Rohdesign Weblog: Sketchnotes

Here you'll find all posts file under the Sketchnotes category.

January 9, 2010

37signals' REWORK Book Illustrations

This week, Jason, David and the team at 37signals have launched a site for REWORK, their new business book being released on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010.

I'm proud to say that I'm the illustrator for REWORK!

How'd That Happen?

I've been connected with Jason since 2007, after sketchnoting SEED 1, SEED 3 and Jason's solo talk at Milwaukee's Discovery World in September 2008.

Jason contacted me in September 2009 about illustrating the essays that make up REWORK, in my signature black & white sketchnote style.

Of course, I said yes. :-)

When the project was complete, there were 90 sketchnote illustrations created, along with custom sketchnote typography for each of the chapter breaks.

Creating that many illustrations for conceptual essays, all geared to work together was quite a challenge. It was also a ton of fun.

Thanks for choosing me Jason and David — I truly appreciate it.

Illustration Samples

I can't wait for you to see the full set of 90 illustrations, but that has to wait until March 9th. In the meantime, here are 6 sample illustrations from REWORK:

PLANNING IS GUESSING

LESS MASS

POLICY

BEST EVERYWHERE

ASAP IS POISON

THROW LESS

Check out the REWORK site or pre-order REWORK today!

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November 30, 2009

NaNoDrawMo '09 Sketchnotes: Completed!

I've successfully completed the challenge of NaNoDrawMo (National November Drawing Month) as dreamed up by Steven Frank.

According to Steven:

Loosely defined goals are: 50 individual works/drawings produced between Nov 1 and Nov 30. Extra points if they work together to tell a story or otherwise share an overall theme (people you know, people you saw on the bus, etc).

Participants were to draw 50 images in November, post the images to Flickr, join and submit them to the NaNoDrawMo Flickr group. You can also keep track with a NaNoDrawMo Twitter search.

I was a bit crazy for doing a project where I had to create 1.67 sketchnotes in my Moleskine sketchbook each day, but hey, life is short and I was able to just pull it off.

Here are all 51 sketchnotes:

The 51st sketchnote is by my 7 year old son Nathan, who joined the fun. :-)

See my NaNoDrawMo Sketchnotes Set on Flickr.

Hope you've enjoyed them as much as I have.

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October 22, 2009

Visual Note-Taking 101 Panel Selected for SXSW 2010!

Great news! The Visual Note-Taking 101 panel I'm involved with, has been chosen in the first wave of approved SXSW 2010 programming!

My friends Austin Kleon, Sunni Brown, Dave Gray and I plan to present the panel together. We had a blast doing the Visual Note-Taking 101 Webinar back in May, so doing it live ought to be even more fun!

We don't have any details just yet, other than we'll be presenting at SXSW Interactive 2010 March 12-16, 2009.

Panel Description:

Ever since Leonardo put pen to paper, visual note-taking has been a route to improve the quality of your thinking, make information more memorable, and make your ideas easier to share with others.

Learn practical techniques and “tricks of the trade” from modern visual note-taking masters: how to write, sketch, and diagram ideas live, in real time, as you hear them.

Thanks to all who voted for the panel and to Austin Kleon, who submitted it!

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September 21, 2009

Launched: Sketchnotes of SXSW® Interactive '09 iPhone app!

app-sketchnotes-of-sxsw-interactive-2009-book_n_phone.jpg Hooray and hallelujah!

The iPhone app I demoed in June and have been working with the folks at SXSW and SixVoices on, has launched! Get it for FREE in the iTunes app store or directly via your iPhone or iPod Touch:

Download Sketchnotes of SXSW® Interactive '09

The SXSW and SixVoices teams worked with me the last few months to get the details right and to work through the entire process of submitting this app to the iTunes app store for approval.

I'm pleased with how the Sketchnotes Tapstack app turned out. It feels snappy on my iPhone 3GS.

Tapstack Demo Video

Here is a brief demo video of the pre-release app (I'll update this shortly):

Sketchnotes of SXSW® Interactive '09 Tapstack App Demo from Mike Rohde on Vimeo.

The final release adds a new 'double-tap' feature that jumps back one card at a time, so you don't need to turn the iPhone or iTouch sideways to access the nav menu.

Thanks SXSW and SixVoices!

Thanks to the staff at SXSW (Shawn, Scott, David, Pete & Melissa) and the SixVoices crew (Mark, Samuel & Jonah) for your help and guidance. You were all so great to work with. Thanks for helping make this app happen.

I'm already excited about an opportunity to sketchnote SXSW Interactive 2010 next March and creating a follow-up Tapstack app of those sketchnotes.

Get your free copy of the app today for your iPhone or iPod Touch, add reviews to the app in the iTunes store and leave comments here. I'd love to hear your feedback.

Download Sketchnotes of SXSW® Interactive '09

August 20, 2009

Drops Like Stars '09 Sketchnotes

On a hot, humid, Wednesday night in Chicago, I had the honor of live sketchnoting Rob Bell as he kicked off his Drops Like Stars tour at Congress Theater. Tonight I've scanned and posted all 12 pages of my sketchnotes on Flickr:

In May, I was invited by Rob to come sketchnote the Chicago Drops Like Stars kickoff event and gladly accepted the opportunity (and challenge) of capturing Rob live.

My wife, two friends from my church and I took a road trip to Chicago on Wednesday night and had a great time experiencing Rob in the old Congress Theater. Sketchnoting the event was challenging: lighting was dim and it was hot, but as I got into the flow, the light, the heat and humidity faded into the background.

One happy side-effect of the dim lighting and humid conditions in the Congress is a looseness to the sketchnote quality. Normally I work in well-lighted, comfortable conditions, which produce much tighter sketchnotes.

Here are all 12 pages of sketchnotes (captured in real time at the event):

Who is Rob Bell?

Rob Bell, for those who may not know of him, is the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He's also been the featured presenter in the Nooma series of short videos and is currently on a world tour presenting Drops Like Stars, talking about the connections between suffering and creativity.

Rob is one of my favorite speakers and a great storyteller. I find His unique way of sharing messages from the Bible with relevance to my life today and in context with the ancient cultures and tradition when the scriptures were written, fascinating.

Rob, thanks so much for inviting me to sketchnote your talk in Chicago, I had a great time. I hope you and others thoroughly enjoy the sketchnotes!

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August 17, 2009

Vote for Our SXSW Panel: Visual Note-Taking 101

I have a favor to ask of you, dear reader.

If you're thinking of attending SXSW Interactive 2010, please vote for the panel that Austin Kleon, Sunni Brown, Dave Gray and myself are proposing to present called Visual Note-Taking 101

Panel Description:

Ever since Leonardo put pen to paper, visual note-taking has been a route to improve the quality of your thinking, make information more memorable, and make your ideas easier to share with others.

Learn practical techniques and “tricks of the trade” from modern visual note-taking masters: how to write, sketch, and diagram ideas live, in real time, as you hear them.

Questions we will be discussing on the panel:

What is visual thinking and note-taking?
Why are visual notes important?
I can't draw -- how can I take visual notes?
What are some good drawing tips for beginners?
What's the proper way to draw a stick figure?
How can I become a better listener?
How do I synthesize ideas in real-time?
How can I use visual notes in the work place?
How can I practice my visual note-taking?
How can I share my notes with the world?

What is a 'Panel Picker' Anyway?

For context, SXSW Interactive has a unique way of choosing the panels that are featured at each year's event called the Panel Picker. Attendees and others can submit ideas for panels and the ones SXSW find most interesting are posted for voting on my attendees of SXSW Interactive.

Vote today: Visual Note-Taking 101

Thank you!

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August 14, 2009

Associations Now: Visual Thinking Feature Article PDF

The August issue of Associations Now Magazine is out and I've had many requests for copies of the magazine after writing up my illustration process a week ago.

Lisa Junker, the Editor-in-Chief of Associations Now Magazine has been taking requests for printed copies of the magazine.

In fact, the requests were so popular they've run out of spare copies to give away!

As a solution, Lisa and her team have created a PDF of the entire Visual Thinking feature article, with my cover and feature spread illustration work included.

If you enjoy the article, please leave a comment here to let the Associations Now team how much you appreciate their hard work.

Download The Associations Now Visual Thinking Feature (2.5MB PDF)

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August 5, 2009

Associations Now Magazine: Sketchnote Illustrations

I was honored and excited to be interviewed by Mark Athitakis for his Associations Now Magazine article, Are You A Visual Thinker?

Imagine my surprise and excitement at being hired to illustrate the Associations Now Magazine cover and feature spread for the very same article in my signature sketchnote style.

What a great opportunity to share visual thinking in a fun way, to about 20,000 leaders of associations.

The Hand-Drawn Idea

As Mark was writing the article, Associations Now Magazine's art director, Beth Lower, saw and liked my sketchnote of the iPhone 3GS Unboxing. Each issue of the magazine has a different design in context to the feature story, which led Beth to a completely hand-drawn, sketchnote style cover to communicate the visual thinking feature story.

Beth and I chatted about the concept on the phone, and both of us resonated with the concept of a visual thinking collage, comprised of the tools and notes about them in a hand-drawn sketchnote style.

Pencil Sketches

Associations Now Illustration: Concept Sketch

For the next step, I sketched out a rough cover design idea using pencil in my Moleskine squared notebook, and scanned it for Beth to review for direction.

Beth liked the the look and feel of my pencil sketch and approved the illustration phase of the project. I prepared for the final sketchnote illustration, though I knew some elements would likely need to be sorted out on the fly.

Inked Illustration

Because I wanted to create the art at 100% actual size, I found a sheet of heavy paper to layout the structure of the cover on. I drew out the full size of the cover and began laying out elements I knew had to be in place — Associations Now logo, headlines and table of contents elements in pencil, etc.

Once the main elements were organized, I began inking in the elements, starting with the logo in the top left of the page and working my way down to the main headline on the left side of the page.

I encountered issues with gel ink reacting less than smoothly with my paper and pencil graphite lines, but thankfully, I was able to work through those issues and ink out the cover for production.

Photoshop Production

Once I was pleased with the final illustration, I scanned it into my MacBook and began preparing the final art for production in Photoshop.

I knew Beth wanted to capture the sketchnote style, which meant producing a creamy background color behind the rich black illustration work.

Cream can be a very tough color to capture in the printing process, using standard colors of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK). It's so easy to lean too much toward yellow or red and ruin the creamy feeling you're hoping for.

I found what I felt would reproduce in CMYK as a good cream combo, then imported the final scans in, tweaking the contrast, moving elements around in subtle ways and perfecting the final artwork.

Once the art was finalized, I shipped source artwork off for production.

Inside Feature Illustration

Next up was the two-page feature spread illustration which had to continue a consistent image and feel from the cover, to connect them visually.

Beth provided a PDF of the page spread with a headline in place. I used this to trace and ink in the headline and figure out where drawn elements needed to be placed.

I used some elements from the cover for consistency, then began sketching out other elements to fill the remaining space in a balanced way. This is where I built art elements on the fly, allowing the concept of the article and elements already created for the cover to spark new ideas.

When the inner spread was completed to my satisfaction, I created a Photoshop file similar to the cover, with cream background and the elements in their exact locations on the page.

Beth had one more element for me to sketchnote — a quote by Ryan Coleman of VizThink. I sketched out a pencil grid, drew the lettering, scanned and sent the art out to wrap up my illustrations.

Printed Magazines: Wow!

A few weeks later, a package arrived at my door with a package of final, printed copies of the Associations Now August magazine, featuring my illustrations on the cover and feature spread. I'm very pleased with the cream color and how well the illustrations look on the page.

The Associations Now team have been very pleased with the final results, and I'm excited to hear how their subscribers react to this unusual issue of the magazine.

Thank you Mark Athitakis, Beth Lower and Lisa Junker from Associations Now for your faith in me to produce the cover and feature spread illustrations. I'm very honored to have been chosen.

If you are interested in getting a copy of the August issue, let me know. Lisa, the magazine's editor has told me she has limited copies of the magazine available for those who ask nicely. :-)

Related Links:
Associations Now Magazine Illustrations Set
Are You A Visual Thinker?
Download The Associations Now Visual Thinking Feature (2.5MB PDF)

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July 16, 2009

About Mike Rohde's Sketchnotes

Welcome podcast listeners, visiting via the Von Glitschka recommendation of my sketchnotes on Freelance Radio 35.

Thanks for stopping by!

What are Sketchnotes?

Sketchnotes are a visual note-taking technique, featuring a combo of hand-drawn sketches, typography and text notes. I capture talks & presentations in real time with this technique, using a black gel pen and a pocket Moleskine sketchbook.

Learn how to sketchnote

Check out the VizThinkU: Visual Note-Taking 101 Webinar I did with Sunni Brown, Austin Kleon and Dave Gray. In the webinar, we share our techniques and tips for taking visual notes and thoughts on their benefits over regular notes.

Logo, Icon & Web Design

I'm professional designer and art director, specializing in logo, icon & web design. Feel free to have a look around the site or send me a note.

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July 8, 2009

Why Visual Notes Work

Here's an interesting video from TED of Tom Wujec, an information designer and Fellow at Autodesk. I thought it would be an insightful video to share here, as I've been focused on sketchnotes and visual note-taking the last few months.

In his talk, Tom explains the 3 ways our brains make meaning, help us understand words, images, feelings and connections. He also talks about why visual notes resonate so well with humans (sketchnotes for instance) and he shares the techniques Autodesk uses to plan strategically with visual thinking.

June 30, 2009

Alaskan Cruise '09 Sketchnotes

I'm back from a wonderful Alaskan cruise of the Inside Passage last week. I spent the week capturing 28 pages of sketchnotes of my experiences to share with you:

Alaska is almost indescribable. I've done my best to capture what I saw, but the best way to experience Alaska is first hand. If you ever have a chance — go.

Enjoy the sketchnotes!

I've now posted a set of Alaska '09 Photos on Flickr as well.

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June 2, 2009

SXSWi '09 Sketchnotes Tapstack iPhone app: Demo Video

Today my friends at SixVoices sent over the final preview of my SXSW Interactive 2009 Sketchnotes Tapstack app for iPhone/iPod touch and it looks incredible!

Tomorrow the app should be submitted to the iTunes app store — hopefully it will be on sale for $0.99 in the next few days. I'll keep you guys posted.

Tapstack Demo Video

In the mean time, I've created a quick demo video of the Tapstack on my iPod touch, to show you what the app looks like and how it works:

SXSW Interactive 2009 Sketchnotes Tapstack App Demo from Mike Rohde on Vimeo.

I love how the Tapstack app displays the sketchnotes. My original sketchnote pages were created in a Moleskine sketchbook, so the card stack format works really well. Funnily enough, creating numbers for every page was the most work!

More Tapstacks?

I'm very excited to see sketchnotes available as a handy mobile reference for the iPhone and iPod touch. I'm already thinking about creating Tapstacks for SEED 1 and SEED 3, SXSW Interactive 2008 and An Event Apart 2008.

If you're interested in seeing any or all of those, let me know!

Thanks SixVoices!

Throughout the Tapstack planning and building process, the SixVoices crew (Mark Carpenter, Samuel Bowles and Jonah Bailey) were great to work with. It's so much fun working a bunch of guys so excited about building new products. Thanks guys!

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May 23, 2009

Society of News Design Chicago '09 Sketchnotes

Last weekend I was honored to be invited to attend the Society of News Design to sketchnote their meetup in Chicago. After enjoying a morning wandering Chicago, I arrived at Tribune Tower for the event, ready to capture the presentations.

You can see the presentations captured in my SND Chicago '09 Sketchnotes Set or in the slideshow of the sketchnotes created for quick viewing as a FlickrSlidr:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Thanks Matt Mannsfield and Chris Courtney for your kind invitation. I appreciated the opportunity to meet people from the news design industry and had a great time!

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May 13, 2009

My VizNotes 101 Webinar Experiences

On Tuesday, Austin Kleon, Sunni Brown and Dave Gray put on the first in a series of VizThinkU webinars, called Visual Note-Taking 101. We had a great time presenting and judging by the #viznotes Twiiter hashtag, our attendees had a great time too.

What the webinar covered, in a nutshell: Austin covered drawing skills with fun drawing exercises, I shared techniques and tips I've learned from sketchnoting and Sunni explained listening skills for the visual note-taker.

Sketchnoting Austin Kleon's Drawing Lessons

While Austin presented his section on drawing, I live captured this part of the webinar. Here are 6 pages of my sketchnotes from the first section:

Presenting Sketchnote Techniques

I went next, sharing the techniques and tips learned from 2 years of developing my sketchnote style at conferences and events. You can see my slides in this post.

I felt the presentation went reasonably well — though I wish I had another week to run through my slides and materials. I've noted some things I need to improve for next time and am asking some key folks for feedback as well. If you were an attendee, please email your feedback to me with VizNotes101 in the subject line.

At the end of the presentation, I used a webcam on a tripod to capture myself live sketchnoting Dave, Austin and Sunni answering audience questions:

Missing Sunni Brown's Listening Skills

During hour 3 of the webinar, I was a panelist in a social media discussion at Northwoods Software, so I wasn't able to see Sunni's session on better listening. I'm bummed I missed it, but am looking forward to watching the recorded webinar.

Final Thoughts

Here are a few thoughts after pondering the webinar for 24 hours:

I'm still blown away that over 100 people signed up for the webinar. Thanks for making this event a resounding success.
I had a great time doing the webinar, but it was odd presenting to a silent room, except for Sunni, Dave or Austin's questions or comments.
The setup made me feel like a cyborg, with wires everywhere, cameras on and windows all over my screen. In fact, after our dry run Monday night, I left everything I'd setup, in place overnight for fear of messing things up.
I'm going to add practical exercises to the sketchnoting presentation, after seeing how much fun Austin's drawing exercises were.
I was fortunate to find Nancy Duarte's excellent video tutorial, 6 Tips for Remote Presenting. She encouraged me to make my presentation personal and to use photos of my family as a reminder that I was talking to a live audience.
3 hours seemed like a long time until we got started, then the time just flew.

I can safely speak for everyone involved in our webinar — we're all very honored to have you spend your precious time learning visual note-taking with us.

Thank you!

May 10, 2009

Visual Note-Taking 101: Sketchnoting Techniques Slides

I've just posted the slides for my section of Visual Note-Taking 101 Webinar called Sketchnoting Techniques. I'll be presenting live with Moderator Dave Gray and presenters Austin Kleon and Sunni Brown on Tuesday, May 12th, 11-2 EST.

Here's the deck on Slideshare:

View more presentations from rohdesign.

Here's the deck on Flickr:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Thetre's still time to register for this $99 webinar to hear the full details behind my slides live and learn about drawing and listening from Austin Kleon and Sunni Brown.

Register today!

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May 5, 2009

Visual Note-Taking 101 Webinar: Tuesday, May 12th 2009

I'm always excited to see others inspired to use the sketchnoting technique I've developed and have been refining the past few years.

So, when I was invited to present sketchnoting techniques alongside my good friends Austin Kleon, Sunni Brown and Dave Gray in a 3 hour live webinar — I immediately jumped at the opportunity!

Visual Note-Taking 101 Details

Next Tuesday, May 12th from 11:00 AM to 2 PM Eastern, Austin, Sunni and I will present Visual Note-Taking 101. It's a 3 hour live webinar for $99, and that price includes the live event AND access to the complete recording for later reference.

Register today for Visual Note-Taking 101!

Here's an overview of next Tuesday's 3 hour webinar:

Ever since Leonardo put pen to paper, visual note-taking has been a route to improve the quality of your thinking, make information more memorable, and make your ideas easier to share with others.
Learn practical techniques and “tricks of the trade” from modern visual note-taking masters Mike Rohde, Sunni Brown and Austin Kleon. In this three-hour course you will learn how to use visual note-taking to improve your listening skills and take better, more memorable notes.

The focus of this class will be on how to write, sketch, and diagram ideas live, in real time, as you hear them. Many of the techniques you will learn will also help to improve your skills in drawing your ideas at the flip chart or whiteboard.

Here's a detailed outline of what the three of us will present next Tuesday:

Section 1 – Austin Kleon will present “But I can’t draw!”

Addressing your fears of the pen, and rediscovering the ancient, universal childhood pleasure of putting pictures and words on paper
Exploring drawing not as fine art, but as a communication tool
Establishing a drawing alphabet and learning some basic cartooning techniques
Doing fun activities: “How to draw a stick figure” and “How to draw a face”
Building our very own icon library for note-taking

Section 2 – Sunni Brown will present “Learning Active Listening”

What is “active listening” and how is it different than “regular” listening?
A graphic recorder’s approach to active listening – how to listen effectively to multiple sources, fast talkers and ramblers
What to listen for and what to filter out
How to “cache” what you’re hearing so you can capture it on paper

Section 3 – Mike Rohde will present “Sketchnoting Techniques”

The importance of focus & engagement in capturing presentations
Learning to become a filter of ideas rather than a word-by-word stenographer of every last detail
Techniques for getting into the flow, to help you capture better sketchnotes
Getting personal with sketchnotes — letting your personality shine through
How to use recorded podcasts and videos for sketchnoting practice (with a demo of sketchnoting a podcast live)

Materials Needed: paper and pen/pencil

Register for Visual Note-Taking 101

I'm very excited about this event and the opportunity to share detail about the process I use to capture sketchnotes. If you have an interest in learning the note-taking techniques of Austin Kleon, Sunni Brown or myself, please Register today!

April 14, 2009

My Impromptu Video Interview on Sketchnoting at SXSWi '09

My Norwegian pal, Ove Klykken is a spur of the moment guy. He was inspired by Brian Artka's documentary film-making at SXSW Interactive, so he pulled out his little Canon SD1100 and had a little impromptu interview with me about sketchnoting:

Impromptu interview with Mike Rohde at SXSWi '09 from Ove Klykken on Vimeo.

I'd completely forgot about this interview until last night when Ove contacted me with a preview. In the interview I talk about why I sketchnote, challenges in sketchnoting and if I think someone needs to be an artist to do sketchnoting.

Enjoy!

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March 20, 2009

SXSW Interactive 2009 Sketchnotes

SXSW Interactive 2009 Sketchnotes are Posted!

I've just finished processing and posting 70 pages of sketchnotes from SXSW Interactive 2009 on Flickr.

This year I doubled the amount of pages I was able to capture to 70, up from 34 pages of sketchnotes in 2008. Having done more sketchnotes since last year helped as did my position of official SXSWi sketchnoter.

Here's the FlickrSlidr set:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Photo: Derek Dysart

Thanks to Hugh Forrest and Shawn O'Keefe for giving me the opportunity to live sketchnote this year's festival and design the tote bag.

Another Great SXSW Interactive

I had a great time at SXSW Interactive again this year. I met many new people, bowled with friends at the Avalonstar Bowling Extravaganza, wandered the streets of Austin, Texas and received great feedback on my SXSWi '09 Tote Bag Design.

I also had the opportunity to perform live sketchnoting at the 9th annual 20x2. The organizers of 20x2 invited 20 people to interpret the question "What's it gonna take?" so I chose to sketchnote my answer live on stage. Here's the video of my performance (watch it in HD on Vimeo):

20x2 Live Sketchnoting from Mike Rohde on Vimeo.

Photo: Derek Dysart

I'm already looking forward to SXSW Interactive 2010! :-)

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March 1, 2009

SXSW Interactive '09 Tote Bag Design

In October 2008, I was honored when Shawn O'Keefe and the SXSW team asked me to design the 2009 SXSW Interactive canvas tote bag.

I know from my last year at SXSW Interactive that 8,000+ tote bags are given out to SXSW Interactive registrants — so I was driven to come up with an amazing design.

In this post I'll explain the tote bag design process, including some of the challenges we faced through that process and how we came up with a winning solution.

Initial Specs and Feedback

In the initial briefing for the tote bag design project, Shawn had a few specs for the bag and a sense of the general direction the team at SXSW wanted to go in for the design. For specs, I had a 10" x 10" space and up to 7 colors to work with.

The SXSW team also mentioned that the past two bag designs had been hand-drawn in a cartoon style, with mostly darker colors. For the 2009 design they wanted something brighter and less cartoon oriented.

For creative direction, the SXSW team wanted to represent the most common tags generated by the Interactive Panel Picker in a creative way. Shawn shared a Wordle word cloud type treatment as a reference, using some of the tags they were seeing:

Wordle Word Cloud

Sketches

I wanted to explore some alternate ideas for Shawn to see, so I began by sketching pencil concepts in my trusty Miquelrius gridded sketchbook. I find this is a critical step to working out ideas. It's clear enough that clients can see direction, but open enough that there is still room for adjustment and iteration.

Concept Sketch v1
In the first round, I created a network tree, with SXSW 09 text at the center of the tree with panel picker tags branching out from the center to fill the space:

The SXSW team felt the very structured network idea was a bit too rigid. They wanted the design to have a more random, organic feel than a network structure could offer.

Concept Sketch v2
In my second sketch, you'll see I've returned to the general idea of a tag cloud, but making better use of the square shape I had to work with.

The upper sketch uses actual tags to form an arrow pointing to the SXSW tag in the lower right corner. The lower sketch features four arrows created with tags, point to the 4 corners that spell out S X S W:

We liked the second round of sketches, especially the idea with the single arrow pointing to SXSW in the lower right-hand corner of the design.

Black & White Concepts

At this point I moved to Adobe Illustrator on the Mac to build the tag cloud in black & white with real fonts, to see how actual tags would look in place:

This direction was good — the sizing of the letters, positioning and overall shape felt right. In fact, when I showed this to my friend Brian Artka, it reminded him of the state of Texas. I hadn't intended this, but I really liked the serendipity of it.

Shawn and the SXSW team wanted to see the arrow tags and SXSW pointing to the lower left, so I created a second version, emphasizing the Texas shape a bit more:

Notice the circle-star and AUSTIN text in the middle of the type treatment? I added it once the shape was tweaked to look more like Texas.

Color Concepts

With the structure worked out in black & white, it was time to explore color. I started adding colors to the tags, balancing their placement across the cloud. Then mocked up the color concept on a blank canvas tote bag photo for review:

The brightness of the design was great, but it needed something to separate the tag cloud from the canvas color. I used the type to create a halftone-edged shape in Photoshop, which formed the white shape under the typography in v2:

Facing & Solving Challenges

This design was shaping up! The tag cloud was working well, color was bright and cheerful and the overall feel was mostly positive. But there was a problem — the design was a bit too crisp and mechanical.

The SXSW team wanted a design that was more organic, and even though initially they didn't want another hand-drawn bag design, we started talking about using the Sketchnote style they really loved, mixed in with regular typography.

I replaced some of the tags in the cloud with hand-drawn sketchnote lettering:

It still wasn't noticeable enough, since the crisp typography dominated the design. The hand-drawn words were getting lost in the mix, and looked more like bad reproduction than intentionally hand-drawn typography.

Next I traced the bottom half of the tags in a sketchnote style, scanned and auto-traced the letters using Vector Magic (a wonderful service BTW).

I wanted show a transformation from sketchnote letters to real type — but it still felt wrong. It was too loose for actual type and too mechanical for hand-drawn type:

I was stumped, trying too hard to sneak organic hand-drawn letters into the type.

The Solution: Raw Sketchnote Typography

After a good discussion with Shawn about direction, we decided to shift radically and completely to a sketchnote style for the tag cloud typography. I changed my production method, using actual scans of the sketchnote type, rather than tracing the scans into vectors. The raw scans were much more human and organic:

Yes! This was what we were aiming for! Shawn and the SXSW team liked the new sketchnote direction and I did as well. I had my personality baked in and felt unified and organic — something we didn't feel with the clean typographic approach.

With the design approved, I finalized my Photoshop artwork for printing, and sent it to the SXSW team for production. That was November 17th, because printing 8,000+ canvas tote bags with 7 colors needed lots of lead time. :-)

Final Tote Bags

It was mid-February when Shawn sent word that the bags were back from production. He grabbed a camera and took a few shots of the bag design, so I could see how they turned out and for this blog post:

After having a few months away from the design, the human touch in the sketchnote lettering really feels right for this bag design. I'm very happy with how it's turned out.

I'm hoping attendees to SXSW Interactive for 2009 will enjoy the bags and the design. I'm honored knowing that these bags will be used for years to come, reminding SXSW attendees of their great experience in Austin.

Thank You

Thanks go to Shawn O'Keefe, Hugh Forrest and the entire SXSW team for choosing me to design the tote bag for 2009. Thanks for staying with me through the tough times in the process as we met the challenge together. It's been great fun.

I'm excited to see thousands of tote bags I've designed wandering around Austin! :-)

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January 31, 2009

Sketchnoting SXSW Interactive 2009

Doom and gloom. Meltdown of the global economy. Real estate prices dropping, layoffs, businesses closing and more bad news bombards us daily.

2008 was a rough year and 2009 is off to a rocky start. These are challenging times.

In spite of the bad news around us, I've decided to focus on the positive. To focus on the opportunities in this new year and not let the negativity dominate my outlook or perspective.

For me, this begins with SXSW interactive in Austin, Texas, March 13-18, 2009.

SXSW Interactive Official Sketchnoter

One hugely bright spot in 2009 is the honor of being the Official Sketchnoter to SXSW Interactive. In 2008, my first ever SXSW, I used my Moleskine pocket sketchbook and G2 pen to live capture several of the panels and sessions in sketchnote form.

At the time I was capturing the event for myself and the small band of followers who enjoyed my work from SEED 1 and SEED 3 conferences and other events I'd captured in 2007 and 2008. What surprised me was how popular the SXSW 2008 sketchnotes became. Just a week after posting the sketchnotes, they appeared on 80+ sites, including Daring Fireball, R.BIRD, FrogDesign, Jason Santa Maria and Boing Boing!

I'm very excited about working in an official capacity this year. I think the toughest challenge will be which panels to attend and capture. I have a list of panels I'm looking forward to, but I also know how panels often overlap. It should be fun. :-)

Get In Touch

I'd love to meet new people at SXSW, so if you're attending and would like to talk over coffee at the event, drop me a line with SXSW in the subject line and say hello, and if you like, follow me on Twitter.

I'm attending the 2009 Avalonstar Bowling Extravaganza on Saturday, March 15th, and my co-conspirator Brian Artka and I are organizing some kind of small gathering at an Austin location during SXSW Week, we'll announce soon.

Stay Positive!

Be thankful for what you have in your life. Be ready for opportunities. Circumstances can bring you down — don't let them ruin your outlook. Stay positive!

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January 17, 2009

8 Questions on Art Direction, Design & Sketchnotes

Several months ago, my friend Larry Wright asked if I'd be up for a detailed interview about design, art direction and sketchnotes. I loved the idea and agreed, responding to Larry's questions via email.

We met at the first SEED conference in 2007 and we've kept in contact since. As a developer, Larry is fascinated by design and after sitting next to me as I produced the SEED 1 sketchnotes, was curious about the sketchote process.

Here are some excerpts from the interview, first, my thoughts on art direction:

"In my view, an 'Art Director' is a designer with a 50,000 foot meta view of design projects they work on. They are involved all the way from listening to the client and stakeholders on a project, through the conception of an idea to the design, development and production the idea."

On my design process:

"Once I understand the challenge, I read my notes, and synthesize the goals for sketching. I use pencil sketches to help work out ideas that can solve the challenges I’m facing. These sketches are presented to clients with what I call “rationale notes” explaining the whys of my design concepts."

And on my sketchnotes:

"I find taking notes and sketching really reinforce what I’m capturing in my head as a speaker talks. Sketchnotes are not meant to be word-for-word stenographer notes, but interpretive. I capture what I feel is important, which makes sketchnotes personal."

The full interview: Mike Rohde - Designer, Blogger, Sketchnote Artist is available at Larry's site. Do check it out and consider following Larry Wright on Twitter!

Thanks Larry!

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January 8, 2009

Spreenkler Sketchnotes: Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett

Last night I had an opportunity to attend the Spreenkler January meeting, to hear Milwaukee's Mayor Tom Barrett speak about his vision for sustaining creativity and innovation and answer questions at The Residences at Hotel Polomar's sales office.

I wasn't intending on sketchnoting the event, as I'd left my blank Moleskine sketchbooks at home. However, I did have my Moleskine notebook and a G2 gel pen along, so I decided spur of the moment to see what would happen.

Turns out that Mayor Barrett had some great things to say, which I was able to capture in sketchote form, shown above.

Thanks go to Steve Glynn for starting up Spreenkler to give Milwaukeeans more opportunities to connect and generate excitement in the city and this area, and to Mayor Barrett for speaking and taking questions.

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December 2, 2008

Coffee Achiever Interview at iNeedCoffee.com

I'm very honored to be interviewed and featured as Coffee Achiever for December 2008 issue of the iNeedCoffee newsletter.

I replied to questions from Alex Scofield, who crafted his article from my replies. It's fascinating to see how Alex's article compares with my interview replies. If you're curious, I've included my interview replies below.

Here's an excerpt from Alex's article:

"The coffee artwork in Rohde’s calendar is an outgrowth of his Sketchnotes. They’re a twist and a major upgrade on the margin doodles of a note-taking student – Sketchnotes capture an event utilizing visual elements and fonts that are as crucial as the text in the overall presentation."

You can read the entire interview and the other great articles at iNeedCoffee.com.

Original Questions & Answers

Here are Alex's questions and my detailed replies, the basis of the final article.

Q: Can you say a little bit about where you grew up, where you went to school, and how you developed as an artist?

I grew up in Chicago, an area called Rogers Park, right on the border with Evanston, Illinois near Northwestern University. I went to school in that area through my Freshman year in high school, when our family moved to the Milwaukee area, where I still live today.

My elementary and high school years were very formative as an artist, because I drew all the time. That early experience of constantly drawing has been key to drawing and illustrating now that I'm older.

Q: How were SketchNotes born, or how did they evolve toward their present form?

They were born back in 2007 in a form clearly defined as "sketchnotes". I was attending a UX Intensive event put on by Adaptive Path in Chicago when I created the first set:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rohdesign/sets/72157600139569147/

I decided to try intentionally including drawings and fonts in my notes to see if it was possible and how well I would be able to capture the event. It worked out so well, I've continued to take sketchnotes at other events:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rohdesign/collections/72157602798339521/

Lately, I've been invited by organizers of several events like SEED 3, and An Event Apart to be the official 'sketchnoter' at those events, which has worked out quite well:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rohdesign/sets/72157605489759516/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rohdesign/sets/72157608141993098/

I'm scheduled to attend Word of Mouth Crash Course on December 10th, and SXSW Interactive in March 2009 as the official sketchnoter. I'm very excited about these and other future sketchnoting opportunities.

http://events.gaspedal.com/
http://sxsw.com/interactive/

Q: Was there anything in particular that inspired the calendar’s coffee theme?

Our friend Kathy loves coffee and happens to have a coffee themed kitchen. We had a terrible time finding coffee calendars for her at Christmas, so we decided to create our own coffee calendar at Café Press.

A few years ago my wife and I created a coffee calendar with photography, which our friend loved. Then, as I had been sketching more in the past few years, I had the idea to do a calendar with an illustrated coffee theme.

So, I took my Moleskine pocket sketchbook to local cafes and began the illustration, which were scanned and colorized in the Mac and posted at Café Press as the calendar you can buy today:

http://www.cafepress.com/rohde.40227192

It's been very popular as a gift, I think because there are so few good coffee calendars out there. Turns out I'm the top organic hit in Google search results for 'coffee calendar' along with my friend Ricardo Levins Morales' wonderful illustrated coffee calendar:

http://www.thecoffeecalendar.com/

Q: Can you describe the “colorization” process used for the Sketchtoon calendars?

The art is all done in black and white in a pocket Moleskine sketchbook, scanned in and colorized in Photoshop.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rohdesign/2059959887

I've found a few special brushes in Photoshop to created the mottled look for the dark brown, and the color for the coffee drinks was painted so it overprints the black artwork.

Q: The first time you colorized your art this way, was it a happy accident, or the expected result?

I've actually done similar colorizations in my career as a graphic designer, in particular some illustration work for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee years ago, with black and white art colorized in Photoshop.

I like this approach because I can easily change direction or colors by simply re-doing a layer of the Photoshop file.

Q: Do you ever do your coffee Sketchtoons while you’re drinking the beverage described?

Heh, great question! I've had most of these drinks, and a few while sketching the art at the local café.

Q: Do you remember when you first drank coffee?

When I was about 5 I spilled hot coffee on myself at my grandmother's house, but it hasn't deterred me! I recall starting to drink coffee regularly in college, when I worked as graphic editor for the Milwaukee Area Technical College Times. They had a coffee club I could afford, and during the cold winters, hot coffee was perfect.

Q: What is the café/coffee scene like around Brown Deer and Milwaukee? Any favorite places?

Of course we have the chains here, Starbucks and Caribou, but in Menomonee Falls where I live, we have an excellent local coffee shop called John Harbor's Main Street Coffee house. They feature great, locally roasted coffee, food, free WiFi, and live music:

http://johnharbors.com/

Another Milwaukee area roaster and coffee chain called Alterra Coffee, with cafes all over the city in interesting and often historical buildings:

http://alterracoffeepro.com/

And there are all sorts of small, independent cafes and coffee shops around the city, too numerous to list.

Q: How big a part of your life is coffee these days?

Coffee is very important. I brew coffee in the morning for my wife and I to
start the day. At Northwoods Software where I work, I often pull shots of
espresso or make cappuccinos on the office DeLonghi Magnifica — which I have
to say is great to have around.

I also have a Krups espresso maker at home which takes pods as well as ground coffee, a French press and a handy moka pot.

Every now and then I like getting away to my local café for coffee to read,
or do a little sketching or design work in a relaxed environment.

Q: What is your favorite kind of coffee, or your favorite coffee-based beverage?

I like darker roast coffees and given a choice, I'll take a cappuccino or a well-pulled shot of espresso. For me coffee is all about taste.

Q: From the ‘Diner Coffee’ entry, I get the feeling that you appreciate high-end coffee, yet are okay with drinking diner coffee, too, depending on the situation. Am I right?

Yes, exactly! I like exploring a wide variety of coffee and surprisingly, some diner coffees aren't so bad. I think in the US there's been a positive effect of Starbucks and other coffee establishments improving the quality of coffee overall, which benefits we coffee fans in the end.

But I will say that when I encounter truly bad coffee I won't drink it. Life is just too short to torture my taste buds. :-)

Alex, thanks for the opportunity to interview with iNeedCoffee!

Check out the full interview at iNeedCoffee.com

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November 17, 2008

Michelle George's Global Leadership Summit Sketchnotes

A few weeks ago I received an email from Michelle George, who had questions about the pens and Moleskine notebooks I use to capture sketchnotes. I shared my thoughts and about a week later Michelle emailed to share her sketchnotes:

It was very cool to see Michelle use sketchnotes at her event. I was curious to hear her feedback after trying out the sketchnote approach at the Global Leadership Summit she attended, so sent Michelle a few interview questions:

Michelle, I’m curious to hear how the sketchnote approach worked for you. Was it easy to do? Were there specific challenges you found while capturing your sketchnotes?

I found it difficult to start with because sketchnoting is a totally different style of note-taking to what I use most of the time. I occasionally work as a scribe in government recruiting processes, and that involves taking LOTS of very detailed notes during the interviews.

To get the speed and accuracy I need for that I type on my little laptop (Fujitsu Lifebook 1620P), and end up with three or four pages full of single-spaced notes after a 30 minute session.

The sketchnote approach forced me to slow down and process the information on the fly and what I ended up with was a much more distilled representation of the information.

The sketchnotes that I filled my little Moleskine with are about what was impacting me as the speaker delivered his or her message, as opposed to being a slab of recorded information that was disconnected from how I felt about it.

Once I got going it was pretty easy. I have doodled in journals for years, and have played around with graphic design a bit, and letting those things flow as I processed really was a meditative process. I loved it!

Challenges? Hmmm... yeah that my sketching ability sucks when I’m under pressure! Normally my drawings take several hours…to whip out a sketch in less than a minute takes some serious skill! Practice!

How do you feel about your sketchnotes after the fact? Are they easy to read? Did they capture the detail you had hoped for?

Usually I take notes at a conference, the notebook gets tucked away and I rarely go back over them unless I’m looking for material for an article, but with sketchnotes, they are like little pieces of art… I have to confess that I love looking at them.

I am really pleased with the way they turned out as a first attempt. I don’t think they are particularly aesthetically pleasing, or anywhere near as wonderful as yours, but I have enjoyed the process itself as well as going back over the notes.

I have found it remarkably easy to remember the context and even some of the mannerisms of the speaker, which is a real surprise to me given the notes are not a verbatim account of what happened at the conference. I would have liked to draw a little more to reinforce the words, but I think that will come with time as I practice.

Michelle, what do you do professionally?

I work for myself as a technical writer. I work with government ICT sections and small businesses to produce user documentation, process and procedural documentation, and help desk material.

I also do some scribing and editing work, and the occasional graphic design job. I am passionate about clear communication, and I am fascinated with the connection between the written word and good design.

My business website Robertson Studios is being given a facelift at the moment, though you can see my personal blog and my online drawing board, to see more of my work online.

Thanks so much for taking the time to share your sketchnotes and thoughts on using them!

Mike, thanks for the opportunity to share this stuff! I love the way the Net connects people all over the world!

You're welcome Michelle! Thanks for taking the time to talk and share your work. I hope it encourages others to try out the sketchnote technique at their next meeting or event.

(Ed. - Michelle lives in Canberra, Australia with her husband and two sons.)

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October 20, 2008

Skecthnotes on The Thirsty Developer Podcast 39

I'm happy to announce that my interview on sketchnotes with Larry Clarkin and Dave Bost for the Thirsty Developer Podcast is online!

In this episode of the Thirty Developer Podcast, Larry, Dave and I talk about how sketchnotes came to be, my approach to creating them, the tools and techniques I use and how sketchnotes might be useful for information documentation on development projects.

Here's the show link and the full MP3 for your listening pleasure.

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October 18, 2008

An Event Apart Chicago 2008 Sketchnotes

I'm back from An Event Apart Chicago 2008 and have just posted 82 pages of my sketchnotes captured at the event. I've created a FlickrSlidr show below:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

I thoroughly enjoyed all of the talks on Monday and Tuesday. I picked up on a couple recurring themes: a challenge to add more craftsmanship to our work in an era of modular CMS tools and a challenge to push our designs further and break new ground in web design.

Sketchnotes Report

Sketchnoting event went very well. My hand was a bit tired at the end of the 2 day event but not nearly as tired as I feared it might be. My mind was more fatigued from processing all of the excellent talks I was able to hear.

In the end I captured 82 pages of sketchnotes, using up a brand new Moleskine pocket sketchbook in the process. I had to use another sketchbook to capture the final Q&A session on Tuesday afternoon.

At the event, I had a chance to speak briefly with Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer about sketchnoting. They were both happy to have me there and very curious to see what I would capture. I hope you guys like the results. :-)

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October 1, 2008

An Event Apart Chicago 2008: Official Sketchnoter

Hooray! On Monday, October 13th & Tuesday October 14th I'll be the official Sketchnoter at An Event Apart Chicago 2008!

What is An Event Apart?

Imagine 2 full days of learning from the greatest minds and hottest talents in web design and development, then add a healthy dose of meeting other like-minded, passionate web designers and developers — that's An Event Apart.

Speakers? How about: Andy Clarke, Curt Cloninger, Jason Fried, Robert Hoekman Jr., Cameron Moll, Sarah Nelson, Derek Powazek, Jeffrey Veen, Rob Weychert, Jason Santa Maria, Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman. Heavy duty.

This event is so good, it's already sold out!

I'm excited about sketchnoting the event. We'll see how my brain and hand hold up with so many great speakers and topics packed into 2 very intense days.

I'll be posting my sketchnotes after the event. If you're curious about sketchnotes, have a look at my Sketchnote Collection on Flickr.

Thank you Mr. Zeldman for the invitation to join the event and provide sketchnote-by-sketchnote coverage. I'm honored!

Say Hello!

I'm staying in Chicago Monday night to meet attendees and speakers, so if you're attending An Event Apart, drop me a line with AEA in the title, or follow @rohdesign on Twitter. I'd love to meet for a coffee and show you my Moleskines!

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September 25, 2008

Jason Fried's Discovery World Sketchnotes

This evening I had the opportunity to hear and sketchnote Jason Fried of 37signals while speaking at the Discovery World Museum on Milwaukee's lakefront. Jason's 1.5 hour talk was sponsored by my alma mater, Milwaukee Area Technical College.

I captured 22 pages of sketchnotes from the talk:

View the archived live video from the September 24th, 2008 event here: www.justin.tv/signals37/archive

Afterwards I had a chance to say hello to Jason, and show him the sketchnotes. He seemed very pleased and a little surprised (in a good way) about how I managed to capture that many pages in an hour and a half.

Jason, thanks for coming up to Milwaukee to talk with students, MATC alumni and the business community. We all really appreciate your time and insight.

Come up again anytime! :-)

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August 13, 2008

Sketchnotes on Fast Company & Official SXSW Sketchnoter

This morning my buddy Bryan Nystrom let me know that he saw my SXSW 2008 Sketchnotes in a FastCompany.tv video. The video is Robert Scoble's interview of Phil Libin, CEO of the amazing product/service Evernote:

You can see Phil bringing up a photo of my SXSW Sketchnotes first spread, at around 23:00. He discusses how Evernote is quite good at OCR, but artistic hand typography used in Sketchnotes is often very tough for any OCR software to crack.

You can view all 34 pages of the SXSW 2008 Sketchnotes, in a public Evernote notebook. Feel free to test out the OCR capabilities of Evernote on hand-drawn type.

I'm an Official SXSW 2009 Sketchnoter

Thanks to Hugh Forrest and SXSW, I'm an official "Sketchnoter" and will be at SXSW Interactive 2009, capturing panels as I did in 2008. Once the panels are selected, I'll be working with Hugh and his team to choose which panels to sketchnote.

Kudos to my friend Matt Henderson, for sending me to SXSW Interactive 2008 this past spring as a MakaluMedia representative. If it wasn't for Matt, I wouldn't have had the wonderful opportunity to do sketchnotes at SXSW. Thanks Matt!

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June 8, 2008

SEED 3 Sketchnotes

I wanted to pass along word that all 26 pages of my SEED 3 sketchnotes are now posted on Flickr, so please go check them out and leave comments if you like. I will replace this post with something of more substance in a day or two.

Thanks!

SEED 3 Sketchnotes

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June 6, 2008

Off to SEED 3

Tomorrow morning I'm headed south from Milwaukee to the SEED 3 Conference in Chicago.

The event will be similar to the first SEED I attended last year, but with added speakers, including Jake Nickell and Jeffrey Kalikoff the guys behind Threadless along with Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV. It's happening at Crown Hall on the IIT campus.

I'll be sketchnoting the event, and should have my scans up sometime this weekend for review, along with commentary on the conference.

If you're at SEED 3 tomorrow, stop by and say hello. :-)

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May 8, 2008

VizThink Workshop Chicago Sketchnotes

I'm back from the VizThink workshop in Chicago with Dave Gray, Karl Gude and Tom Crawford. What a fabulous time, learning about visual thinking, and getting to exercise my mind and my drawing hand in new ways.

But first, go check out the 16 pages of sketchnotes captured at the workshop:

Here are a few observations on the VizThink Workshop in Chicago:

Smart Leaders — The workshop was run by great people. Dave, Carl and Tom are great guys and know their stuff. Even for a practicing visual thinker like me, I found their offerings and insights valuable and challenging.

Dave Gray is the Professor of Visual Thinking & Language, having though long and deep about the whole topic as a language and as a tool. It was fascinating to hear how he's processed visual language at an atomic level to better understand how it works and how to use it effectively. He's also a great teacher.

Karl Gude is the Professor of Infinite Drawing, whose passion for drawing and solving problems literally oozed from his pores. Karl spent 27 years in the news business, generating news graphics for AP and Newsweek on tight deadlines. It was a blast to see him getting excited as he talked and taught us his techniques for more effective drawing and communication. Did I mention he's a complete nut? :-)

Tom Crawford made sure everything ran smoothly, while quietly observing the visual thinking workshop. At the gathering afterwards, I had a chance to talk more with Tom, and he's very well versed in visual thinking. Very cool guy.

Great Attendees — Attendees were fun to be with and from such diverse backgrounds and locations. I had a blast working with my teammates on solving information challenges together. It was also great fun to see team members who don't normally use visual language finding out how valuable visual thinking can be.

Fun Socializing — It was as much fun after the workshop as in the workshop. I had a chance to hang out with a core group of leaders and attendees at Rivers, on the Chicago River. We talked in depth and shared some great stories. It was so much fun, in fact, that I barely made the last train back to Milwaukee, running down the platform, climbing aboard with a only minute to spare!

My 2 big takeaways from VizThink Workshop Chicago?

Visual Thinking Will Help Me at my New Gig — I'm convinced that visual thinking will help me take on the next challenge of my career, as art director at Northwoods Software. I'll be working on large sites, organizing information as well as design, so these techniques will most certainly help in this regard. I'm excited about sharing these techniques with my new colleagues.

I Want to Share Visual Thinking Techniques — My passion for encouraging others to use visual thinking skills has been stoked up. Seeing non-artists experieicing the joy of solving problems with visual thinking tools was enlightening, because it reminded me that it's not about drawing skills, but about communication.

If you're considering a VizThink Workshop, I highly recommend the experience. It's quite reasonable, and you'll get great new tools and ideas from the workshop.

Thanks Dave, Karl and Tom for a fun and informative workshop!

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April 25, 2008

SXSW Sketchnotes on Evernote

Yesterday made my Evernote SXSW Sketchnotes notebook public and searchable, following a friendly Twitter request from the Evernote team.

This Evernote notebook of sketchnotes is a great example of how well Evernote's server-based scanning and character recognition works on hand-drawn text.

Give it a try!

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April 8, 2008

Sketchnotes at Photoshop World

I love it when my sketches inspire others to draw.

I intentionally choose to share my drawings, sketches and sketchnotes on the web as a way of encouraging others in their own drawings, sketches and sketchnotes.

Photoshop World Sketchnotes!
On Monday, I learned that Amanda Kern, professor at Valencia Community College in Orlando Florida was inspired by my SXSW Sketchnotes. But she went a step further and encouraged her students capture sketchnotes while attending Photoshop World last week. Wow, that is so cool!

From Amanda's post on her Photoshop World experience:

If you happened to be at the conference you may have noticed many of us sketching away in our sketchbooks during classes. Several of us had attendees and speakers comment on how we took such great notes during the conference.
With inspiration from Mike Rohde’s awesome sketchnotes, I proposed the idea of creating sketchnotes to students who were awarded Photoshop World Scholarships. They’re a great reflection of just how many great things were thrown our way during the conference. I’m quite impressed with how they turned out. Sketchnotes provided a creative way for us to document the experience.

I love this! It's wonderful to see students exploring the idea of sketchnotes, finding out how to make something unique and interesting for others to see, but also rich and detailed for their own memories of the event.

Amanda, thanks for trying sketchnotes, I'm honored to have inspired you guys!

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March 22, 2008

SXSW Sketchnotes: Additional Observations

It's a bit over a week since posting my SXSW Sketchnotes and I've been fascinated watching the meme and images make the rounds. It started small, with mentions on Twitter and then blogs with links, images or both in postings (currently at 66).

On Thursday, I notice a huge increase in Flickr emails with favorites and comments on the sketchnotes, so I checked my RSS feed searches for 'sketchnotes' and found that both Boing Boing and Digital Web Magazine featured them.

The Digital Web Magazine article was an intentional collaboration between Matthew Pennell, Tiff Fehr and me, but the Boing Boing mention was organic, via a post by Laughing Squid earlier in the week.

My observations about this whole experience?

People like to share things that make them look good — If you do something unique and interesting, people love mentioning your work to their friends, especially if it makes them look good. Being the first one to find something cool can earn credibility with a network of friends.

Word of mouth is powerful — I couldn't have planned the path or the speed with which the sketchnotes would have taken any better their own path via word of mouth. This reminds me how powerful word of mouth is. I know in theory how quickly good or bad messages can spread — this experience reinforced it for me.

Share your work with your network to "seed" it — I had several friends who I first shared the sketchnotes with: Twitter friends who attended SXSW and the speakers at the events I covered with my note-taking. I also mentioned them to longer-term friends like Jim at Coudal, Armand at Moleskinerie, as well as newer friends like Matthew & Tiff at Digital Web Magazine, who contacted me prior to SXSW. The old adage that you should build your network before you need it is really true. Having the trust and friendship beforehand makes all the difference.

Creative Commons Licenses Encourages Image Posting — I firmly believe that hosting the sketchtoons on Flickr with a Creative Commons license allowing re-postng with attribution made it super easy for bloggers to include images on their sites. This further encouraged visitors to check out the set, my site and even dig into my archives or email me directly.

Things you do outside your main work can improve your reputation — I'm a professional designer and art director, specializing in logo, web and icon design, yet am gaining notice via sketchnotes. This is a good thing, since my sketchnotes show how I listen, process information, think, analyze information and capture it visually. While completely separate from my professional work, it is at the same time at the very heart of that work, showing how I solve problems for clients.

I'm now considering a few products created from the SXSW Sketchnotes, including an e-book with high res images and added notes, and an on-demand or limited edition printed version of the sketchnotes, for sale to those who would like a copy. If you have interest in either of these items, please leave a message in the comments.

Finally, thanks to everyone who has mentioned and linked to the images, or left comments here or on Flickr. Your kind words have been greatly appreciated! :-)

Stats on Flickr — Wow!

Photo: John December

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March 16, 2008

Lessons Learned from my SXSW Sketchnotes

I've been pleasantly surprised by the positive reaction my SXSW Sketchnotes have received this week.

They've been featured on all sorts of sites, from Coudal Partners and Daring Fireball to Laughing Squid and The Guardian's Jemima Kiss' PDA Blog — and on Twitter!

I've decided to capture my observations here and share what I've learned:

A Fast Spreading Meme
I'm fascinated at how quickly the sketchnotes spread across the net. On the Tweet scan and RSS searches for my name, "SXSW Sketchnotes" were popping up all over and being re-tweeted like crazy. I seeded the first few links to SXSW speakers and a few friends, but at a certain point the mentions took on a life of their own.

Readers Like Personal Accounts
People seem fascinated with personal accounts of events. Sharing a unique, personal perspective is a powerful way to communicate. Sketchnotes are one way that attendees to the panels can re-live an experience. Even those who never attended the event can glean ideas from this kind of text+visual note style.

The Human Touch Attracts Readers
I'm finding that readers enjoy the human touch of my sketchnotes, which were hand-drawn in real time at the event. They're a little imperfect, yet very readable and understandable. Their impressionistic nature seems to be engaging readers in a different way than photos or computer-generated text from SXSW Interactive.

Sketchnotes Awaken Memories
For many SXSW attendees the sketchnotes seem to awaken positive memories, even several days later. This is one of the reasons I keep a travelogues when I go on trips. Notes and sketches of my activities help me recall clear memories — even years after the trip. Hopefully this will be true of my SXSW Sketchnotes in the future.

New Opportunities
I've been approached several times this week about doing "sketchnote" style illustrations for a couple of projects. It appears that something unique, like my sketchnotes, can lead to new opportunities to do more of them.

Creative Commons Frees Up Images
All of the sketchnote scans and photos have been uploaded to Flickr with a Creative Commons non-commercial, attribution license, which frees people to place my images on their sites with attribution, and no need to ask permission. I love this!

In a nutshell, the SXSW Sketchnotes have been a phenomenal success. Both SXSW attendees and outside observers seem to resonate with them, and they tell one angle of the human experience I had while in Austin. I most certainly plan to do more sketchnotes as I attend conferences, based on the reception of these and other sketchnotes I've published.

As I discover new effects from the sketchnotes, I'l be sure to add them here.

Stats on Flickr — Wow!

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March 12, 2008

SXSW Interactive 2008 Sketchnotes

Welcome BoingBoing readers! Be sure to check out my follow-up post called Lessons Learned from my SXSW Sketchnotes too!

SXSW Interactive 2008 Sketchnotes are up!
I've just completed scanning, tuning and uploading 34 pages of sketchnotes I captured in my pocket Moleskine sketchbook at SXSW Interactive earlier this week.

I think the sketchnotes turned out well, and it was no problem for me to continuously create them for nearly every session I attended. I certainly went through ink in my G2 mini pens — I'm glad I brought several along.

With the SEED Conference sketchnotes being pretty popular, I'm curious to see how these SXSW sketchnotes are received. While sketchnotes capture concentrated concepts for each session well, I think they're even better at awakening ideas stored in the minds of session attendees.

Speakers Featured
Here are the speakers featured in the SXSW Interactive Sketchnotes: Naz Hamid, Veronica Belmont, Casey McKinnon, Ryan King, Glenda Bautista, Ariel Waldman, John Gruber, Michael Lopp, Jim Coudal, Dan Rubin, Didier Hilhorst, Eris Stassi, Lea Alcantara (sorry for the Leah misspell in the notes!), Ben Brown and Frank Warren.

Finally, here's the FlickrSlidr Slideshow set:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I did creating them! :-)

Stats on Flickr — Wow!

Check out Shaun Swick's very cool SXSW Sketchnotes 08 Flickr Set for another perspective.

Dave Gray does his style of sketchnotes on 3x5 notecards, check out his set from VizThink08.

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October 30, 2007

SEED Conference Thoughts & Sketchnotes

Whew! I'm back from Monday's excellent SEED Conference in Chicago.

What a great event! The Illinois Institute of Technology and Rem Koolhaas' Tribune Student Center building, was an incredibly cool venue. Funky lines and the architectural space provided a unique backdrop for the sessions of the day.

Carlos Segura
All of the sessions were very good, though the most interesting for me as a designer was hearing Carlos Segura speak. He talked about taking risks and thinking deeper for clients and going beyond only what they ask to figuring out what they really need.

I was especially inspired by the Corbis Stock Photo case study, where Carlos' team changed the stock agency's overall approach to consider their clients (designers) and in doing so, changed an entire industry.

Segura also stressed keeping small, working on projects and with clients you really want to work with. Good work comes from these situations, and by staying small you aren't constantly taking jobs you dislike just to keep everyone busy. In fact, this turned into a thread that connected all of the talks of the day.

Jason Fried
Jason spoke very briefly, so he could open the floor for lots of Q&A time. He recommended these 5 items:

Watch out for red flags
Keep your team small
Make sure your staff has alone time
Keep meetings short and focused
Make tiny decisions instead of massive ones

Jason also recommended a small team size, though his perspective focused a little more on communication issues with small vs. large teams and scaling projects to fit your team size rather than scaling your team to fit scope.

I resonated most with Jason's call for alone time. I work remotely, but even though I work alone, there is always a temptation towards IM, email or phone calls, and I find that blocking out chunks of alone time makes a difference. I know this may be a tough one for the multi-tasking generation, but I think it really can help your focus.

Jim Coudal
I loved Jim Coudal's candor and relaxed approach, and especially his openness in sharing his firm's successes and failures. He shared several stories and films, and drew ideas from them. My take away:

Be curious
Choose people on their taste
Don't be afraid to fail

Jim talked about his curiosity and how many of the things he's been curious about have turned into business ideas. Curiosity helps with client work, since you can get to speed quickly and often see a problem from a different perspective than the client.

He also talked about identifying people and hiring them on taste over technical talent. Not untalented people with taste, but rather if you had to choose between two people and one had good taste, go with taste over talent.

Coudal suggested that failures are OK. They're learning experiences which often create opportunities that might never have happened otherwise. You have to learn to identify and capitalize on unexpected opportunities that often grow out of failures.

Discussion Session: Segura, Fried & Coudal
The most interesting of the sessions was the final hour or so of open discussion time with Carlos, Jason and Jim at the front of the room. They fielded all sorts of questions from attendees about their ideas. Questions about small teams, marketing, simplicity, community, building products while still managing client work, questions about creating apps that rely solely on other platorms (Facebook), and more.

Of all the sessions, this was the one I and the 4 other guys I met, thought was the best of all. Why? Because they had a chance to respond immediately and candidly to random questions. I also enjoyed hearing them discuss and explore ideas in depth that hadn't come out in their talks. Finally, it was interesting to hear their similarity of thought and subtle differences of approach and opinion on the same questions.

Sketchnotes
As mentioned last week, I took my pocket Moleskine sketchbook along and captured 17 pages of sketchnotes, from the entire day's talks and discussions, including Carlos Segura, Jason Fried, Edward Lifson and Jim Coudal.

I didn't try to capture everything said during yeterday's event, since others were probably doing that.

Instead, I took time to listen and analyze the talks, distilling and capturing the main ideas I was hearing. By doing a bit of on-the-fly processing, it forced me to boil down what was being said, then express it in ink on the page in a way that would be meaningful to me and to others who might read my sketchnotes later.

To make the notes interesting, I played with typography and images with the sketchnotes, to provide a little texture and depth beyond pages of gray text.

SEED Sketchnotes on Coudal Partners
Seems my notes have struck a chord. Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners emailed about my sketchnotes on Flickr and made mention in their Fresh Signals feed. Thanks Jim!

SEED Sketchnotes on Signal vs. Noise
Awesome! 37signals noticed them too: Mike Rohde's SEED Conference 2007 sketchbook notes. Thanks Matt!

Pretty cool to have speakers and sponsors mention notes taken during the event. :-)

Overall, SEED Conference was well worth the time and price to attend.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Permalink | | Design | add to del.icio.us

April 27, 2007

UX Intensive Chicago 2007: Thoughts & Sketchnotes

This week I attended Adaptive Path's UX Intensive: Interaction Design Workshop in Chicago. I've decided to share my thoughts on the event and my set of sketchnotes on the blog.

UX Intensive event was a 4-day series of workshops and lectures, and of those 4 days, I attended 1: Interaction Design. Here are my thoughts about that particular event:

The Speakers & Venue
Overall it was a good experience. Dan Saffer and Kim Lenox are both very smart, talented designers who know their stuff. I gleaned good ideas for tweaking my own design process, and was affirmed in the approach and process I already follow.

The Black Orchid was an OK venue. The room was relatively spacious, and the food was quite good. The tables, however, were designed for drinks while listening to jazz — not ideal for taking notes or working, and not positioned ideally for a conference. I got a bit of a cramp from sitting at an angle at my table, trying watch the speaker and take notes.

Workshop or Lecture?
UX Intensive was billed as a "workshop" even though Wednesday's Interactive Design session was actually a day-long series of lectures. Even though the topic very much interested me, by about 2pm I was having a hard time focusing, even after a second Starbucks cappuccino.

I heard from Matt and Que, 2 guys I met at my table, that Monday's Design Strategy and Tuesday's Design Research sessions were true workshops, with activities and interaction between the attendees — much different than Wednesday's lectures.

Concepts I Liked
There were many good ideas shared by Dan and Kim, some of which I'll note below:

• Research is useless in a raw, unstructured form. It's critical to filter the information and draw insights and conclusions from your research that can be applied to the project. I liked Dan's suggestion to use physical and visual representations of research, using post-it walls and drawings on various surfaces.

• Brainstorming for quantity and brainstorming in categories. Dan suggested brainstorming sprints with limited times and an emphasis on many ideas in that time. I also liked his idea of brainstorming within narrower categories, then displaying findings in a matrix or a grid.

• Failure is OK. A 50% failure rate was suggested as a good thing. I've noticed that in my sketches, the more ideas I can get through the sooner I usually find a solution. Trying out ideas that may fail, lead to a good ideas, so I find this to be very true.

• Good designers make better guesses. Intuition is important in design, and it's based on making good guesses. Dan shared principles and techniques for making better guesses and decisions.

• Living Documents. Kim Lenox talked about designing for suites and platforms, suggesting the use of living documents, sharing information and innovations, consistency and that interaction designers need to think about the integration of 3 key areas: the PC, the Internet and mobile devices.

• All products are broken. By starting with this premise, we're free to try and improve products rather than making them perfect and completely free of brokeness. Dan talked about good areas to focus on for fixes, breaking fixes down into smaller chunks, and the use of quick n' dirty wireframes with screenshots (I use this approach, and it works great!)

• Constant Communication. Use various tools such as blogs and wikis within your team, to keep communication lines open with each other, and to capture information as living documents.

View my detailed notes in my UX Intensive sketchnotes on Flickr.

Suggestions
I'll end this post with my thoughts on how the Design Interaction portion of the UX Intensive event could be improved:

• Call it a workshop only if it has workshop activities. I came expecting interaction and activities with my design colleagues and instead got a day of lectures. Workshop activities would have broken up the time, made it easier for me to focus on the ideas and apply them practically.

• Add more breaks. We had breaks for lunch and for the morning and afternoon sessions, which were great. However, because of the day-long lecture format, by the afternoon I needed mini breaks in-between the individual sessions. By about 2pm I was losing focus on the topics that a few mini-breaks may have helped with.

• Show more real-world examples. We had some nice examples in the lectures by Dan and Kim, but I wanted to see more of them to illustrate the concepts presented. Having more examples might also have helped my focus in the afternoon.

• Go narrower and deeper. I think reducing quantity of material covered and focusing on deeper real-world examples, discussions on those ideas and workshop activities might improve the relevance of the information to attendees. So much info was presented, that I couldn't adequately digest, discuss or apply with those ideas to my own design practices.

I hope these thoughts are helpful to fellow designers, and might be useful to Adaptive Path in tuning and perfecting their UX Intensive series in Amsterdam in June.

Many thanks to MakaluMedia (my employer), for sending me to the event.

Technorati Tags: uxichi07, chicago, design, rohdesign

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Rohdesign Weblog

Rohdesign Weblog: Sketchnotes

January 9, 2010

How'd That Happen?

Illustration Samples

November 30, 2009

October 22, 2009

Panel Description:

September 21, 2009

Tapstack Demo Video

Thanks SXSW and SixVoices!

Related Links

August 20, 2009

Who is Rob Bell?

August 17, 2009

Panel Description:

Questions we will be discussing on the panel:

What is a 'Panel Picker' Anyway?

August 14, 2009

August 5, 2009

The Hand-Drawn Idea

Pencil Sketches

Inked Illustration

Photoshop Production

Inside Feature Illustration

Printed Magazines: Wow!

July 16, 2009

What are Sketchnotes?

Sketchnote References

Interviews

Sketchnote Video References

Learn how to sketchnote

Logo, Icon & Web Design

July 8, 2009

June 30, 2009

June 2, 2009

Tapstack Demo Video

More Tapstacks?

Thanks SixVoices!

May 23, 2009

May 13, 2009

Sketchnoting Austin Kleon's Drawing Lessons

Presenting Sketchnote Techniques

Missing Sunni Brown's Listening Skills

Final Thoughts

Related Links

May 10, 2009

May 5, 2009

Visual Note-Taking 101 Details

Register for Visual Note-Taking 101

Related Links

April 14, 2009

March 20, 2009

SXSW Interactive 2009 Sketchnotes are Posted!

Another Great SXSW Interactive

March 1, 2009

Initial Specs and Feedback

Sketches

Black & White Concepts

Color Concepts

Facing & Solving Challenges

The Solution: Raw Sketchnote Typography

Final Tote Bags

Thank You

January 31, 2009

SXSW Interactive Official Sketchnoter

Get In Touch

Stay Positive!

January 17, 2009

January 8, 2009

December 2, 2008

Original Questions & Answers

November 17, 2008

Michelle, I’m curious to hear how the sketchnote approach worked for you. Was it easy to do? Were there specific challenges you found while capturing your sketchnotes?

How do you feel about your sketchnotes after the fact? Are they easy to read? Did they capture the detail you had hoped for?

Michelle, what do you do professionally?

Thanks so much for taking the time to share your sketchnotes and thoughts on using them!

You're welcome Michelle! Thanks for taking the time to talk and share your work. I hope it encourages others to try out the sketchnote technique at their next meeting or event.

October 20, 2008

October 18, 2008