Sketchnotes for Conferences: How to Stay Awake and Engaged
By: Workday Design
Tags: Sketchnote, Conference Notes, Sketching, Drawing, Conference Engagement

Picture yourself in a drinking-from-a-firehose situation, like the first day of a four-day conference. You want to get the most out of the event (and your entrance fee), but you have some long days ahead of you, and you’re maybe a little jet-lagged. What do you see yourself doing next? Pulling out a notebook and pen and toiling to record every single detail? Doodling on a napkin to keep yourself entertained? Focusing on the speakers’ words, only to get distracted partway through?

No matter which option you picked, you’re not alone. All three methods are fraught with challenges, like fatigue, lack of focus, and hand cramps. So you might want to consider one more option: sketchnotes for conferences.

Sketchnotes combine art and writing into a product that helps you pay attention, and in doing so helps you learn. If you want to get more out of your notes, read on!

What Are Sketchnotes? Why Sketchnote?

Sketchnotes are what they sound like; they’re notes that use pictures. People seem to like looking at sketchnotes, and because they attract the eye, they are a great source of LinkedIn clout. Beyond that, sketchnotes are a great learning tool! Taking sketchnotes requires more translation of information than traditional notes do: what you hear becomes a concept, which you have to recreate on the page as a combination of words and pictures. The moment when you decide to turn “goal” into an arrow with a target, or to draw “network” as interconnected circles and lines, is where you reinforce your memory.

Here are some examples of sketchnote styles made by me and by other people!

Regardless of topic, sketchnotes use similar techniques to convey information. The sketchnotes above share many elements: large titles, illustrations, diagrams, drawings of people, and even some colors. The layout helps your eye jump to different parts of the subject. Anything considered important is called out with colored highlights or arrows or with a different lettering style. Each page makes you want to look closer to learn more.

Example of Marisa’s neuroscience notes from college

The same can’t be said of regular notes. Regular notes — handwritten, bullet-pointed, linear — are boring. All the text is the same size, with maybe a few variations due to underlining and capitalizing. This monotony makes traditional notes more difficult to scan for information. It’s easy to take these kinds of notes — it’s what many of us grew up with. But these notes tend to be transcriptions instead of highlights, which not only tires out your hand, but also doesn’t involve as much mental processing. Not having to mentally process what you’re writing might sound like an upside, but you’re more than a transcription machine — you’re someone who wants to learn something. Surely we can do better.

How Do I Listen?

Sketchnotes start with listening. I know this seems like an article about how to draw, but it’s really an article about how to pay attention to stuff in the world and extract valuable nuggets of information. To do that, we’ll detour and talk about how to dissect a talk, and how that helps you sketchnote.

When a speaker titles their talk, they’re making a promise to you about what you’ll learn from them. Every pithy quote, every title slide, every transition, every diagram should help reinforce that promise. The speaker wants you to learn and remember certain things, which they’ll hopefully call out for you, so that you can record and remember them. Title slides can become section headers, transitions become arrows, pithy quotes are embellished, diagrams are recorded. Remember that you’re not carbon-copying someone’s words, you’re just pulling out the parts that you want to remember. (A good speaker will make it easy to take good sketchnotes, because sketchnotes are all about the big picture.)

Speaking of the big picture, some things don’t translate well into images. Sometimes you’ll need to use bullet points to capture details, especially with things like anecdotes and in-depth explanations. For the things that do translate, it’s worth spending time ruminating on which objects you think should represent certain concepts. For example, it’s both easy and cliche to represent machine learning as a brain with some circuit-y lines. A laptop computer is a frequent stand-in for technology. Smiley faces usually mean “happy” or “good.” These kinds of concept-to-image sketchnote methods exist everywhere in the world; copying is totally allowed!

What’s My Style?

Should you choose to use sketchnotes, make them work for you. There’s no need to change your handwriting or your art style just to make your notes more attractive. If you’re taking notes, that’s something you’re already doing for yourself, so keep doing that! Capture what’s meaningful to you in a way that’s comfortable for you. Make your sketchnote style yours.

In the spirit of sticking with what you’re comfortable with, try to resist the temptation to go out and buy fancy new pens or an expensive notebook just so you can take notes. If that’s what motivates you, go for it, but know that it’s not really necessary or productive to have expensive equipment. The best pen is the one you have with you, and the best notebook is the one you have on hand! Whether that’s a pad of post-its and a pen from your bank, or the newest model of iPad and an Apple Pencil, use what’s available.

It’s faster to draw things if you don’t think about them too hard, and you gotta go fast to keep up with speakers! I’m a notorious overthinker, so I’d like to liberate you from the burden of overthinking. There’s a whole world of practices around the easiest ways to draw people, visual vocabulary, and hand-drawn typography. The two keys here are simplicity and familiarity.

Exploring your art style not only helps you take notes faster, but also helps you establish a connection with your notes. If you want to add some differentiation to your headers, give cursive a shot, or try all-caps. If you’re a stick figure aficionado or a star people stan, go right ahead. Making your notes yours is the key to taking better notes, and sketchnoting is one way of doing that. Sketchnotes let you inject your own personality and priorities into your notes.

Conclusion

The next time you’re at a conference and you feel pressure to do something to justify your attendance, give sketchnotes a try. By using sketchnotes for conferences, you create something that you can take more pride in and are more interested in coming back to. In addition, sketchnotes help you to do more processing of information by taking in a presenter’s words, extracting their key ideas, and translating those ideas back into images. Learning is good for your brain, and so are sketchnotes!

Have you ever tried sketchnoting? How did it go? Let me know in the comments!