I shared visual notes I took during a recent conference on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. They got more engagement than any work-related post I’ve shared in years, as well as many questions, so in this post are answers to FAQ’s about what visual notes are, why and how I got started, and what I use to make them.

Visual notes are a way of recording information non-linguistically. Public speakers are remembered for their words, but I’ve always known that I could be a better visual communicator. And visual notes were one way for me to rely more on visuals and less on words. I fall into the camp of “I can’t draw,” so learning this new skill was extra daunting!

I was first inspired to improve my visual communication skills by Dan Roam’s The Back Of The Napkin, and then the first part of Gamestorming. I’ve decided to jump into visual note taking with both feet, adding a few new books on the topic to my library:

A Simple Guide To Sketchnoting by Alessio Bresciani
(IMO this is an excellent starting point for those of us who are “not good at drawing”)
The Art Of Visual Notetaking by Emily Mills
(Emily generously shares a free and helpful sketchnoting demo on Youtube)
Show And Tell by Dan Roam

For a few weeks I immersed myself in the exercises from these books and practiced visual note-taking during a few podcasts and TED Talks. While I love writing with physical paper and pens, I prefer my three-year-old iPad Pro and Apple Pencil combo for visual notes. I’ve tried the Procreate and Notability apps for note taking, but Paper by wetransfer is far and away my favorite at the moment.

The “visual notes” I took at several sessions of the annual winter conference for my largest client were decent, but IMO still too wordy, and nowhere near as charming, whimsical, or VISUAL as the samples in the books above. I think I’m still focused more on information architecture than the visual communication, but that just means there’s lots of room for me to grow.

Here is a gallery of my conference notes, in chronological order. I learned a lot, and I feel like I can see the improvement in my notes from the first session to the last. I’ve taken a little break but will keep practicing with podcasts and TED Talks.

Do you take visual notes? What tips do you have for us newbies?