sketchnotes

When I was a kid, some of my teachers used to get on me for “drawing during class.”

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes, I really was just doodling out of boredom. But the teachers who paid attention knew that sometimes, something else was going on: I was filtering what the teacher was saying through the visual portion of my brain and putting what I “saw” on the page.

Even now, it’s hard for me to describe this process with words. It’s a special alchemy that really helps me process what I’m hearing, especially on Zoom.

During the pandemic, I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend the 2021-22 academic year as a Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellow at the University of Michigan. Each week, my cohort would meet on Zoom for a seminar. Our speakers included creative thinkers from the worlds of sociology, journalism, linguistics, and tech.

I started making these “sketch notes” during the seminar and sending them around to the group afterward. Later on, I learned that what I was doing had a name: graphic recording.

The fellowship director, Lynette Clemletson, even had a bunch of them printed out professionally and hung in the seminar room at Wallace House. If you’re ever in Ann Arbor, go check them out!

And if you think your meeting, conference, presentation, or seminar could benefit from something like this, send me an email.