told before the podcast, it was a wonderful evening.

MR: Yeah. I told him my German experiences that made me fall in love with Germans and Germany. Maybe I'll tell that story sometime. Well, everyone, this has been another episode of "The Sketchnote Army Podcast." So until the next episode, we will talk to you soon.

EG: Thank you. Have a nice evening. Bye-bye, Mikey.

MR: See ya.

In this episode, Mawusi Amoaku, a fashion designer turned educator shares how stumbling on sketchnoting helped her overcome learning challenges which she now shares with students that have special learning needs.

Sponsored by Concepts

This episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.

Concepts’ infinite canvas lets you sketchnote in a defined area while still enjoying infinite space around it — to write a quick note, scribble an idea, or keep pre-drawn visual elements handy for when you need them most.

The infinite canvas lets you stretch out and work without worrying if you’ll run out of space. When combined with powerful vector drawing that offers high-resolution output and complete brush and stroke control — you have a tool that’s perfect for sketchnoting.

Concepts is a powerful, flexible tool that’s ideal for sketchnoting.

SEARCH “Concepts” in your favorite app store to give it a try.

Running Order

• Intro
• Welcome
• Who is Mawusi?
• Origin Story
• Mawusi's current work
• Sponsor: Concepts
• Tips
• Tools
• Where to find Mawusi
• Outro

Links

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Mawusi on Instagram
• Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer.
• Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All by Tom Kelley and David Kelley
• The Sketchnote Handbook by Mike Rohde
• The International Sketchnote Camp 2021
• Sketchnote Army Podcast

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• A4 sheets of paper
• FriXion pen
• MUJI pen
• Paper Mate InkJoy highlighter
• STABILO BOSS gray highlighter
• Tombow marker
• Clairefontaine dot grid paper
• Clipboard
• Transparent clipboard
• LED lightbulb
• Rhodia Staplebound Notepad
• iPad Pro
• Apple pencil
• Concepts App
• Procreate

Tips

1. Continue feeding your mind.
2. Even if you go digital, keep drawing by hand.
3. Don't overthink it. Just do it.
4. Be open to trying something new.
5. Listen to other sketchnoters.
6. Share your work.
7. Experience with other layouts, find out what works for you.
8. Collaborate with your colleagues.
9. Ask for feedback.
10. Be intentional and tell someone your goal.
11. Don't give up. Be patient.

Credits

• Producer: Alec Pulianas
• Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer
• Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro

Subscribe to the Sketchnote Army Podcast

You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.

Support the Podcast

To support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!

Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike Rohde, and I am here with my friend, Mawusi Amoaku. How are you doing, Mawusi?

Mawusi Amoaku: I'm doing good, Mike.

MR: It's so good to have you.

MA: How are you?

MR: I'm doing great. It's always great for me to have someone interesting on the show to talk about their visual thinking journey and the work they do and the impact they're having. And I feel like you're someone who definitely is doing that. And I love to share those stories.

I think that's the core reason why the podcast exists is to just reveal really interesting people all around the world doing great things in the visual thinking space. So, with that, why don't you tell us, give us an introduction, who you are and what you do.

MA: Okay. My name is Mawusi Amoaku, and I'm originally from Ghana. Grew up in Northern Ireland, hence my accent. I work in education supporting learners with additional learning needs, and I love it.

MR: As I understand, in our chats that led up to having you on the show, you've pretty recently discovered Sketchnoting. I would love to hear your origin story around that. Where did that come from? And maybe look back to when you were a little girl, like, have you been drawing since you were a little girl? And how did those two worlds and your teaching all overlap into where you are today?

MA: I think I'll start by telling you a little bit about me growing up. I've always loved drawing. When I was younger, I wanted to be an artist. And I love hand lettering and I love making zines. In terms of drawing, well, I try to draw something every day.

I stumbled across sketchnotes in 2020 and it really transformed my learning experience. Although I work in education, I had to do a course as part of my job role to help me support my learners with learning needs. And I was finding the course particularly difficult because when I would read my textbook and make notes, when I came to writing the assignments, I would just forget everything. And I was so frustrated. Like I started to fall behind with my assignments, which I thought, this is ironic because what I do, I support learners to get their assignments done. Here I am, I can't even do my own.

I didn't wanna tell anyone that I was struggling, so I just kinda had an idea. I thought to myself, "If this was one of my students, what would I say?" Like, I would encourage them to keep going, but I would encourage them to find another way. So, one day I just thought, right, I'm just gonna Google it.

I was so behind with my work, I really didn't have time to be doing this, but I thought, I'm gonna have to try and find some answers. So yeah, I went on the internet and I researched and I came up with mnemonics, memory palace, mine maps, and finally, sketch notes. And that changed everything.

So, for me, the first sketch note I made was of a "TED Talk" because I bought your book and I wanted to find out like, straight away, does this thing work. Should I continue with it or not? 'Cause I need to know that I'm investing my time wisely.

And I sketch noted, I think it was called The Greatest Ted Talk Ever Told, I think that's the name of it. I was like, 20 minutes long. And I was like, I don't even know if I still have the sketchnote, but I remember the video. And I sketchnoted that and I thought, "Oh, wow."

And then when I read my textbook, there were certain topics that I was really struggling with. So, I decided, I'm going to sketch note this, but I set myself boundaries 'cause I used to write pages and pages of notes and never read it, even though I used different colored pens, et cetera. I thought, okay, I'm gonna limit myself to an A4 sheet of paper per topic.

I went to the glossary in the—when you talk about creating an icon library, I thought, okay, so for each topic, I'll look at the glossary and write down what those keywords are to create my icon library. And then I'll read a chapter and then I will sketch note it and that's it.

I did that for each of the chapters, particularly the ones I was struggling with. Then I used those notes to write my assignments. I have to say, before I started doing that, I just thought, why am I not remembering this information? Why I'm not understanding this?

But then when I sketchnoted it, I was so encouraged because I realized I do know it, I do understand it, and I can do it. So, it really helped me with my confidence. And I did the work.

I have to say I was really behind with my work, but I did it. I got it done, I got my assignments in on time. And I remember thinking, you know, I actually do love learning, but that experience was so negative for me that I thought, now I kind of understand how some of our students feel when they can't understand a piece of work because it does knock your confidence, it does make you feel stressed, it does make you feel isolated.

For me, I was too embarrassed to tell anyone because that was actually my job was to help other people. And I couldn't help myself. When I got to the end of the course, what I couldn't understand was I—the course was not finished, but I wanted to keep learning 'cause it was just so addictive. Like to do the sketch notes it was such a fun activity to do.

It was right at the summertime, so I kept learning it. I kept researching effective ways to learn and reading different books that inspired me. One of them was "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Josh Foer, I think is how you pronounce his name. He talks about using the memory palace as a way to remember information.

I was just fascinated. I was hooked. And then I thought, "Oh my goodness, I wouldn't mind doing another course." From not wanting to do the course that I did, I wanted to keep learning. Well, I started looking for opportunities. Any opportunity to sketchnote.

At that point, I hadn't shared my work with anyone. It was just for myself. Towards the end of 2021—no, end of 2020, 2021, my New Year's resolution, I kept it pretty open and creative, was to invest in myself. That would primarily be learning a new skill and also, trying things that I probably wouldn't normally try 'cause I would be afraid to do it.

One of them was actually public speaking. You know, do a workshop for my colleagues because I am a shy person. I'm an introvert, and the idea of speaking in front of any group of people scares me. So, that January, like that whole year actually, I started thinking, what if, what if? And starting to do different things, and showing my work.

In terms of the sketch notes, I didn't actually use it at work initially. I tried to fight the urge to sketchnote. I really wanted to do it, but I was kind of worried what people would think.

My background is art, actually, it's fashion design. Everyone knows that I love to draw, but I thought that if I drew at work, maybe people would think that I wasn't taking my job seriously. Or like, "Why is she doodling? Why are you doing that?"

One time in a class I was supporting a group of students and nearly all of the students in the class had a learning need. I used to find it really difficult to support the group 'cause the needs vary a lot. I remember observing one student in particular who really struggled to understand what he needed to do.

In the class, the students would rely on me to take notes. And I remember thinking, well, my handwriting's not great, and if they don't understand the notes, probably my handwriting. But I kind of thought I'd like the students to read the notes, use them, understand them, and become more independent.

I thought if I sketch note this—it was partly 'cause I was struggling to write down the traditional way, but I thought if I sketch note this, maybe they'll be so curious, they'll want to read it. I really wanted them to want to read it and use it.

I started to do it. And I shared that with the teacher because I was supporting the students in the class, I wasn't the teacher. I shared what I wanted to do with the teacher. I told them that this is a new thing that I'm learning. I would like to get better at it. Perhaps could I do it in this class? Because I feel that the more I do it, the better I get. And if I do every single day, I'm definitely gonna improve.

He was really supportive and I started to use it. At first, the students didn't really know what to make of it. They're like, "Mawusi, you are drawing? Oh, my goodness. Like, what is this? This is serious."

I thought, oh dear, I have to tell them this is really important. You're supposed to use this. So, I give them a little speech. I said, you know, "Yes, it took a lot of effort, but I'm doing this because I want you to do well. I really want you to enjoy your learning, but I want you to use the notes, understand it, use it, but not to rely on me to learn that you can do these things for yourself as well."

And so, I did it. Then the next day I was like, oh, I might have to reinforce that. I started to do my little speech, and they said, "Mawusi, we know you told us yesterday." I never mentioned it again. And so, I kept doing it.

It was during the pandemic, so we were in our bubbles. That meant a unique opportunity. I got to stay with my students in the various classes that they were in. And I continued to sketch note in each of those classes. They got used to it.
I didn't have to say anything.

What happened was the teacher would deliver the lesson and I would have a clipboard sketch note the lesson, scan it, and share. We use Microsoft Teams. I would share it on Teams and all the students would have access to those notes.

One of the unexpected dividends, I guess, of doing that was it meant that students who have learning needs could use it, but everybody could use it. Whether they have a learning need or not. And if someone misses a lesson, they have those notes to help them to catch up.

It was tiring, and a part of me wondered why I even started because I didn't actually have an end plan for when I would stop doing this. So, I would ask the teacher, "Would you like me to stop?" I kind of secretly hoping he would say, "It's okay, Mawusi. You can stop." And he is like, "No, keep going. It's all right. Keep going. And I said, "But they're not using it". He's like, "They're using it. Walk around the class."

The first student who we went to, I hadn't said anything and within minutes of me sharing it on Teams, he had printed the notes and he was looking at it. I should actually clarify that this was a media lesson and so they work on computers. He was referring to the notes and doing his work.

I hadn't had to say anything to any of the students. They knew the pattern, this is what happens in class. Then he said, "Okay, keep walking around." I noticed that they were all using it, but in their own way, whether it could be on the screen or on their phone or if they printed it out, but they were just doing their work.

And I was like, "Oh my goodness, it actually works." I was so happy I just wanted to do a happy dance, but obviously, I was working so I didn't. But yeah, so that's kind of how it started in the classroom.

I made some revision notes because I wanted to encourage my students to revise 'cause not a lot of them would revise for their exams. The exciting thing about the sketch notes was that I later found that they were being shared by other tutors. It gave an opportunity for me to talk about my work.

And actually, one of the key things was, although I made the sketch notes for the students, I didn't really know what I was doing. It was an experiment. And I asked them for feedback. And the feedback from the students was invaluable because that's how I improved it.

For example, one of the parameters that I set for myself, which was limit the information to one page, didn't necessarily work for the students because it was actually too much information on one page.

MR: Really?

MA: Yeah. So, with each sketch note I made, I would make changes because they were giving me constant feedback. And then tutors gave me valuable feedback. For example, because my handwriting's terrible, I used to write in capitals because that's my way of writing neatly.

One of the dyslexia specialist tutors said, "Well, actually that's really hard for someone to read if they have dyslexia, 'cause it's the shape of the letters that helps them to differentiate the words."

Well, had to kind of retrain my brain to write in lowercase as well. It was just really useful to share the sketch notes as a way to improve, but also yeah, to share my skills.

But Mike, I have to say you did influence me a lot in that because I attended the sketchnote workshop, or no, the sketchnote camp that was held online in 2021. And your keynote speech was about care and service and community.

And how we as sketchnoters 'cause we are a global community as Sketchnoters can do good to our organizations that we work for our communities. We are in a very specific situation in the pandemic and it's affecting all of us in different ways. How can we use those skills to benefit others?

That was what encouraged me actually because up to that point, I was doing it for myself, but then I thought, well actually there is a community of people who are doing this and I'm going do it in my workplace and I'm gonna share it.

I'm not online, but I'm gonna share it in the space where I work. And I hope that it'll benefit other people. But really the driving force for me to share sketchnotes is that I was really desperate when I find it. And I was thinking somebody else might be in a similar situation and I hope it helps them.

MR: It's really funny because that's my origin story. I was desperate as well. The way I was taking notes was just so frustrating and I'd forced myself like you to l to limit myself to a small notebook and switched from pencil to pen.

The experiment that I first did really set me on the path to say, "Hey, this is working for me. I really enjoy this. I can't wait for the next workshop or event that I can go try this and experiment with. "

So very much similar in that way. And hoping, you know, if this is working for me, there has to be somebody else who this will help. And then also, you know, sharing it with other people and getting feedback was a similar experience.

It sounds like yours was even more, I guess, accelerated because you didn't have a lot of time, you just had to keep working and then taking feedback live and then incorporating it as you worked, which is probably good for you.

You almost got into a mode, it seemed to me like where you were just doing the work, you're getting feedback, you're making modifications, and next thing you know, you're writing upper and lower case, you're modifying the structure and you're serving.

It seems to me like you're someone who, if you're serving someone else, you're willing to kind of jump through hoops and go over fire and do these things because you know it's gonna help your students.

In some ways, doing it for yourself, you sort of run into a point where like, "Uh, I don't feel like doing it anymore. Who's there to hold you accountable?" But you found an accountability group, which were your students who actually gave you the feedback and held you accountable and pushed you further to really accelerate your learning. And also, it ultimately benefited them, right? Because your sketchnotes started to align for what their needs were. Is that a fair way to think of that?

MA: I would think so. I think the desperation I felt at the beginning was something for a long time that I actually tried to forget. And I remember telling my boss this, and she said something to me, which was quite profound. She said you know, "It is giving you more empathy for your students." And that is exactly it.

I've always loved learning, but I've never struggled to the extent that I struggle that time. But I'm really glad for that experience, well, because I share that with the students. I tell them I struggle.

But when you struggle, you always have a choice. You know, you can find another way. You don't need to give up. It's kind of like if you see it as an opportunity to do it a different way, basically that is what I learned. And that is one of the reasons why I am so passionate about this because I'm so lucky I stumbled across it.

It was actually when I read a book about the memory palace, it was a free book on Apple Books. And then I found another free book about sketch notes. It was basically a compilation created by educators and they were talking about the benefits of sketch notes and they shared examples of theirs.

And that's where I heard about your mini-workshop, which was on YouTube. So, I watched the video and then I was like, that is actually why I bought the book. 'Cause I was like, "I need to do this. This is it."

I have to say thank you to those people for putting the art there because I would never have found it. One of the other reasons why I was confident that it would work with my students was your episode where you interviewed Laura Kazan, I think you pronounce her name.

MR: Yes, yes, yes.

MA: That episode actually—I have listened to every episode of your podcast. I'll just tell you that, and the reason being, I wanted to learn as much as possible from your interviews with different people of and how they've used it. But her interview really stood out for me because I thought, "Those are my students. Those are my students, and I think they will benefit from this."

One of the things she said at the end of her interview was, in her three tips, she said, "Is your school special education department willing to support sketchnoting."
I thought as a department that I worked for in my college. So that is what give me the confidence to share it with my team because, you know, it made such a difference to her son, and I thought, well, it might just help our students as well.

So, your podcast helped me a lot because there was something that I was doing by myself, but in listening to your interviews with other podcasters or other sketchnoters, I kind of felt like I wasn't by myself in doing this. I was so encouraged. So, thank you.

MR: Oh, that's really great to hear. You know often doing podcasts can be a lonely business because you do these interviews and of course, they're enjoyable in the moment and you publish and there's often not a ton of feedback that I receive back from the episodes, but I keep doing them because I enjoy it.

I think that's the driving force. And I know that there are people, and I know that because I hear like you and others who will say, yeah, I've listened to all the episodes. I can't wait for another one to come out. So, I know there are fans out there, which is, you know, really exciting and helpful, and especially when I hear it in the context of your—I would call your experience a journey, right.

You sort of definitely went on this journey where you kept on discovering something else and that led you to something else and that led you to something else. And you continued to follow the thread all the way to kind of where you're at now, which is really cool because I think so many, you know, with the internet especially stumbling onto something can lead to something else if you allow it to if you're curious and you follow that path.

I think that's a good reminder for us that sometimes it's just being open to something and taking it one step further might lead to something that you could never have expected. Your story, your origin story here sounds exactly like that. That string, you just kept pulling the string and now here you are.

MA: Yeah. Actually, one of the reasons why I'm excited is for quite a few years, I have been looking for a passion. You know, my background is fashion design, I like to sew, and I love education, but I was looking for something that I would be really passionate about. And this is definitely it. So yeah, I love it.

MR: Wow. Well, I love your origin story. Thank you for sharing all the detail and giving us insights and where those pivot points were. I would love to hear is there a project of any kind may be that you're beginning that you're excited about that you'd love to share with us.

MA: I guess I would say is I've had more opportunities to share sketch notes with my colleagues and I've been in training staff on how to sketchnote. For me, someone who I said is kind of an introvert. I find it really hard to talk to people. This is like a watershed moment.

I have to say the sharing of sketch notes has just helped me develop more confidence in myself. So yeah, that's something. And this year, in particular, the college that I work for the focus is on inclusion.

So, as I started to share my sketch notes, last year we had a guest speaker and he's an inclusion expert. And I decided long before the event, I am definitely gonna sketch note this. Only I didn't wanna tell anyone because I didn't wanna put pressure in myself.

So, I sat at the back and I made some sketchnotes, worked on it over the summer, and then my goal was I'm going to share it with my colleagues because I wanna tell more people, but I wanted to sketchnote something that we had all attended so that it would be more meaningful.

And the exciting thing is this has led to more opportunities to sketchnote for different departments. I've done collaborations with colleagues who are specialists in different fields, and we've combined our skills to train other staff.

So, yeah, it's such a fun thing to do, but it's a really useful way to communicate things that might be quite difficult to communicate in words basically. It's very engaging and I'm excited that I did it and that it's being shared.

MR: That's really great. I love your approach of doing something that would be meaningful to the entire group so they could benefit from it. That's a really great way of layering two things you're passionate about sketchnoting and also about this opportunity to learn. And then making that as a service to your colleagues, right?

Because I'm sure that they're seeing how this is having an impact on students and how it's helping them to learn and retain. So, they definitely see the benefit, and now that's now opened up even the opportunity to teach them these concepts so they could start to think like, "Well, how could I use it in my curriculum for my students in an interesting way." Which is you're just becoming this real true advocate inside your college. Which is pretty cool.

MA: I think also part of it was in terms of—I would say when someone's sketchnoting, I know this is actually a tip, but I'll just say it in advance, is feeding to your mind because when I was doing this quietly, I was reading a lot of books about innovation and sketch notes and various things.

There was a book called—oh, have I written it on somewhere? I have it here. The book is called "Creative Confidence: Unleash the Creative Potential Within All of Us" by Tom Kelly and David Kelly. That book was pivotal for me as well, because they have an organization called, IDEO. I don't know if you've heard of it before.

MR: Yes.

MA: IDEO is responsible for promoting innovation, I guess is how to put it, by taking a multidisciplinary approach. That is what has encouraged me to collaborate with my colleagues because when we think about organizations and how we can benefit our organizations when we work together and share our different skills, we bring different perspectives as well, that is powerful.

So that is one of the reasons why I'm sharing it with my colleagues because although sketchnoting is my skill, I'm learning so much from them and I hope they're learning from me as well.

MR: I'm guessing, just judging by the little bit that I feel here, they're probably learning a lot from you. Which is great. I think that's so admirable for you to not keep it to yourself, but spread it further and offer it to your colleagues, which is great to hear. Well, let's shift…

MA: I was gonna attribute that to you too because you have created a community of sharing. That is, for me, one of the things that drew me to sketch notes because it's such a friendly environment and people are very encouraging of one another.

MR: Definitely, something that I saw in other communities that I was involved with. In the web design community, there was a very welcoming and open environment there, and I just wanted to model that.

It seems to me like, because we modeled that early, that it drew other like-minded people, and we seemed to have built a community that's sort of sharing and open and helping each other all the way down. So, when new people come, the culture is just, hey, this is a space where we share and we teach each other and we help each other.

I always say, there's so much opportunity to share this idea. There's no reason why we should be thinking that we're fighting over table scraps when there's so much opportunity for everyone to have a place at the table and do work and have an impact. There's just so much work to do.

I'm glad that you've sensed that. It's definitely something intentional and I hope that it just continues throughout the community. So that's really great to hear. Thank you.

MA: Thank You.

MR: Yeah. Well, we all do it together, so that's great to hear. At this point, I would love to shift to something more practical, I guess. Not that the other stuff isn't practical, but the people on the podcast love hearing about tools and how people use their tools.

So, let's shift into the tool discussion and let's shift in specifically to analog tools and then follow up if you use digital tools with what digital tools you use.

MA: Okay. I would say use what you have, start with what you have. For example, well, I used to use A-4 sheets of paper because I sometimes destroy my work if it's not very good. Yeah, I have a habit of that. But I started with A4 sheets of paper and a pen although it was a refillable pen—you know the FriXion refillable black pen?

MR: Mm-hmm.

MA: Which it's kind of the best of both worlds. I always think of a pen as the tool that makes me fearless and the pencil that makes me cautious. But the FriXion pen is a pen, but I can rub it out. I'm kind of contradicting myself anyway.

I started it with that one because if I'm in the class and I'm sketchnoting, sometimes I make spelling errors and that helps me to fix it really quickly. But lately, actually, I haven't used that as much, so maybe my confidence has grown. I like to use Muji. Have you heard of Muji pens?

MR: Yes. Of course. It's a famous Japanese store, which I've been to the one in New York City, but I know it's worldwide as well.

MA: I love Muji. The Knot 0.38 and the Knot 0.5, my absolute favorites. One of my colleagues introduced me to the Paper Mate InkJoy Gel Pen.

MR: Oh, yes.

MA: You've heard that one.

MR: Those are good as well. Yeah.

MA: That one's amazing. And actually, just recently stumbled across—I didn't realize that you could get gray highlighter pens, so I used the Stabilo Boss highlighter in Gray. Well, I was using the Tombow markers, but they're quite expensive. So, I like to buy a box of the Stabilo Boss. They're really good.

But paper-wise, I highly recommend dot grid paper because it makes my work look neat. Some people say, "Oh, Mawusi, how do you do such straight lines? Or, you know, that's so neat." I'm like, "If you zoom in, you will see the dots." It really helps a lot.

In the classroom, I use a clipboard, which is quite handy. But also, if I'm doing a finished sketch note by hand, I use a transparent clipboard. That's a little tip. If you use a transparent clipboard and then you use one of the, you know the flat LED light boxes, you can trace your work. So, it's just really handy.

MR: Interesting. So, you have a light source behind this clear clipboard, and then you can lay the rough sketch underneath and then do your finished on top of it. Am I understanding that right?

MA: Yeah. And those things are very cheap to buy, but perfect for what I need. The dot grid paper that I absolutely love is Clairefontine paper. It just feels really, really nice.

MR: It works well with those pens that you've mentioned. A question, for those who are dot grid connoisseurs, I know that there's different levels of dot grid. Like I know some have very light gray dots and some are darker.

Where is the Clairefontaine fall on that spectrum? Is it relatively light dots so that it's, you know, kind of goes invisible at some point? Or are they a little bit darker?

MA: I think it's kind of light because people don't really notice it. I kind of feel like I'm cheating 'cause I'm thinking, they think I'm really neat, but I'm not.

MR: Well, I suppose if you're using the Stabilo Boss gray marker, I guess you could adjust your exposure, say in Photoshop or whatever your photo tool is, and increase the contrast. Those dots would probably drop away and you wouldn't even see them, right? So, that's probably another option as well.

MA: Oh, actually another tip. I find when I was sketchnoting in the classroom, I was taking too long with preparing the page in advance. What I did was I had a template, the original was dot grid paper. And because I'm in the classroom, I just photocopied that page. And so, the dot grid was even less noticeable so when I scanned it, nobody knew. So, yeah.

MR: Interesting.

MA: That's another little tip.

MR: Cool. That's pretty cool. We're getting free tips here. This is pretty great. Now, does the Clairefontine paper come in like a block, and then you tear off sheets as needed? Or is it bound in some way? How is that paper? How do you work with the paper?

MA: It's in a block and then you tear it off. They say it comes in A4 and A5. I think that's the European size. But when you tear it off, it's slightly smaller.

MR: Oh, I see. Because there's perforations on the edge probably.

MA: Yeah. But I think they provide the paper for Rodeo Notebooks. Is it Rodeo?

MR: Yes. Yes, exactly.

MA: Yeah, I think they have that same paper, but basically, I like loose sheets because I can then arrange it in whichever way I want. And it's much easier to scan your work if it's not in a notebook.

MR: Good point. If I'm not mistaken, I think Clairefontine and Rhoda are both French companies, so it would make sense that they would collaborate in some way. Maybe they're owned by the same parent company for all I know. I don't know. But I think Rhoda Notebooks work in a similar way where there's a—and maybe they calculate this, right.

So actually, the part you tear off is maybe A4 and they add a little bit. So, when the perforation tears away and what's left in the notebook is a little bit taller than A4. You know what I mean? Like, when you tear out the sheet, it's exactly A4. I don't know if that's true, but I've used Rodeo paper—

MA: No, it's smaller.

MR: Is it? Okay. So, it is—

MA: It's annoying that it's smaller, but I still like the paper. It's still like the paper, but it's smaller.

MR: Got it. Okay. Good to know. Good to know for those who find that important, little tip again there. What about digital? Do you have digital tools that you use? Are you using an iPad or some other tool like that?

MA: I've started using the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil. The first sketch note I did with that was one of the guest speaker because I just wanted to take the sketch notes to a more, in my view, professional level.

Because when I was having to trace it for a finished sketch note, I wanted to kind of take away some of those steps and do more of a rough sketch and then do the illustration. I use Concepts. Oh, my goodness, Concepts is so good.

MR: It's a great tool. Yeah.

MA: And Procreate, obviously. Yeah. Everyone uses it. I have to admit, I don't know how to use both of them really, really well, but I use them enough to get the finish that I would like. That's something to explore later. I have to admit, I prefer working on paper. I just love the feel of paper. That's my go-to.

MR: Yeah. I think many sketchnoters will use a paper-like, or some of other similar matte screen protector, which sort of approximates the feel of paper. I mean, it's not exactly. I think paper-like, probably achieves it the best with the best clarity, but there are other screen protectors that also do the same. Which helps, but still, it's not quite ink on paper, it's closer.

MA: It's good. But I have to say by going on the iPad, it makes me more of a perfectionist and I don't like that because at least when I sketchnote in the classroom, it feels hot off the press and I haven't had a chance to make it beautiful because my objective is to make meaningful notes that are useful. So, I think when I do my digital sketchnotes, I'm thinking too much about aesthetics. I'm trying to break away from doing that 'cause it's very tempting.

MR: Yeah. It's almost as though paper and pen puts emphasis on the process. Because you have less control. Whereas when you go to an iPad or something, you end up inadvertently being maybe even more focused, a little bit more focused on the output. Because you have the ability to undo or to redo things or to change things, or to move things.

Heedlessly, if you allowed yourself to, and there's something about the paper that, you know, maybe the friction of the paper in the sense of if you do it hot off the press, right. And even if you redid it, let's say you wanted to do it a little nicer, like if there's some friction there, right?

You've gotta redraw all this stuff on another sheet on your clear clipboard with the light coming from behind and it's a little bit of friction. You wouldn't wanna do it a third time, right? So, you would probably stop at that point. Where with the iPad, it's very easy to just keep noodling and noodling and noodling and never finish. So, I could see the definite different feel for them.

And, you know, I always think of the two, sort of provide different purposes. So, I often use the iPad for illustrations where, you know, it's gonna be printed or there is some final output that's important. But I found this recently on a project, just to point out this.

I was doing the iPad with—I use paper and I was doing sketches and I had sort of built a little template for myself for this illustration project. And I found myself getting really rigid and I was resisting drawing and I was taking longer on each piece.

And I got to the point where I said, wait a minute, I need to just change this up. So, I got the manuscript for the book project that I'm working on, and I just got my little pen and all I could fit were in the margins, little thumbnails along the edge of where the text was. So, it was very limited space.

I just started doing these little thumbnails and started drawing concept. And it was amazing how much it freed me up to just think, "Oh, a little thumbnail, big deal. You know, that one didn't work. Draw another one. Oh, that didn't work. Draw another one. Boy like that. What if I do another one?"

Next thing you know, every one of these ideas I was having to illustrate for you know, I was doing three or four different concepts or little variations, right? Suddenly the floodgates opened, and I was just like moving through the manuscript like crazy. And all it was, was this shift from, you know, sort of the rigidity or the perfectionism or something on the iPad back to paper and a pen with limited space.

Again, coming back to limitations and embracing them just keeps proving itself as a really effective tool for, at least for me, freeing my mind to kind of focus on the content and really get into the process and stop worrying so much about the output. So, I definitely can resonate with what you're saying here.

MA: I agree. I also would say that I find that as I've—I hope I go back to how I was before. When I started Sketchnoting and I didn't have anything to go by, any previous sketch notes, basically all I thought was, I'm just gonna do it. I'm just gonna do it.

Now that I've been doing it, I'm starting to be more cautious. 'Cause I'm like, what's happening? Because I'm almost scared to do it because I feel that people expect it to be good. What if it's not good? So, I just need to just do it.

MR: I think it would be interesting for you to actually ask someone to do some, you know, user-testing and ask them what do you expect out of it. And you probably would find that they would think like, whatever you're doing is amazing.

They wouldn't care either way. They just love that you are thinking this way if you get to the core of it. I mean, the beauty of it is we often sort of find ourselves, like the story I told you about the illustration, I sort of boxed myself into this situation.

It finally dawned on me like, “Wait a minute, I'm in charge of this project. Why am I feeling as though I have to follow some rigid template that I made? Like, I can change anytime I want to. I’m just going to grab the manuscript and a pen and forget the iPad. I'm not touching the iPad.” We have the opportunity to have you know, the ability to make those changes and to try and experiment and sort of work our way back.

So that's really good news that if you ever find yourself bound and/or you've painted yourself in a corner, well, you know, your shoes might get some paint on them, but you can walk out of the corner and just start over again.

That's always good news is you have the opportunity to shake it up and try some new things or go back to the thing that worked for you and start again and see, what did I learn from the other one and how can I apply this now knowing it, which is sounds like a little bit of where you're at as well.

MA: Yeah. I wanna say one of my daily practices for sketch notes is that I sketch note sermons online. There's a church that does a daily devotional which is like 15 minutes long. I don't do it first thing in the morning, 'cause I'm not a morning person. I do it later on in the evening.

I find that those sketch notes are more real because nobody sees them except me. Actually, I've moved from single sheets of paper to a notebook for that. So, I have a whole notebook full of them. What I like about them is they're just themselves. I have not tried to make anything beautiful. I just quickly got that information done. So yeah, even if you go digital, keep drawing by hand.

MR: Maybe that's your first tip since we're now sort of heading into the tips department.

MA: Oh yeah.

MR: And I guess I should frame it. I always frame this. Probably regular listeners like you will have heard this a million times, but, you know, give us three tips that you would say to someone who feels stuck. Someone who feels they're on a plateau. Just these little inspirations to kind of break out of maybe a rut. And I think if you wanna go further in this, what you've talked about, you know, go back to drawing by hand. This could be your first tip, I think.

MA: Okay. I have many tips, and it's hard to choose one to three, so might give a few more. Is that all right?

MR: That's fine. Yeah, please.

MA: Okay. First, one is don't overthink it. Just do it. Just do it. I tried to talk myself out of it when I was doing it at work, but I have to say when I did it, what a sigh of relief. I really enjoyed myself. Even though I was getting paid for it. I was like, "Wow, this is fun." So just do it. That's the first tip.

If you can't do something, don't worry. Find another way. Be open to trying something different. And if you're struggling with your sketch note, listen to the podcast. Listen to the different interviews with different sketchnoters, find out how they're using it, and especially make note of their tips. What are they doing that? And just try it.

Next one is share your work. I am not online at present, but I will be. So, share it at work. Share it with friends or even just sketch note in a diary or something. But yeah, share it with other people. Experiment especially with the layout of the sketch note. Find what works for you. Actually, this is way more than three. I'm gonna give you a few more.

MR: Okay. Go for it.

MA: Collaborate with your colleagues. That is golden. Collaborate with your colleagues 'cause then you get to make really meaningful connections with colleagues. I know working with people that I wouldn't have an opportunity to work with or our path and way not have crossed, but sketch notes has kind of opened the door for that. So, collaborate.

Ask for feedback. Another golden one. Because that is how you're going to improve. If I had sketchnoted and sketchnoted and sketchnoted and nobody saw it, how could I improve? I might have improved, but maybe a lot slower. So definitely ask for feedback.

Tell someone your goal. If this is something that you wanna start doing, share that with someone. Because what really helped me, what was so pivotal, was that teacher. He encouraged me because, you know, my very first sketch note, I have it in the classroom that I did it, it's not wonderful.

I thought he was gonna laugh, but he just encouraged me. And that kind of helped me to be accountable because I've told people, this is something that I wanna do. So be intentional and tell people about it. If it's a New Year's resolution say, you're more likely to keep it if you've told people you're gonna do it.

I'll give you a bonus tip. Don't give up. Be patient. Be patient because when you sketch note, say for example at work, people may not understand what you're doing at first, they might think it's a bit strange, they might wonder why you're doing it, they might actually tell you to stop doing it. Nobody told me to stop doing it. But just say somebody might, don't let that determine whether you do it or not. Keep going. Do not get discouraged. Just do it.

MR: Well, those are fantastic tips. I'm glad that you added some additional ones because it seems to me like this is a great series of tips that you've shared with us and directly from your own experience.

I can tie them all back to the story you told of how you began sketchnoting at work and, you know, with your students in mind. And next thing you know, you're collaborating with colleagues and sharing information with them and having an influence, right?

This one little experiment led to influencing your whole college, it seems like, and probably leading in that direction, which is pretty cool. So, thank you so much for the tips and offering them to us.

MA: Thank you.

MR: This is the part where we typically ask where we can find you. And as we chatted just before we began recording, you're in the middle of developing probably a website and working out social media stuff. So, if you don't have anything yet, that's okay. We will put that in the show notes if it's available when we come to this.

Maybe in lieu of doing that since we'll just do that in the show notes. If you're listening, just peek in the show notes, and if Mawusi's got some information, we'll put it in there for you so you can find her.

I just wanted to let you know that I'm so impressed with your story and how you've just moved yourself forward with a servant attitude serving your students and how this led you to where you're going and you continue to serve. I think you just a really great example of our community.

You really represent our community, and I'm really proud to have you as a representative where you are and so encouraged by your story. Thank you so much for taking time and spending time to share it with us. And I'm so excited to hear how this will influence the next person who hears it and all the influences you're gonna have in the place where you are. So, thank you so much, Mawusi.

MA: Can I say a big thank you to you?

MR: Sure.

MA: You have encouraged me so much. You didn't know that I was listening to all of your episodes. You didn't know that I attended your workshop online. When I went to the sketchnote camp that was online, you could only see my illustration. I wasn't visible. I did all those things quietly and, you and your community has encouraged me so much, even when I was doing this by myself. So, thank you so much.

MR: Well, thank you.

MA: I'm forever grateful.

MR: Well, it's an honor. It's an honor to serve, so thank you. Sounds like we're in a good place and we continue to have our influence. Sometimes it doesn't seem like you are, but you are having an influence. So, keep going. Just as Mawusi said in her tips, keep going.

Well, this has been so much fun. It's been so enjoyable to talk with you and hear your stories, and I'm just excited to see where this all goes for you and how you're gonna fit into our community. For everyone who's listening to the podcast, this wraps another episode of "Sketchnote Army Podcast”. Until the next episode, this is Mike and Mawusi signing off for today. Talk to you soon.