Taking notes that are out of this world🚀
By: Elba Ornelas
Tags: Sketchnote, Notetaking, UX, Design Process, Drawing

A STEP BY STEP GUIDE FOR

Taking notes that are out of this world 🚀

An insight into my note-taking process, how it can work for people on Earth, and why it matters now.

🐘 Elephants don’t take notes as far as I know.

They do have an incredible ability to remember life-saving details for their survival [hint: this is why Evernote has an elephant in their logo].

Though I’m not expecting for you to depend on notes to get water, in this post you’ll find a trick or two for a lightweight life; with less burden for your mind. By taking handwritten notes you are helping your future self by keeping information in an appealing, personal, and memorable way!

In the words of David Fowler, the creative director at Ogilvy — a huge marketing and advertising agency — says:

Handwriting can lead you to ideas that are more personal and emotional. The connection between your hand and the page via a tiny strand of ink can impart something closer to your heart.

Keep reading to learn about the note-taking process I follow, the tools I use, and the benefits I’ve experienced in my day-to-day life.

🧐 Why is it relevant to take handwritten notes?

For the ones skimming through this post, here’s a handy GIF:

Think about your notes as a map which will be stored in two different places — in your memory and one piece of paper.

This map turns out to be the result of a mindful moment where you payed close attention to what you want to capture.

But how does this process works? Moreover, why is it effective?

Here’s how this works:

🧠 1. Recognize to recall. When taking notes, your brain is mapping out and connecting every visual outcome generated from the movement of your hand. This means you will recall information by recognizing where or how you wrote that thing down.

It’s a strong reason to ditch the notes app you may have for a while, and give your hands a try.

But please don’t lose the paper. 😬

These are some notes I took from a ‘Lessons learned’ session we had in the team. There are at least 3 months in between the making of these notes and the making of this post — and I still remember the core!

👁💬 2. Visual & Verbal inputs: a killer combo. Allan Paivio — a psychology professor who spent nearly forty years in research on imagery, memory, language, and cognition, among other areas — knew best about the Dual Code Theory, his hypothesis.

In a nutshell, by engaging visual and verbal inputs, memory strengthens. This wiring between words and images has profound roots in our brain’s development. This means it is a skill we can all practice and master with time.

The chances that a memory will be retained and retrieved are much greater if it is stored in two distinct functional locations rather than in just one. – Allan Paivio

📄 3. Grand focus in a rather small piece of paper.

Your brain is already busy. Computing what you are listening to, coding it to written words and/or images, and balancing everything to fit in a piece of paper.

By minimizing how easy it is to get distracted with annoying random notifications, or opening new tabs on your computer, you can enter a state of ease and control of your thoughts, and the easier it will get for you to enter the zone of massive creation, if you may.

What is worth your time and attention? Be intentional about where your attention goes. – Irene Au, Design Partner at Khosla Ventures; former head of design teams at Google, Yahoo, and Udacity.

Convinced? Great!

🤔 Now, how to start?

For the ones — still — skimming through this post, here’s another handy GIF, this time about how to get started:

🖍 1. Choose your weapons of massive analog* creation.

Remember those days when you had a favorite pencil? Or better yet, your favorite crayon?

This step is about the same concept. Is it a big fat marker, a hand-sized bitten pencil, a shinny glossy pen, or the Apple Pencil** itself?

Explore as many writing tools as possible, since the best tool is the one you feel happy with. No judging here.

*You know, because this is all about handwritten notes.

** And of course you can handwrite notes with an iPad! Right?

My arsenal of tools.

Pilot G2 of 7mm has the perfect width for writing down pretty much anything. The Pentel Sign Pen is my go-to for adding contrast, size, and weight — and it doesn’t bleed the pages of my Inc Peter Pauper Press notebook!

Once you choose your favorite writing tool, pick the perfect companion. This copilot will help you for an important task: ✨ highlighting ✨.

Choose another color, a complementary one, or a tool that has bolder/thinner outputs. I’ll explain why in a bit. Choosing the colors boils down to personal preferences, in my case I love to keep it as monochromatic as possible — so whenever I use a color, it will be with a concrete intention. Then for instance, you could think of always using a combination of black as the base color and yellow for highlights and important takeaways.

These notes are part of a training session I attended, about Writing 101. Again, the way I mapped the concepts are still fresh in my mind, which makes it easier for me to remember where I wrote these, plus, highlighting helped the overall structure.

The last step here is to choose your canvas, your white slate, your stone.

This will depend on the previous tools you chose, of course. The size, format, and material is bound to the kind of notes you want to keep. More on this later.

Personally I use dotted pages which don’t feel as intimidating as white pages and doesn’t feel as cluttered as lined pages.

Pro tip: dots help you to settle a clear-cut structure and serve as handy guidelines for your notes, arrows, lines, or drawings.

By the end of this step, you have built the harmonic triad for you.

Feel free to break it. Try new ones. Change colors. Remove colors. Add tints, readjust sizes. Anything!

This process might as well take longer than taking notes per se — feel free to reach out to friends and learn about their process and tools, experiment and iterate!

Find what makes you feel empowered.

👑 2. Hierarchy is king/queen. Contrast follows content.

Your notes are the reflection of whatever the input was.

Think of hierarchy as the blocks of information — not in lines!

Think of contrast as the edges that create an invisible structure to follow those blocks.

These notes I took were from genius webinar by Joanna Peña-Bickley. Once you train yourself to think in blocks, the notes come naturally as you listen.

These notes were from a special guest we hosted in our weekly Design Team Meeting: Jaime Jasso. Make sure to visit his work — it’s definitely out of this world!

Let’s pretend you want to capture a music festival with your notes. Or a conference, whichever is more fun to you.

There is a hidden hierarchy that you can resemble.

First, an initial happening say: registering in the ticket booth, then the artists (or speakers) show up, one after the other and most likely at the same time as others!; and finally a closing event when you leave home.

Arranging your notes in chronological order will help you out in the mapping process. Here lies the first type of hierarchy you can leverage.

Certain aspects were more relevant than the others — the artists’ performance vs. waiting in the queue for your ticket or getting out of the venue.

Here is an even greater hierarchy you may want to highlight for your notes:

Make this stand out with your highlighter,

bigger letters,

ALL CAPS,

or all these techniques at once!

This is how content dictates contrast.

I captured these notes while Roy Stanfield was talking during his webinar about the future of UX design — note (pun not intended) the use of contrast with weights and colors, as well as font change throughout the notes.

What was more important?

What elements have the same importance?

What was the least important thing?

Capture exactly that.

🎧 3. Listen.

Active listening plays an important role for taking notes — as it is for talking to someone. Do more than hearing. Give that little extra attention!

Hello again, skimmers! Another GIF for you, in case you were wondering what are considered ‘Good notes’:

If you’d like to have the written takeaway:

Good notes are the outcome of:

The full focus you wrenched for what you want to capture,

Quick distinctions between what it is important to keep and what is safe to toss,

The synthesis of a rather complex subject or process.

Trust me on this, it may look like rocket science, but it is not.

What Nathan Myhrvold IS rocket science. Watch it on Netflix, in The Creative Brain.

To gain focus, let the information flow. Embrace the JOMO [joy of missing out] even if it feels counterintuitive.

If you are capturing notes from a TED talk, you will know what is important by listening how the speaker treats their own voice when saying something — be aware of pauses, elevation in the tone, accentuated words, and such.

Whereas if you are taking notes about song lyrics, you can always pause, rewind, and play again and again.

From the TED talk, did something make you nod or smile? Write/doodle/draw it down! This means something resonated. This is the kind of material you want to keep. As you practice, you will notice how drawing may come easier — or maybe not! Don’t feel frustrated at this point.

From the song lyrics, is it being too repetitive? Write it once, mark down repetitions, and toss the rest.

When you combine the previous methods, you are likely to end up with a simple outcome of whatever the input. Try it out! Go over your notes and explain the content out loud.

Is the narrative coherent?

Did you capture the spine of the topic?

Did you miss any building block?

All good, you can try again next time.

💭 4. Stay inspired.

When I started to take notes in a more mindful [and handwritten] way, I got frustrated by not knowing how to capture thoughts swift and sweep. That’s when I took a look at the giants on the topic.

If there’s a book you may want to more than skim, is The Sketchnote Handbook by Mike Rohde. Pretty straightforward theory and full of examples from other sketchnoters.

This is THE book. There’s a follow-up called The Sketchnote Workbook, full of exercises and ideas to leverage your visual note taking skills.

Also, you may want to take a look to #sketchnotes, #vizthink, or #notetaking in your favorite social media. Not only you will see this trend going on about various topics and for several use cases, but also the amount of possible styles! Spoiler: it has infinite styles.

One of my favorite talents to follow and get inspiration is Eva-Lotta Lamm. Here use of color reinforces what she draws, and, can you see the ‘blocks’ of her notes? Follow her take on sketchnoting and visual thinking @evalottchen!

Jessica Esch is another inspiring and talented sketchnoter — notice how she plays with the size of the letters to better illustrate the important concepts. Follow her amazing work @jesch30!

You will notice the amount of drawings in the notes.

You can study the styles of the revolutionary people showcased in the book, and in social media.

And you will also notice how complex these notes can get.

It might seem too overwhelming, but worry not, here’s my final tip.

💖 5. Take these notes for you.

Remember why you wanted to take notes in the first place. Improving your memory. Having your thoughts in one single source. Keeping your mind sane by not skipping a detail.

Whatever the reason, the purpose must serve you, and no one else.

Sure, it’s GREAT to share with the world, but at the end, the only one that will make sense of your mess is, well, you. [Even with great hierarchy and perfect contrast applied.]

The best part of this journey is exploring your style, and owning it.

To achieve this, the secret — which duh, is no longer one — is to practice, practice, PRACTICE!

Don’t get frustrated if your drawings don’t look like a pixel perfect SVG icon.

Or if your handwritten letter is smashing the abstract symbols’ door. Why not starting your own alphabet!? All serious now, trust the process and keep trying!

Ok, now let’s get started…

🤩 But where to start? About what should you take notes?

We didn’t get this far to not have an answer.

Final GIF! If you collected them all, here’s the final piece with ideas on what to take notes about:

Here’s a brainstorm from yours truly:

Favorite [or not so favorite] TED talks

School Classes [I honestly wish I did my notes like this a while ago]

Webinars

Roadtrips / Travel adventures / City guides

Yoga [or virtually, any other sport]

[Audio]Book summaries [or main takeaways, lessons learned]

Cooking recipes [or baking, too]

Learnings from YouTube videos

Documentaries from Netflix [or your preferred platform]

SpaceX latest achievement

Movie plots [Bonus point: you’ll also learn about storytelling!]

Music lyrics

A concert / festival recap

Biographies of pretty much anyone you know… or googled recently.

Game of Thrones / Star Wars / Lord of the Rings / Harry Potter timelines and character development.

Meetings*

…and so on.

*Regarding meetings: define if you are going to share the notes with your team. I’ve mentioned that visual note-taking is basically for you, but there’s no harm in sharing what you captured. Either you’ll get feedback or praise — or both!

An additional note on meetings [pun intended]: