In this final episode of The Sketchnote Army Podcast season 13, we’ve gathered all the tips from 9 fantastic visual thinkers to inspire you!Sponsored by ConceptsThis episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.Concepts' vector-based drawing feature gives you the power to adjust your drawings — any time you like. You can nudge the curve of a line, swap out one brush for another, or change stroke thickness and color at any stage of your drawing — saving hours and hours of rework.Vectors provide clean, crisp, high-resolution output for your sketchnotes at any size you need — large or small. Never worry about fuzzy sketchnotes again.Concepts is a powerful, flexible tool that’s ideal for sketchnoting.SEARCH “Concepts” in your favorite app store to give it a try.Running OrderIntroKatrin WietekFilippo "Sketchy" BuzziniEric BakeyMaria Coryell-MartinJulia KnyupaTy HatchMawusi AmoakuEdmund GröplNatalie TaylorOutroLinksKatrin's WietekFilippo "Sketchy" BuzziniEric BakeyMaria Coryell-MartinJulia's KnyupaTy HatchMawusi AmoakuEdmund GröplNatalie TaylorKatrin’s TipsPick a project you are really excited about.Don't compare yourself to othersDon't overcomplicate things. Don't overcomplicate sketchnoting.Don't overvalue talent.Filippo’s TipsBarter your services.Ask your colleagues, connect, share, and give.Prepare your title ahead.Use Post-it notes.Eric’s TipsWhat problem are you trying to solve, who is it for, and what is the value of solving that problem?Where are you right now and where do you want to go?Be useful, resourceful, and know your five-mile famous world.Maria’s TipsUse a timer and set yourself a very small amount of time to do something.Give yourself the opportunity to play with color, what you see, and don't worry about composition.Paying attention to the world and just letting yourself start with notes just to start that attention.Trust the process.Practice not perfection.Julia’s TipsFake it till you make it.Work-life balance. Just continue learning every day, getting inspiration from everywhere, from your colleagues, traveling, and following people from different industries.Authenticity is the most important value nowadays so allow yourself to be yourself and be very kind o yourself.Ty’s TipsEverybody is creative in their own way, and that's okay.Enjoy what you do. You can like a range of different things, and that's okay.Set boundaries for the things that are really important to you, in your life that are not work-related. Set those boundaries, talk about them, and live your life in a way that reflects your priorities.Mawusi’s TipsContinue feeding your mind.Even if you go digital, keep drawing by hand.Don't overthink it. Just do it.Be open to trying something new.Listen to other sketchnoters.Share your work.Experience with other layouts, find out what works for you.Collaborate with your colleagues.Ask for feedback.Be intentional and tell someone your goal.Don't give up. Be patient.Edmund’s TipsBenefit from self-organized learning groups.Attend a LernOS sketchnoting circle.Zettelkasten with Obsidian is your second brain for sketchnoting.Take useful notes!Natalie’s TipsInvest and improve in what you love.Recognize what is your strength. Focus on your strength as you try and improve your weaknesses.Share your work.Write down your ideas.Get involved with the community.CreditsProducer: Alec PulianasTheme music: Jon SchiedermayerShownotes and transcripts: Esther OdoroSubscribe to the Sketchnote Army PodcastYou can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.Support the PodcastTo support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!

In this episode, Natalie Taylor shares how she slowly built her sketchnoting skills and is now sharing her work through her channels.Sponsored by ConceptsThis episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.Concepts' vector-based drawing feature gives you the power to adjust your drawings — any time you like. You can nudge the curve of a line, swap out one brush for another, or change stroke thickness and color at any stage of your drawing — saving hours and hours of rework.Vectors provide clean, crisp, high-resolution output for your sketchnotes at any size you need — large or small. Never worry about fuzzy sketchnotes again.Concepts is a powerful, flexible tool that’s ideal for sketchnoting.SEARCH “Concepts” in your favorite app store to give it a try.Running OrderIntroWelcomeWho is Natalie?Origin StoryNatalie's current workSponsor: ConceptsTipsToolsWhere to find NatalieOutroLinksAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.WebsiteInstagramSylvia DuckworthThe Sketchbook Handbook by Mike RohdeDoug Neill's YouTube channelToolsAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast. Brush pens - Crawford & BlackSharpie gel pensStaedtler two-end marker pensCrawford and Black SketchbookiPad ProApple pencilProcreateEvernoteNoteshelfTipsInvest and improve in what you love.Recognize what is your strength. Focus on your strength as you try and improve your weaknesses.Share your work.Write down your ideas.Get involved with the community.CreditsProducer: Alec PulianasTheme music: Jon SchiedermayerShownotes and transcripts: Esther OdoroSubscribe to the Sketchnote Army PodcastYou can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.Support the PodcastTo support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!Episode TranscriptMike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike and I'm here with my friend, Natalie Taylor. Natalie, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you.Natalie Taylor: Thanks, Mike. It's so good to meet you, and thank you so much for inviting me on to the show.MR: It's good to have you and I love your accent. We mentioned this before we started recording. Your British accent into the north, which I picked up. It's fun to hear. I don't hear it all the time, so I will enjoy that as we have a discussion. Tell us about who you are and what you do.NT: I am Natalie. I'm from the Northeast, as you've mentioned, in a small seaside town. Full-time, professionally wise. I'm a market manager at a brilliant university here in the Northeast, and I'm an avid sketch noter on the side in my spare time.MR: That's great. We'll definitely dive into the sketchnoting details. That's what this is all about for all the crazy fans of sketchnoting who are willing to listen to a podcast or watch a YouTube video and learn. I think that's what it's all about. I'm really curious, so we know what you're doing now. Obviously, you've got some skills in marketing. How did you end up where you're at?Maybe particularly, from a visual thinking perspective, were there things that happened when you were a little girl that directed you, or maybe in your college years or, school years that guided you to where you are now? What would be those key moments if you were to give me an origin story, I like to call it? Like a superhero origin story for Natalie Taylor.NT: I love that. I love the Avengers origin story. That's what it always makes me think of.MR: Yes.NT: Looking back, it's interesting when I've listened to the podcast, I've listened to so many episodes and I notice a lot of people tend to describe that they've always been very artistic and very into doodling and drawing. For me, I used to think that I wasn't very creative, but looking back, I've always been quite creative, but more in the writing sense. I have always doodled, but I wouldn't sit and draw and do these kind of detailed drawings. It would be very basic, like smiley face, love, heart, and flowers.I would say it's quite a recent thing that I've got into sketchnoting. I say recently it's probably 9 or 10 years that I've been into presenting information in that way. Yeah, it's interesting 'cause I didn't have that artistic background if that makes sense.University, I studied media and communications, which at the time, it got given a bad rap a lot of the time as a degree that isn't sometimes as respected as some degrees. But looking back at that, that was very creative and a lot of the tools that I used in that degree are tools that I still use now. Things like Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, even setting up a website, creating a magazine.It was all creative and using graphics in that way. Like you mentioned, my professional background is in marketing and communications, so I've been in that for around 11 years-ish. It's a little long-winded way into how I got into sketchnoting but when I finished university, I wasn't quite sure what to do.It was just based around what jobs I was looking at the time and I thought, oh, PR and marketing obviously sounds quite fun and that's creative. It was creating leaflets and a lot of design work I suppose. That is kind of in the artistic realm. It was for the local fire brigades that was creating a lot of leaflets and newsletters for the local community about fire safety.That's how I got into marketing and having quite a creative role professionally. But it wasn't until my next role, 'cause that was a one-year temporary contract that I learned about sketch noting. I was working at a very, very small startup in the ed tech field.They had this brilliant software, which was the result of academic research all about collaborative learning. It started on this amazing technology. I dunno if you've ever seen the huge tabletops. When they were around, it was around 5,000 pounds, I think one of these tables.MR: I've seen the Microsoft Surface table, the original surface, years and years ago. Something like that.NT: Yeah, exactly. Similar to that. I think it worked on that and the Promethean giant tables. It was for this very specific hardware and then it adapted to be for iPads. But when I say small startup, it was me and the director, they were the directors, but not working full-time and then a computer programmer. I was doing everything marketing and communications and trying to raise the profile of this small startup company.It's part of that getting involved, building up the Twitter following, and finding things that people would find interesting. I don't think I've actually mentioned, but basically, the target audience was teachers and educators. It was when I started going on basically education Twitter that I came across Sylvia Duckworth.MR: Oh, yeah.NT: Who's sketch notes I absolutely love. That was my first experience of sketch notes and I would just look at them and be like, "Wow, these are absolutely brilliant. And they're just conveying the message she wants to converse so well that I thought I'd absolutely love to give this a go." I did find it really, really hard to get to grips with how to actually start.At the time I would just share her sketch notes with our Twitter followers 'cause they would find them really interesting. Then as part of that role, there was also the Bett show in London. This is a very international education technology conference, and we would go along to that. We didn't have our own stand but would be on hardware stalls and demonstrate in how the hardware could be used with our software.MR: Got it.NT: Then there was just snippets of time I had to go and watch some of the keynote speakers so I remember trying to take in—Sylvia had put some advice out on how to do sketch notes, but I had at the time a little iPad mini and I didn't have a stylus. I remember just trying to do sketch notes just with my finger on the iPad Mini which was really hard.MR: Yeah. Frustrating.NT: Yes.MR: I've tried that. I can relate.NT: I bet you, yeah. It's so tricky. Sylvia shared guidance on tools and things. I clicked on the links and it was this stylus that wasn't available in the UK and I just couldn't find an alternative so I tried doing them with my finger. Then I think I just become a little bit disillusioned with it 'cause I just thought mine are never gonna be anything that I could present to anyone or that people would find interesting.As time went on, I just practiced in my own time. Then I went to Japan on holiday, and they're obviously known for stationery and technology so I got a stylist there. I just played around with it on the flight home on Procreate. I'm still, to this day, not sure why I didn't ever think of trying analog and just getting paper and pens. I think maybe I did try, but just with felt tips and biros, and then I just was a bit like, "Oh, these aren't very visually appealing."MR: Just didn't fit, right?NT: Yeah, exactly. Gradually, I just built up and just practiced. With this stylus, I did start doing some—It would take me hours 'cause I would do a lot of tweaks afterwards and start tweaking around. I suggested to my manager, but again, 'cause we were such a small business, I had to have a lot of different hats on, so I couldn't just explore sketch noting, but I said, you know, these are really kind of intriguing teachers. So, occasionally I would start one and then do a lot of it in my own time, but I started doing almost as a marketing technique.Essentially, what the software was, was like card sorting activities. You might have one on a particular moment in history and then students would have to work with them and match them up and group them together. It was all about how it demonstrated their thinking and how they'd come to a conclusion. I would just do things like 17 reasons to create your own card sort or you know, the top 10 things about collaborative learning.I'd develop the confidence to write using the stylus and it looked quite nice, but still the drawing was just not something that I was very competent in. I would sometimes get free icon libraries and just put them in instead of actually drawing them myself.They were really successful actually at getting the message across as to what the software was, and Sylvia's work in sketch note and hers was still something I aspired towards, but I became more confident to share them on our channels.MR: It's interesting that you had, I guess an inspiration, Sylvia, right? Doing this work, so you knew, it's nice when you see that. Even if you feel like I can't quite achieve it, I have a focusing point and I'm gonna go for that. You're trying all these techniques, you're buying an iPad, you're trying to use your finger, you're trying analog and it doesn't fit, and then you find a stylus in Japan. You keep on moving.There was something about you that's pretty dedicated. You were gonna get there somehow. You didn't know how you're gonna get there and you kept on fighting through it even though a lot of people might have given up and it seems like you didn't. Why do you think that was that you didn't give up? That's really fascinating to me.NT: When you've said it like that, I suppose I was quite determined. The main reason is that I just enjoyed it so much. Like I said, I couldn't dedicate much time in the professional day to it, even though there were marketing tools, but I might do the baseline in maybe an hour, and then that weekend I would spend a few hours of my own time doing it purely because I just really enjoyed it.Sylvia's sketch notes, a lot of them were based towards educators, but a lot of them were quite general. Some of them she did were around mental health, which is something else that I'm really passionate about. That mental health sketch notes are probably one of the biggest things I do now since I'm not in that role anymore.The sketch notes that I do have completely changed. That's how I first started learning them. I think the reason why I stuck with it is because I saw how impactful Sylvia's were on me. I remember printing off a couple before and keeping them up. She did one on the iceberg effect, things that you see on the surface versus what's actually going on underneath, and I just found them really inspirational.MR: I'm sort of putting pieces together. On the one hand, you enjoyed it, so I there's one component. I find, like when you have multiple components that you're more likely to stay driven. You had the enjoyment part of it. You had enough success that you thought maybe I could do some portion of it. You talked about you like the writing, but then you would use icons so that is part of it too.But then on top of it, you could see the effectiveness of the sketch notes she did from a marketing perspective. You know what works in marketing, it's obviously impacting you. You're starting to see it probably in other places. Like this is an opportunity and I can see how it could work, but there was still a gap of getting to where you could do them to communicate and that just took time, right?NT: Exactly. Exactly.MR: That's interesting.NT: I think it must have been around two years ago that I came across your book, Sketching Army, and that completely revolutionized the whole thing again.MR: Oh, wow.NT: I just came across this whole community that I didn't know existed. I knew Sylvia had a sketch noting book, but it was specifically for educators. I'd been beavering a way of doing these things in my own time, but without much guidance or training. I think I did find Doug Neill's YouTube channel.MR: He's Great. Yeah, Doug is great.NT: Yeah, absolutely brilliant. I did a lot of his tools. I remember there was simple tips on how to practice so he had, I think I call it the dictionary game. Basically, you get a dictionary, open it to a random page and sketch note a word.MR: That's a good one.NT: Yeah. That really helped just gradually dipping my toes in. It's only been the last couple of years that I've actually shared them on my own channel and done them on things that I'm directly passionate about.MR: Cool. It's been a progression, right? You've been slowly building up your skills and now you're at the point where you are doing your own sketch notes and you're sharing them on your channel, and you've built those skills up through practice.That reminds me to say to people who are new to this, they'll come to me when I do little workshops and say, "How can I do this?" Like, "Well, it's not easy, but it's still fun. You can have success to a certain degree, but to get better at it, you're gonna have to practice. I don't know how to tell you that there's a substitute, there's no magic pill you can take. There's no, can't jump in a time machine. You just have to do it."What I'd identify in your story is this idea of overlapping. I keep coming across this when I can do one thing that overlaps with something else that I like that's more successful. If I can layer in a third thing, the success rate goes up, the more I can integrate several parts of my life or my interests.If you're a gardener, let's say, if you're passionate about gardening, well, planning your garden like as a sketch note might be really fun on multiple levels so you're more likely to do it and really get into it and maybe build a technique that you could then maybe you could actually teach other people how you approach that, right?NT: Yeah.MR: That's pretty cool, and I see that in your story. That's really fun and it's really satisfying for me to hear someone who's dedicated and committed to following the passion and multiple passions to arrive where you are, which is really cool.NT: Thank you. I do absolutely love sketch noting. I think that's the main thing is that I just really enjoy it and I would see some sketch notes and think—when I discovered the community on Instagram and looked at your sketch notes and sketch notes in the book, it was a case of, "Wow, these are absolutely fantastic. I might not be there now, but I can keep practicing the exercises in your book and Doug's channel."I've got another book that's just purely doodling different objects. When I had to self- isolate with COVID over last new year, I think it was, I spent hours just doodling and practicing.MR: Well, that's good. You probably accelerated your skills there. Like taking a bad situation and making it into something worthwhile, right?NT: Yeah.MR: I got COVID, and all I got was better at drawing, or whatever.NT: Yeah. It's a nice positive spin on something not good.MR: Yeah, exactly. You make the best out of what you've got.NT: Yeah.MR: This is really fascinating. I love hearing the origin story, my favorite part of the podcast because I think it's interesting for me to hear it, but I can imagine there's people listening, I don't even know who they are, who feel like, "Oh, you know, I'm a marketing manager, I can't sketch note, but Natalie's a marketing manager and she's sketch notes and that's her story. She really had to work at it, and it took a long time. Well, I could do that."You can relate to people because there's such a variety. We try to find such a variety of people that hopefully it inspires anybody who listens that they can do it. It takes work like anything worthwhile, it's gonna take work. You said you're a writer, like the only way you get better at writing, is to write. There's no substitute, and reading, of course. Reading to get inspired by like, "Wow, look how they turned that phrase or the way they structured that thing. I wanna copy that."NT: Exactly.MR: It's definitely a form of—imitation is really important. Imitating, what other people doing, but then—I think that Natalie or Austin Kleon often talks about this idea that copying is helpful because as much as you try to copy that other person, you're not gonna get an exact copy. Eventually, your personality's gonna come through on it and you're gonna add your own little tweaks and twists and it becomes your own without you really realizing it. There is definitely a benefit to copying people to get better and figure out where you're going. That's very helpful.NT: Yeah. Definitely.MR: For you, Sylvia Duckworth, I guess is probably one of those key figures that you were trying not so much to copy, but to emulate and to follow and produce something on the level of Sylvia that would communicate the way you saw it impacted you, which is really, really fun to hear.NT: Yeah, exactly. I really love her work.MR: I'm really curious about what is some exciting sketchnoting-related project that you're working on. You mentioned mental health sketch notes, is where you're at. Is there one that you're doing now or a series or something maybe that's coming up that you're excited about that you could share with us?NT: Yes. In general, I love doing sketch notes on mental health. I think that came about with if I was having a particular struggle, I would just Google that struggle. It might be overthinking, for example, which is one of my more popular sketch notes, and I'd just put into Google ways to stop overthinking.Rather than just read that article and come away with maybe a point that I was gonna try that week and then forget about, I would start sketch noting that and sketch note podcast and books to actually learn from that. Then the bonus is that then helping other people. I've got a project coming up with a lead in mental health psychology publication that I'm gonna do a collaborative post with, and that's gonna be on four ways on how to be kind to yourself.MR: Oh, wow.NT: It's in the similar realm to the overthinking one that I've done. What's interesting is sometimes, I've noticed my friends who are very supportive and family, they'll come up with ideas and say, "Have you thought about doing this?" One thing that I'm doing at the moment is baby sketch notes.I've got quite a few friends who are having babies at the moment. One of my friends said, "Have you thought about doing a baby sketch note about the day they were born?" I took that idea and thought of different ways to make it a bit more interesting. It's like what song is number one at the time, the horoscope, the Chinese zodiac, and actually, getting those printed and framed for friends and people who'd like them.That's a very recent thing that I've started to do. I've recently done some work with an ADHD podcast who they thought it would be really interesting to sketch note one of their podcast episodes. That's been fascinating as well because I did the sketch note and my style, it is a little bit more wordy than some people's and there can be a lot going on.When she shared it on her channel, there was a lot of really positive feedback of those people saying—I remember one comment that said something like, "I'd absolutely love a whole book like illustrated in this way on ADHD because it's exactly how my brain works."But then there was a few comments that said the complete opposite in that it's just too overwhelming and there's too much to take in, so it's interesting how it works in that way. For some people it resonates and some people it just doesn't work for them in completely opposite extremes.MR: Right. I've got kids that have ADHD, and the two boys that have it, the way they react to it is quite different. They have different experiences. I think within ADHD, you could have someone with ADHD who thinks, "This is amazing, this is the way I think." Then somebody else who's got a slight variation of it would be overwhelming to them. Just people, in general, that can't maybe get into it. I think that's the nature of just humans.NT: Yeah, exactly.MR: If I go to my Amazon page and look at the reviews, there's quite a few good reviews, but there's some bad ones too. I'm a fan of Seth Godin, and he says, "Once you release your book into the world, you just stop looking at the reviews because the book now belongs to the public and you can't really do anything. It belongs to them. Looking at reviews doesn't do you any good." So, I don't.NT: That's really good. Well done on the self-discipline there. 'Cause yeah, I can imagine it's tempted to rake through them and then you've got to try and train your brain to focus on the positive ones, I guess.MR: It was probably harder at the beginning when there was very few 'cause I felt like we had a technical issue with the Kindle version that a lot of people complained about. If you look way back in the—all the one-star reviews are Kindle failures which we had no control over. It just must have been so a technical accident. We eventually sorted it out and got it solved, but in the meantime, there's all these one-star reviews, which you can't really remove.That feeling like you have to answer like what happened over and over again, and there's nothing you can do, but at some point, you just kinda let it go. The book's been around for 10 years, so that's more important than if there's enough good reviews on the book. In some ways, maybe that's the same thing when you do a sketch note, there's just gonna be people that don't relate to it and it doesn't work for them and that's okay.NT: Yeah. That's very true.MR: It's better to focus on the ones who it does resonate with because they will appreciate it and then you can make them the audience that you are thinking about as you're doing your work. Those people will really like it, and if someone else doesn't, there's plenty more on social media to look at. You don't have to look at my thing.NT: Exactly. They're also different on them with sketch noting styles. I find it fascinating and I don't think you necessarily—I mean, I didn't kind of set out with a style in. Especially, probably the last year, I think a particular style, but when I look back at the ones when I started sketch note and maybe seven, eight years ago on my little iPad they're just completely different.I use all wild colors and whereas now they're quite toned back and I'll just use one color, but that's kind of learning as you go. The podcast has been absolutely amazing, hearing about different techniques and tools and tips. That's really, really helped.MR: I just happened to pop up Instagram here and head it up so I could be aware of your stuff. I happen to look at six reasons to visit Maple and Doe, which I assume is a little shop that you like. It's just really straightforward and simple and fun. There's six really simple.I think the thing too that sketchnoting does, just by the nature of how it works, is you typically have everything on one page. You don't have to look through multiple pages. You can just get everything on a page and look through it. I can definitely see, if I scan back through your stuff, as you keep on improving, you keep on trying new things and that's really good to see.It does make sense now that you tell me that your background is in writing and that's a real strong thing for you. Me too, for my book, I wrote the whole manuscript before I drew a single thing. I think in words too. Sometimes I have to remind myself, "Okay, you can draw something, Mike." I can do like lettering and text and still have fun with the layouts and stuff and just little images sprinkled in and that's okay.It's nice that there's that variation. You could be really visual and do lots of drawings and very little text on one side and then on the other side you could be very textual with just drawings as little sprinkles, and anywhere in between there, which it's great that the sketch note community is so varied that everybody can come at it and express it in their way, which is great to see.NT: Exactly. That's really interesting that you said that you've have tended to think more in text form as well, and visuals and illustrations are brilliant. I would never have thought that it come from the other way around, if that makes sense.MR: It surprises people. A lot of times for me to solve a problem, I might write out the problem first. Then it enters into my verbal side, to quote Doug Niell. Then once I understand it verbally, because that's how I was trained as a kid, then I can engage the visual side of me, which I probably did more drawing before I knew how to write and read. Those then kick in and layer on top of it. It's pretty fun.Well, that sounds like a really fun project. I can't wait to see when it comes out. As later on in the show we'll send you to Natalie's social media connection so you can go follow her work and see when those pop up. Let's shift into tools. Now that I see some of your work, I would love to hear, what are your favorite pens? Do you have favorite notebooks? Then, of course, second would be your digital tools, how you use digital tools.NT: I mentioned earlier, I got into sketch noting via the digital side. It was only through the podcast and when I ordered your book that I realized a lot of people start off on analog. I was still doing them digitally even though I knew that, 'cause I couldn't get my head around how—'cause I'd started digitally, I couldn't get my head around how you would know how everything would fit onto one page.I'd start off and then I'd make it a lot smaller and push it to one corner. I was like, "I can't do that on a piece of paper." It was on a whim that I was out trying to find some trainers, I couldn't find any. I went into this shop called The Works that we have in the UK. I think they have it in the U.S., but it's not as much of a big thing in the U.S. I don't think. It's books, stationary. It tends to have things really good discount. I got this little—I know you won't be able to see it if you're just listening, but just like a really small one. Small little sketchbook.MR: That's a square sketchbook with a hard cover and spiral binding, I guess, is the word.NT: Yeah, exactly. It's got slightly thicker than printer paper. I thought I could just start doing some little mini-ones. At the same time, I picked up some brush pens, and I started writing with the brush pens and they were absolutely brilliant. I thought actually I could start doing that.I don't think the sketchbooks got a particular name. The brush pens that I first started using are called Crawford & Black really cheap in The Works here in the UK. Then as I progressed with the paper side, I found this old sketchbook that I'd had—like I said, I've not called myself an artist. I wouldn't sit and drawing a sketchbook, but I kept holding onto this book. I think I was thinking I might use it as a scrapbook. I'd had it for years.That's very similar to the one I've just mentioned, but it's much bigger and it's also square, so it lends itself really well to Instagram post. For the actual pens, just a few months ago, Sharpie gel pens, their 0.7. Yeah. I found they're really good for doing a lot of the actual words on the sketch notes. Then Staedtler, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right.Staedtler brush pens. I got them in lots of different colors. I use the thick side of that to do titles. Then I'll use the Sharpie gel pen to do the actual text and little drawings. I've got a bigger pencil case, but then I've got like a tiny really thin one that keeps maybe three or four pens. I'll try and keep that tiny one and then my little sketchbook in my bag wherever I go. I've got it in my bags.MR: Rough and ready in your go-bag, which is cool.NT: Yeah.MR: That sketchbook is the one you have with you, right?NT: Exactly.MR: That's good. You mentioned the Sharpie gel pens. I've been really impressed with those as well. We have them in the States and tried them in the past and really like the ink that they've manufactured is really smooth and dark. Seems to dry pretty quickly. I've been really impressed with the, I think it's labeled the S-gel here. I don't know if that's the same there, but it's Sharpie gel.NT: Yeah, it is.MR: If you're listening and you haven't tried the Sharpie gel pens, give it a try. They of course make alcohol-based permanent markers of all kinds that you can pick up, but they will bleed through most paper unless it's thick. They do have a alcohol scent to them. That's something you consider. The gel would be scentless. I think if I'm right, the gel pens are also water resistant at least or maybe waterproof, I'm not sure.I think once it goes on the page, if it gets wet, it's not gonna wash away like say a regular felt tip marker that's not permanent. I think both those are permanent markers. That's interesting you mentioned the Staedtler brush pens. It's the two-sided, right? So, there's two ends, right?NT: Exactly. Yeah. I forgot to say that.MR: Those are nice pens. I've seen those around. I've not tried them much. I need to go to the Office supply store and load up on some new things.NT: Yeah. That's the thing with this podcast, you're just like, "Oh, I wanna try that and I wanna try that."MR: Spending your money. Spending your money.NT: Exactly.MR: Talk a little bit about your digital. You said you started with digital. You hinted at Procreate. Is that the tool that you still use? Have you found any other tools and then tell us about this Japanese stylus or have you upgraded to an Apple pencil, or what's your digital status?NT: With digital, I don't think I mentioned earlier, but a huge part of the sketch note journey for me and starting to share sketch notes was getting an iPad Pro 'cause I did find it very difficult with this stylus I had, it was a stylus that has a little plastic circle on the end.MR: Oh, I know. I had this one, yeah. I know which one you're talking about.NT: It wasn't very precise. I found it quite difficult. It was the second main COVID lockdown and had a lot of time on my hands. I was sketch noting more, but they just took quite a while and the surface was quite small in the iPad mini.My manager in my previous role nominated our team for this special award thing. We won that so we each got a 300-pound voucher to use on a variety of—you could just spend it on clothes, holidays, et cetera. I thought, "Oh, this might be my excuse to get an iPad Pro because I'd wanted one for so long.MR: Covered a good part of it, right?NT: Exactly. It was COVID and I wasn't going on holiday, I'd managed to save a little bit of money because obviously, we weren't going anywhere. That was a big part of it, but when I chatted with friends and family about, "Oh, shall I get this iPad Pro?" I made a pact with myself. If I was going to do that, then I would have to share some of the sketch notes. I made a little pack with myself to do that.It was when I started sharing the sketch notes that I think I must've started using #sketchnote and I'd click on that, and I think that's when I came across your work, Sketch Army. Obviously, I came across things like the Visual Jam, Sketch Effect, Sketch Academy, all of these things, and I was like, wow.Yeah, it's called still Procreate. Again, I thought if I'm getting the iPad Pro, I'm gonna get the proper pencil. One thing that I do use, because I don't use an Apple phone, I don't have an iPhone, but I love my iPad. I wanted somewhere of things transferring across easy. I use a combination of Evernote and Noteshelf.You can get Noteshelf only of the iPad, I think, but then Evernote you can sync it so that anything you do on Noteshelf syncs. Ofter, 'cause I use sketch notes and I don't necessarily share, but in kind of planning and productivity and so, I'll sometimes plan my day out in sketch note form. I have done that on my iPad. I want it on my phone so I've got it when I'm going around and I can't really drag the iPad around.MR: Then that syncs over. Now it's on your phone wherever you are or on your desktop I suppose, if you've got Evernote there.NT: Yeah, exactly.MR: That's a smart idea. I think there's lots of these integrations that often to get overlooked that could make the connection between, like, I like this tool but I wanna use it this way. There's likely some kind of connection or there's a way to do it, I suppose. That's pretty cool.NT: Yeah, definitely.MR: It'd be interesting to see, and I haven't explored Evernote for a long time, if Evernote's in improved their drawing tools in that you could technically draw on Evernote on the iPad. I suspect there must be an iPad app of Evernote, but I don't know what kind of drawing capabilities it has. Maybe it doesn't have very good ones and it would be more frustrating. Helpful, right?NT: I can't remember why I didn't just use Evernote as the actual tool 'cause I use Noteshelf and it syncs to Evernote. I think it's 'cause NoteShelf was like a one-off fee of maybe 10 pounds and maybe—MR: Yeah, it has a subscription.NT: Whereas Evernote has a subscription, but you can use the free version to sync.MR: Got it.NT: It does have some nice tools. I'm not sure why I haven't really used it more.MR: I know Noteshelf's really powerful. It's a tool. I think that's what I use to present from when I editing presentations.NT: Oh really?MR: Because I can move the pages around, I can present, and then the way I teach sketch noting, is I like to draw right on the presentation. The cool thing is when I'm done then I can just export that to a PDF and send it to the students and it's all bundled up. It's the thing they saw, it matches the recording if they see the recording, and it's a really convenient tool. I find Noteshelf really great.NT: That's brilliant. Yeah, it's really good.MR: I did not know that it synced with Evernote. I'm not an Evernote user, but that's really good information to know in case I run into it Evernote user, and tools are pretty helpful. I think all those note-taking tools, their tools have gotten a lot better. That's really great.NT: Definitely. When I listen to the podcast and people recommend new tools and Concepts as the sponsor, I always wanna try these things, which sometimes I just don't get the time to sit and explore. I think especially 'cause doing it analog is quite new for me. That's an avenue I'm exploring.I think one of the other reasons I started to explore analog is because Procreate had an update and the pens just became too complicated and it just wasn't working. Now I've found the right brush again on Procreate, so I'm doing a mixture. There's a nice feature where you can favorite the brush thickness, which is really, really useful.MR: I've used that too. Very useful. Now we're getting nerdy, but on the Procreate size control, if you press and hold in a certain location, you can lock it and a little mark will appear there and then you can jump from mark to mark.NT: When I come across that, I thought, this is amazing 'cause I'll have one for the headers and one for the sub-headers or even just the little doodles. It's so much easy 'cause before, I think that's why I was making some things massive, something small and I just lost track of what was meant to be what.MR: Then you're using the same brush and you're just changing the size of it. You just touch the size you want and away you go, which is nice.NT: Exactly.MR: Cool. Well, now we're at the point where we talk about tips. The way I frame it is someone's listening, they're a visual thinker of some level, whatever that might mean to them, and they're excited, they like the community, they like doing sketchnoting, but they feel maybe they're stagnating or they're in a plateau or just need a little inspiration. It's wintertime here in the north so maybe they just need a little inspiration like spring is coming, whatever, but what would be three things you would tell that person to encourage them?NT: I'm not sure if I've got four or not.MR: Or you can do more than three if you wish. That's fine.NT: I certainly thought of lots of tips. The first thing I would say in line with, I'm not saying everyone needs an iPad Pro but just investing in what you love. If you love sketch noting and it is investing and that might be in time or courses. That's really helped me is just dedicating a bit of time and sometimes money to get a really good course and it can really elevate your sketch notes to the next level.It'll just get you back into it again. Often the course is a collaborative so you meet different people as well, which is helpful and learn from others. That's one thing I would say. But then equally, as much as it's invest and improve, I wanted to say recognize what your strengths are.For some people, they might be held back because there's the comparison thing, like what we were discussing earlier and you see some sketch notes that are very visual and these amazing illustrations that I love looking at. I've had to reframe that 'cause I've had sometimes, moments of lack of confidence thinking, "Oh, mine are quite wordy. I'm never gonna be a natural illustrator."I've had to think, "Well, my strength might be more in the sense of listening to a podcast and picking out the key points. That's something that I do in my professional role as a market manager is I might have to take it an academic paper and try and present it in a nice way.That's something that I've had to think is, what are my strengths are. I would say to people focus on your strengths as well as try and improve your weaknesses 'cause everyone's sketch notes are different.MR: That's a great tip. I love that one.NT: Thank you. Another tip is to share your work. I know it's not for everyone, but if you are sometimes stuck in a rut, it can help to share your work and break that barrier. 'Cause I kept my sketch note secret for years, the ones that I did on mental health and things. Some of them that I've shared I did maybe four years ago and just didn't post, but that can really help get you work out there and get feedback. Also, if you're sharing them on social media, it helps to connect you with people.MR: I suppose you could even frame that as maybe sharing, doesn't have to be with the world, but maybe it's a small group. If there's some chat or something where you can share that work. That's considered sharing. If it's two tens of your best friends, you're still announcing to your friends and they can give you feedback.NT: Exactly, and that's actually what I did first. I just started sending them—During COVID, I'd send them in WhatsApp group chats and people are like, "Oh wow. How have you not shared these before?" It's kind of like deeping your toes in it first.MR: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You go to the friendly audience first because social media cannot always be friendly, right?NT: No, exactly. That's very true.MR: Interesting.NT: Another one is just to write down your ideas. Sometimes I find if you're out and about and you're out in nature or you're away for the weekend, I think you sometimes get inspiration for sketch notes, but if you don't write them down and I'll keep them in—I've got Google Keeps, I'll just keep a little ideas list and just throw them in there. It means that when I am sat at home with my sketchbook or some time and my iPad Pro, I can actually bring that idea to life rather than thinking, "What was that again?" That's been really helpful.MR: Some kind of reference. Some kind of a spark. That's Good.NT: Exactly. I dunno whether I'm onto fifth tip now, I'm not sure.MR: I only count them later.NT: One is just get involved with the community as well. That's a tip that I would recommend. There's been a few that I've been involved with lately, monthly hangouts and your layouts workshop. I think that's just really helpful, and again, it's learning from people. You might get tips that you've not thought of that might take 10 minutes. I think one of your previous guests, I think it was Reverend Geek, said he had a 30-day challenge where he would just sketch out a word for 30 days, but sometimes he'd get those ideas from other people and communities that you're part of.MR: We have that. If you want an easy one, Sketchnote Army has a Slack channel you can join.NT: Oh, really?MR: Yep. Every day there's someone in one of the channels who posts the prompt and you can be challenged to draw it in. They challenge you to draw it in 30 seconds or something, so it builds your thinking skills. We have that channel.Also, probably the other benefit of that channel is any kind of events that happen. Lai Chee Chui, who's one of the members, she's like a hawk. She finds every of cool event and she publishes it in the events announcements channel. You'll find out about workshops or the Visual Jam we'll post in there so you get a sense of like what's coming, which is great.NT: How brilliant. That sounds great. Yeah. I'd love to join that. Thank you.MR: If you go to sketchnotearmy.com/slack, should take you to the page and you can sign up for free. It's all free. We just—NT: Brilliant. I'm just writing that down.MR: We don't save any of the back channel 'cause we're just doing the free one, but it's more spur of the moment, the interaction between people in the community, which is pretty cool. Anybody that's listening, including Natalie are welcomed to sign up and hang out in there, there's a really cool bunch of people in there.Your public sharing could be in the Slack channel with friendly sketch noters who will give you encouragement, which we aim to have our community be an encouraging community. I think that's a good place to start if you wanted to follow that tip that Natalie just gave.NT: Brilliant.MR: I'll be sure to count up the tips and I'll give them numbers to them in the show notes. Of course, we'll have show notes for all the things we've talked about. We're near the end of the podcast. Can you believe it? Like, suddenly this time has just flown by.NT: It has.MR: I would love for you to share what's the best places to go. Are there certain social media where you hang out? Is there a website we can go to to find out all the work that you're up to?NT: The main place that I share my sketch notes is Instagram and that's @natalierobertat. I also use LinkedIn, but that's Natalie R. Taylor. I did set up an actual LinkedIn page, but I just tend to not post on that end. I don't actually post my schedule notes very much on LinkedIn, but I do use it. I set up a Twitter, but again, I've posted it a few times and not really used it a lot. So, I would say Instagram.MR: Okay. Got it. We'll make sure we put a link to that. I'm on your page now and it looks like you've got a campsite bio page with some specific things that you'd like people to check out first. That's nice that you got an extended list of things for people to dig into. That's really good and you can see her work there.Well, Natalie, this has been so much fun. Thank you for joining us on the show and sharing your experience and encouraging people. I think it's, again, another great episode that will encourage somebody out there who we can't even imagine right now who's listening to this episode and being inspired and trying something out, which is what this is all about. Thank you for making time to be here.NT: Thank you so much for having me. I've absolutely loved it and I love the idea that it could help someone, so thank you for saying that.MR: I think so. I think it definitely will help someone. I'm often surprised, I think I do these podcasts and often you don't really hear much back and that's okay, I don't do it for that reason. But occasionally I'll talk to someone and say, I've listened to every one of your episodes. It's happened like four or five times recently. All the effort that you put into it, you think like, "Is anybody listening to this?"I see people downloading it, but you don't hear anything, and then suddenly four or five people say, I listen to every episode. Like, wow, okay, well I guess we're gonna keep doing that. It's really encouraging and it's definitely gonna be encouraging to someone and many people potentially. That's really great to hear.NT: Thank you. I've absolutely loved listening to the podcast when I discovered it and it was lockdown as well, so I'll go for these long walks and I've listening to maybe two, three a day just thinking, I was like, "Wow, there's eight or nine series of this?"MR: You're like a super fan, Natalie.NT: Yeah, I am. They we're kinda packed into a certain time. I think I'm up to date now. There might be a few I've missed.MR: It's quite a back catalog. Well, thank you so much and I think for everyone who's listening, that's another episode of the "Sketch Note Army Podcast." Until the next episode, we'll see you soon.

In this episode, Edmund Gröpl, a retired engineer, discovers how life is often circular. He shares his in-depth knowledge of Zettelkasten (card file in German) and how he links sketchnotes using Obsidian. Edmund shares how he is integrating Zettlekasten and sketchnotes in a new book.Sponsored by ConceptsThis episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.Concepts' vector-based drawing feature gives you the power to adjust your drawings — any time you like. You can nudge the curve of a line, swap out one brush for another, or change stroke thickness and color at any stage of your drawing — saving hours and hours of rework.Vectors provide clean, crisp, high-resolution output for your sketchnotes at any size you need — large or small. Never worry about fuzzy sketchnotes again.Concepts is a powerful, flexible tool that’s ideal for sketchnoting.SEARCH “Concepts” in your favorite app store to give it a try.Running OrderIntroWelcomeWho is Edmund?Origin StoryEdmund's current workSponsor: ConceptsTipsToolsWhere to find EdmundOutroLinksAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.Edmund on LinkedinEdmund on InstagramEdmund on TwitterEdmund’s eBookLinktreeBook: Zettelkasten by Niklas LuhmannHow To Take Smart NotesThe Back of the Napkin by Dan RoanWriting Useful Books by Rob FitzpatrickThe Sketchnote Handbook by Mike RohdeThe Sketchnote Army PodcastToolsAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.Neuland markersStaedtler markersiPad ProApple PencilConceptsMiroObsidianPowerBITipsBenefit from self-organized learning groups.Attend a LernOS sketchnoting circle.Zettelkasten with Obsidian is your second brain for sketchnoting.Take useful notes!CreditsProducer: Alec PulianasTheme music: Jon SchiedermayerShownotes and transcripts: Esther OdoroSubscribe to the Sketchnote Army PodcastYou can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.Support the PodcastTo support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!Episode TranscriptMike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike, and I'm here with my friend Edmund Gropl. Edmund, how are you?Edmund Gropl: Hello, Mike. Nice to see you. And I put one sentence on paper. Thank you so much for having me.MR: You're so welcome. I'm glad to have you. I'm excited because I know that you're really into this intersection between Zettelkasten and sketch notes. I'm really curious to hear in the section where we talk about current projects, where you're at with that. Because I think one of the things that I struggle with is I produce lots of sketch notes, but the challenge I find is organizing them in a logical way.I think your episode, your interview with us may be really helpful for me to think about how do I do that in a good way. I've got some fits and starts. I'm really personally looking forward to learning and getting some ideas from you. Before we get to that, let's start first with who you are and what you do.EG: Hello, my name is Edmund. I'm here from Germany, living in the Frankfurt area. To make it short, I'm a husband, I'm a father, and I'm a grandfather.MR: Congratulations.EG: Thank you. Thank you very much. Husband since 41 years, father then 33 years, and a grandfather since 10 months.MR: Wow.EG: Both three are really exciting.MR: Well, then congratulations to you for setting an example for us for consistency and reliability, and loyalty. It's always good to see those qualities in people because we need that. We need those models and examples to follow. Talk to us a little bit about, you mentioned to me that you were an engineer. I don't know much more about that. Why don't you talk a little bit about your time as an engineer and your specialty and what was interesting to you in the work that you did?EG: If you're in business, it's very important to talk about your profession, about being an engineer. Since two years, I'm retired, and therefore I have a lot of time and I have my head free thinking for my own, not for the company, not for the customers. It's exciting, what is changing. Is it the same as I did years ago as an engineer, or is there's some new stuff?What I didn't expect that it's a really new phase in life, redefining yourself, and you are not a retired engineer. You are your person as your own. If I look at my hobbies, I love swimming, climbing, drawing, going outside, and so, and these are my hobbies. and it's all the stuff I mostly liked when I was a child.MR: Interesting.EG: Yes. It was climbing on trees. it was playing outside, it was swimming in the gym with my parents, it was drawing, not mathematics, and all the other stuff which came important to me afterwards. That's back to the roots and life seems to be a little bit like a mirror to see what was at the beginning comes back at the end.MR: Rediscovering childhood in a way.EG: Yeah. I didn't read it in a book, and it was not a plan. I had no idea what I would do as a retired engineer, but that was it. In the last years, I was working for a big company as a data scientist. I came here from Darmstadt near Frankfurt, and here it was the time when I came as a young man studying software and systems engineering.Therefore, my head is all full with these engineering tools and concepts and methods and all this way of thinking. Sketchnoting was for me, very surprising to get in contact with all the other guys worldwide. Artists, illustrators’ facilitators, and so on and so on. It was really an enrichment of my life to have contact with different people with different professions and so on.That's in short to say about my life. It was one year ago. Do you remember, Mike? It was in March last year. There was a session from you in the internet about sketchnoting, in March 3rd or so?MR: Interesting. It's not one that comes to mind.EG: Eventbrite was the platform where you announced it.MR: It must have been interesting. That must have been—oh, that's a good question. We'll have to look and see. On the top of my head, I don't remember. The reason is there's been so many events that I've been doing that it's not surprising that I don't remember what it was.EG: I was really happy that I could watch your presentation about sketchnoting, about drawing, and all this stuff. Real life, it was Mike, personally. It was not a book, it was you in person. There were a lot of visitors in your presentation. There was this chat by, near all these pictures, and there was one of the participants from New York City. Her name was—there was only a short form, Caroline New York City and she posted Zettelkasten and Sonke Ahrens.I thought, okay, it was a session for Mike Rohde, it's about sketchnoting, there's some new stuff about sketchnoting. I have a whole bunch of literature about sketchnoting. I think all the books of all sketchnoters worldwide in different languages are on my bookshelf. I said, okay, Zettelkasten, it must be amazing. I bought this book, let me show you. It's a Kindle book, "How to Take Smart Notes."MR: Interesting.EG: Yes. Sketchnotes, smart notes, smart sketch notes. I started reading, and I was disappointed.MR: It was all text.EG: Yes. It's only text. The whole book is full of text. No sketchnotes at all.MR: Interesting.EG: And it was about note-taking. Then this boring stuff at the beginning, because only text, I said, okay, if it's not said what is the best way for note-taking, and I translate it in what is the best way for sketchnote taking or taking sketchnotes. I read all this book about note-taking with a sketchnote metaphor in mind, and that was an amazing book.This book from Sonke Ahrens it's not written from an engineer or from a writer, it's a German sociologist as well as this Niklas Luhmann. Let me say in short, who invented this Zettlekasten method.Sonke Ahrens explained it in his own language, and it's an amazing stuff. It's worth reading twice or three times this book. It's about 250 pages. What I learned reading one book about sketchnoting is not okay. I read the book, I'm now a sketchnoter.It needs a lot of practice. With the note-taking, it's the same as taking sketchnotes, it needs a lot of practice, but you need to know a lot of principles behind, and I say hidden principles. In the first moment, you couldn't see these principles.Mike, I looked at your book first. It was amazing, the sketchnotes, the ideas, but it needs maybe one or two years, I came back to your book and say, okay, now I understand it. You have no chance to understand it from the beginning. With note-taking, it's nearly the same.That is my hobby since one year. Since your online session about sketchnoting. To mix it a little bit up to say, okay, that's Sonke Ahrens and that's the Mike Rohde, put it together and that's my hobby since nearly one year. 362 days is my Zettlekasten hobby.MR: I had no idea that a workshop that I was teaching had sparked you along this path. That's really exciting to hear. That's pretty cool.I know we're gonna talk more about what Zettelkasten is, how you've overlapped it or integrated it with sketchnoting, but I think I wanna go back. We've gone back one year to last March.Now, let's go back to when you were a kid, and as you grew up in school and as you went to university, and as you worked in business as an engineer. I'm really curious, what were the moments in time, because you talked about when you were a kid, you liked drawing and now here you are again at the end drawing again in retirement years.What was it that kept drawing alive? Or maybe it didn't stay alive and it had to be resurrected later. Talk about your path from a little boy to now. What were those key moments that brought you to where you are now?EG: It's not drawing as a child, as a senior citizen, or so. It's at school first. I loved drawing most. Then they said, "Drawing is for small children. You are growing up and the really intelligent and clever ones, they can write and they can calculate. Drawing is only for the small ones."But that was at the beginning of the school, but in mathematics, there are also some specialties where you can draw with a pencil, with a ruler, with a circle. It's not freehand drawing, but it's visual. I learned in mathematics also in physics, that all the visual stuff was for me, easy to understand.For example, I'm really good in mathematics and physics and chemistry, for example. There was a lot of stuff I had to learn by heart that was not my idea. The visualization of elements, it was a little bit boring. Mathematics and physics was much more exciting too. In physics, to draw the experiments from the teacher on the sheet of paper and to say, okay, that's the motor, that's the battery and have it with symbols and the wires you can draw.This physical stuff was the way I learned. That was also a reason for becoming an engineer. Engineering is also stuff with drawings there. There are concepts, there are diagrams, all this visual stuff, and that helps a lot. Coming in my professional life, after I was a systems engineer from university, I had to communicate with others, with the colleagues, with my boss, with the customers.Then my drawings were these engineer drawings. I would not like to explain it too much in words. I will draw this system. We want to sell you this system that solves your problem, and so on. Or this process diagrams, flow diagrams and all this stuff. That was all visual. Therefore, I'm sure there are different styles of thinking maybe we are all born with. If you're more visual thinker, it's easier to become an engineer or an architect, and it's easier than to become a lawyer or something like this.MR: I know the physicist that I've spoken with Rob Dimeo and others who talk about physics is really dependent on visuals, and so, they find it a real natural companion to sketchnoting, which is pretty interesting that you mentioned it as well.EG: That's the side when I came to sketchnoting—and let me show you one book, I think one of my first sketch noting book was from Dan Roam.MR: "The Back of the Napkin." Yep. Great book.EG: It was a lot about the concepts itself. And I understand the concepts with a mind of an engineer, but years later, after Dan Roam, that was your book, I had a sketchnoting workshop over five days learning sketchnoting from a guy from Berlin, if I remember, Dick Hanaman.MR: Dick Hanaman. Okay.EG: Dick Hanaman from Berlin, he's giving sketchnoting workshops.MR: Great.EG: That was one of the books he recommended. With this book and with this workshop, I learned the stuff behind it, what does it mean to draw a line in this or in this way, why are there thicker and thinner lines, how to focus the attention on a special part of the drawing, and that was not in this book. Then came the book of Mike Rohde. I was happy to understand after years what drawing really means. I was working for a big company with more than 200,000 employees.MR: Oh, wow.EG: There's an internal platform or an internal community of self-organized learning. If you have some interesting stuff in engineering, in whatever, in the internet, you can post that you will held a session via Zoom or a special tool to show others, oh, there's interesting stuff for you about databases, proclaiming, and so on. And I offered Sketchnoting sessions, and it was two weeks after my first sketchnoting workshop and I held this session with 400 colleagues.MR: No pressure. Edmund, no pressure.EG: It was a feeling like flying in the air.MR: Wow.EG: I was able to draw a sticky man and write my name on paper. It was not only one session, it was repeatable. Week after week. That was really a nice feeling to say, oh, that's the right direction, and therefore I banned all my PowerPoint from my presentations, used the flip chart with the Neuland markers. It is the only ones I can use because I can use them for drawing and for writing. If the paper is white, the pen is black. What we had in the company before was you can't use this stuff. I always had my own Neuland markers with me.MR: Me too.EG: And the corporate material or markers most times they were old, two or three years old.MR: Dry.EG: Dry. You have to throw them away. That was it all with Neuland. Also, as an engineer, drawing on a whiteboard, it was the same with the dry markers years before, but with the Neuland markers for the whiteboard, I was the king. If we had a meeting, blah, blah, blah, this and this. Then Edmund uses his Neuland marker, went to the whiteboard, and explained how it works.MR: What we just talk about, Edmund would visualize it for you.EG: Yeah. It was amazing. It was all I think a little bit by excellent. It was not planned in my career.MR: Organic, maybe a good way to describe it, which is always good because you follow it because it's interesting. You didn't follow it because somebody told you to, or you had to because of your job. You did it because you were interested and you came to love it, it seems like.EG: Most of the stuff by accident, and what was the term I got from the internet? Serendipity. To be open to see things you wouldn't expect. As I told you, it was the same with Zettelkasten. It was, you were sketchnoting session in the internet.MR: That's funny.EG: The girl from New York said, Zettlekasten and Sonke Ahrens. Really cool stuff.MR: You just never know what's going to send you in the new direction.EG: Yeah.MR: Which is great. That's a great thing about life, right, if you're open to it. Which I would argue that people that stay in the sketch note community are very open and interested and curious people, I think by nature. Probably something else you share in common when you go to an event with other sketch noters, everybody's curious and loves to learn and loves to share. Those combination of things seem consistent to me. That makes a great community because there's just endless things you can learn about and endless things to do, which is exciting.EG: It's really my experience learning and talking with sketch noters, it's just another family. It's not the engineering style. It's another mindset. And I love it. They are from different professions. That's a big difference to my typical work as an engineer or as a data scientist.MR: You also have the international component, so not only are they from different walks of life and different interests, but they're also from different countries. Even then you have another perspective change, right? Even in countries in Europe as well as the United States and around the world, everyone has a little bit different view on things so you can learn some new things from those people from other places. At least that's what I've experienced. My life is so much richer because of the community for sure.EG: In this community, I really love this sharing mindset and this lifelong learning. And being curious, there's new stuff. There's a new app for drawing, could you please tell me a little bit about it? For these digital tools, they freely give away a digital brush set.MR: Right. Yeah, it's a great community, and we're glad you're part of it. Thank you for your contributions for sure. Speaking of contributions, I'd like to hear a little bit more about Zettelkasten, how it integrates or overlaps with sketchnoting.Probably, the best place to be would be to give us some history. Where did the term Zettelkasten—it seems to me like a German word from what I've done. Maybe take it from there and give us a backstory. Obviously, we know how you came across it. How do you then apply the Zettelkasten idea with sketchnoting?EG: You are right. Zettlekasten is a German word, and I think if you translate it right, it's a slip box. Typically, a slip box is a wooden box, small ones with a lot of note cards. This German, this Niklas Luhmann, this professor from Germany, a sociologist from Germany from the last century. He had a wooden Zettleksten with about 90,000 notes he'd taken in his life.MR: Wow. He must have had more than one box for that.EG: Yeah. It's a small format, and there's only written down his idea he got while reading a book while reading an article. Not reading in the internet. That wasn't invented at that time. When he was ready with creating this note card, he put it in a Zettelkasten.MR: A slip box. Yep.EG: In the slip box, yes. But you would say, okay, what's the way coming back to this Zettel or to this note card some days, weeks, or months or years later? That was the system we all know if you're familiar with the internet, he put a number on top of his note card, an identificater, an ID. It was written the date and the time when he created this note. And whenever he put some ideas on paper, he linked this note with another ID of another note card.For example, if you would say ideas not art, and put it only here on this note card, then he should put a link to the note card of Mike Rohde, with a Mike Rohde Id and maybe a must be an ID from this book.MR: Got it.EG: Then he put it in his Zettelkasten. Later on, if he was working on an idea, he want to write an article, or was writing a book yet idea, okay, there are some note cards. They're important for this stuff. I got them from my Zettelkasten. With these two or three cards, there are a lot of connections to the other note cards in the Zettelkasten.MR: Then you pull those note cards, right?EG: He put this on his desk, rearrange it a little bit.MR: Card sorting. Yeah.EG: Card sorting and say, okay, all the ideas are on the table. It's an easy stuff for writing. He was never sitting with a blank sheet of paper. Always starts with his notes. Note cards he captured days, months, or years ago. Niklas Luhman, it is said he was very productive in his life. I'm not good in remembering numbers, about 400 articles and 90 books. It's unbelievable for a lifetime.MR: Wow. The thing that makes me wonder is there must have been some kind of index. When you do the ID on the card, you must have to also—I think about the bullet journal. When you put entries into your book, you're supposed to add that to the index so that you can find it later.Is there an index component to this as well? Or do you have to just rifle through your slips? How would you know by the ID whether it's the thing you need, you'd almost need some organizing structure where you would say things about this are these numbers and things about that, or something. Tell me about that.EG: You have different types of notes in your Zettelkasten. The main part of the Zettelkasten are so-called permanent notes. Let me say there's a phrase to call them atomic notes because on one Zettel, there's only one idea. There's not an article or a story. One idea. Okay. And there are other types of notes. For example, structure notes and structure notes says, okay, that's my topic. That's about—MR: Gardening. Let's say.EG: It's about gardening. On this structure notes, you say in gardening, you need tools plants and whatever, soil and you put a list of important stuff for gardening. What are the 10 most important tools for gardening? Put it on this paper. And link it with a note card you already have in your Zettelkasten.MR: Got it. There is some manual, identification and crosslinking and such that you would do. That makes sense.EG: In book writing, it's an index. This structure notes are indexes and there are table of content. You have some structures like the structures in a mind map. In outlining of an article, for example, you have some main ideas, some sub ideas, and so. These structures are on special cards, but on the structure notes, they are only structure information, no content. The ideas are on separate permanent notes, and you have the structure notes.MR: In the physical box of cards, box of slips, I would assume, maybe in the back is where all the content notes are or the idea notes. And maybe in the front is where the indexes and structure notes live. You would maybe first go to the front part of the box to look for topics and say, "Okay, I need card number, this, and card number that and this."And based on that, then you'd go in the back and pull those because they would be in some order, then you could pull 'em all out and then lay them out and do what you will, and then return it all back to the box, assuming you didn't add some notes. If you added notes, then those would go in. Indexes would be updated and the new slips would be put maybe in the back, I suppose.EG: Yeah. These are the main types of notes. How to create the note, if I'm reading a book and I'm note-taking, I use my Zettels, and if there's important information on page 56, I put my idea with this important idea from the book on the literature note card. Literature note card only means it's the content I read in the book with my own words. It has an unique identifier, and with a digital tool, it would be a title.You don't need these numbers anymore. From a hindsight, you have to order and to sort them ad you have no search function. Today, you only have the title, you have the content in your own words, and you have a link to the source. Literature note—MR: Easily do with these tools that exist now, right? Linking is easier.EG: Yes, the only must with the literature note is to have a backlink to the source itself.MR: The book itself and the page number itself.EG: The book also to the author. And the literature note is not a permanent note. Maybe on the same day or little bit later, you will take you a literature note, look at it and say, "Okay, are there any connections in my mind, which may be important?"Maybe it's a phrase from your book, Mike to focus attention in your sketch note. And you said, okay, there's a connection to attention, and there are a lot of note cards, they are connected to attention. You put this on your—if you are started to link your literature note with other already existing permanent notes, then you transform this literature note to a permanent note. And the literature note vanish.MR: Doesn't need to be kept yet.EG: Yeah. With a linking to other notes, you have two possibilities. One is the link, like a hyperlink in the internet and the other possibility to link to other concepts, ideas, or whatever is tagging as you do it in Instagram, in Twitter, and—.MR: The hashtag.EG: —whatever. It's all the stuff we already know, but did it on paper. We are really lucky to have the computers and you have modern tools for this idea of note-taking. My favorite tool is called Obsidian. It's one of the favorite tools from a lot of writers. Starting with a steep curve in, if you ask at Google trends about Obsidian, it's a very slow line and rising high in the last month or years.It's a really great community. It's a little bit this sharing style, like the sketch noters. If you are in an Obsidian community with other guys using this tool and using the Zettelkasten method, and you ask a question, you are sure there's an answer within a few minutes. They really help each other. What is behind as I said to you in the beginning using sketchnoting seems to be easy, but you need a lot of experience.MR: It's a learning curve. Yeah, for sure.EG: It's not so steep learning curve. The same is with notetaking. It seems to be easy, as I told you, only a few types of notes. Use it on paper or use it on the PC with Obsidian tool, but it's really learning, learning, learning. In my professional life, most part, I need a lot of time in my business for note taking, with sketch notes without sketch notes.What, for me, was fascinating. If you have a note card, you can draw on it. There's no need. Like Niklas Luhmann, I think he wasn't a visual thinker. I do not know him personally, but only writing text or note cards. He couldn't have read your book in this time.MR: Yeah. Yeah.EG: There was no drawing at all. Unbelievable. But today, I think use a note card, put your drawings on it, and you have a mixture of sketch noting and note-taking with a Zettelkasten method integrated in the Obsidian tool.MR: Tell us a little bit how you do that, because that's the part where—I've got a text editing tool. I use Ulysses for writing. It can do some linking, but it's not optimized like Obsidian is, which I've considered, but for now, it's been great for writing. I use folders and structures.It also does tagging, so I could do some of it, but I'm really curious to see like bringing in the visuals into Obsidian. I would guess that you could attach images. You could do a drawing, take a photo and attach it to one of these cards and then use your linking and tagging to make sense of how it fits in the greater whole. Talk to us a little bit about how you make that work.EG: It's a little bit like linking a drawing to a note card. It's like building a webpage, there's the written stuff, and then there's a link to a jpeg or PNG or whatever file. For me, that's the same for drawing. I typically us my iPad with the Concepts app. I can export it in this—MR: It's an image.EG: Yeah. It's an image at the special formats. Then they are linked in the Zettelkasten tool. I can reuse. Also, it's only a link to the image. There's one place, they are all images. It's big box with thousands of images. And there's one link to one note. If I use the same image in another note, there's only a link to this image.MR: One link. Got it.EG: One link and one—you say you have a tool using folders.MR: Right.EG: I was trained my whole life working with folders. I'm not sure if it's a German invention to put all stuff in folders. I had these folders before the PC was invented. In the living room, wherever you look, there were folders with different Zettels here. And it was a nice feeling putting all the stuff in the folders. It looks pretty. When I had the idea, coming back to an idea, which was the right folder, where did I put it in? and I lost a lot of time my life for searching.MR: Searching for things.EG: The most confusing thing was this folder structure with sub-folders and sub-sub-folders. It was this tree-like structure, and you never which branch and which leaf and couldn't find it. What was really hard for me, learning the Zettelkasten method there, I would say no folders. All these permanent notes are in one folder. That's a crazy feeling. If you do it at the beginning and you'll say, okay are there the right links? Do I have a link to the source? Do I have a link to the author?And then you put it in this box, in this permanent note box, and it vanishes, and it's gone. From your life, you have no experience, is there a chance to get it back? Although I knew it's easy to get it back. There's a perfect search function, full text searching in this tool. You can look at the links. You have a craft view. You have a crafted representation of this network. You can filter this craft view, and it's really easy with all these tools coming back to an idea. But using folders the whole life—MR: It's very comfortingEG: It's a brainwash to put something in this black hole.MR: Like putting it in the sea.EG: I will never get it back.MR: Interesting. Well, I suppose, if I were to think of the one thing that's close to folders in this method would be tagging. You could have multiple tags. In a way, you're marking it in a folder, but it can be in more than one folder. That's the beauty of tagging where with a folder, there's only one, and if you can't find that folder, it's lost.I guess now with tools like Ulysses as an example, I can do searches and find things. Ideally, and probably the way I would go about it is probably use tagging to start tagging. Then I guess the challenge around tagging that I've seen in my lifetime is being consistent with tagging. Because maybe one tag is icon and then you accidentally say icons and now you have two tags.So, forming a manageable set of tags is probably a challenge because if the tags get out of control, then you could potentially have more processing stuff. You probably have to be disciplined about tagging, I suppose. To have a pretty structured tagging organization otherwise could get outta control, just like folders could.EG: It's really important point you talked about, this tagging and what you need at most at the beginning of working with a Zettelkasten, to have some kind of architecture for your text. What is important, what needs to be tagged in which way and not to have an idea of all the text from A to Z, but you have this taking architecture.For example, I have texts about hashtag type. And in Obsidian you have not only one level of tagging, but two levels of tagging. You can say hashtag type slash note slash sketchnote.MR: So, modify in a way.EG: Slash book. It's not about the content of the note, but it's more a little bit like metadata. If you come back, for example, oh I'm not sure what it was, but it was from a book, and then I could use this hashtag-type book. And then I have a list of books, and then I say, okay, but only the last two weeks. Then the list is very short and say, "Okay, that it was."You can find things and have no—you wouldn't be able to have a prompt, a search phrase. In Google, for example, you need some phrases to find the stuff. With your tagging architecture, you can search for stuff where you have forgotten the phrase.MR: So, probably tags for someone who, like you and me, have been trained to use folders for our whole lives, and that's a comfort for us. Probably the bridging mechanism to Zettelkasten might be tagging and then linking as well. Because in a way, tagging becomes like your representation of what the folder means. It's a metadata. It's the thing that defines the category.EG: In my architecture, I have for example, this taking of types, and as a process engineer, one of my jobs in the past, there was input, computation, and output. Then I have the tech input, and I can say it's from the internet, it's from the book, it's from YouTube. Sometimes, I only have an idea where it comes from. And other texts are about output to say, okay, I put it to Twitter, to LinkedIn, to Instagram or whatever. That's not about the content of the note, but only where it comes from, where it goes to.In this architecture, there several metadata sets I can extend at the end. The list of output, it's infinity to extend it, but this main structure it's very important to have it at the beginning, but when you have hundreds or thousands of notes and you have to change all this text, it's not so much fun.In Obsidian, there's a plugin. There's a plugin, if you say icon or icons, you can say, please change all text icons to icon, and that's makes it easy.MR: Yeah. Interesting. Is there so you think the Sonke Ahren's book is a good place for someone to start who's maybe interested. Are there other resources you might recommend? Are there classes or YouTube videos or something that might be helpful to get people started on this? Secondarily, once they've established the base, is that a Zettelkasten structure then is there reference for how to integrate visuals into it?Because it sounds like a lot of what I've seen is more text oriented, like linking and writing and so forth, it's all text, and there's not so much emphasis on integrating images. I think for sketch and visual thinkers, having that additional information would be useful. In addition, like once you set up the structure, then how do we integrate images into it would be helpful.Some of the things you've hinted at like there's a big folder that has all the images in it, and then you just link to it. And I suppose that's part of the whole box, right? So, you have one folder that's got all the text and it's all linked together, and then one box with images or something, and then you link them together.EG: I have one folder. The folder is called visuals. They're all my images. I have a folder, as I said, a permanent notes. They're all this permanent notes stuff. Other stuff, for example, I collect a lot of PDF files. Maybe I have books in PDF format or table of content from a book I have on paper in PDF, and all this stuff of value in my assets folder and I can link them easily.MR: All between each other.EG: Some of the sketch notes I have in PDF formats from others.MR: I see.EG: Assets for example, are the sketch notes from others I collected as an example, as a source of inspiration. In the visuals, I have these drawings from myself. As Niklas Luhmann did writing it down with your own words, it's drawing with your own pencil.MR: Yeah, same thing. Just a visual interpretation.EG: There's no difference. Therefore, the only difficulty with this book of Sonke Ahren, believe me, there are no pictures.MR: Yeah. Exactly.EG: Most of the sketch noters can draw, and therefore, it should be possible.MR: Now, I know that you offer, as part of your show notes that you pre-sent to me, there's something about an e-book. Is the e-book address using Zettelkasten for visuals and sketch notes? Is that what the book is about?EG: Yes. My idea was using the Mike Rohde book and using the book from Sonke Ahrens, put it together, but not to repeat it. But to say, what does it mean if you put it together? I give a lot of hints and advices how to structure the folders, how to use the architecture for the tagging.MR: That sounds like exactly—EG: That's more important. If it's more, oh, sketchnoting, then there's a link maybe to your book or maybe a link to a YouTube video. All the details are links to the internet, to some Zettelkasten videos or to sketchnote videos, or other material. And it's one overview. It's a book, would say a structure note with a lot of sketch notes and with links to all this stuff you need to put together.MR: Got it.EG: It's a book full of references.MR: So basically, if someone is listening to this and getting excited about the idea of, say, picking up Obsidian, which by the way is free for personal use, sets up Zettelkasten so that they can manage their sketch notes. That this would be the next step would be to get the book that you've created in order to structure it and start working with it and integrating it. Would that be the right way to think about it?EG: And the idea of my book is not writing it and publishing it in two or three years. I'm fascinated from this idea learning in public and publishing all the stuff. If I'm sitting here at the weekend writing a chapter in this book, then it's published in a pre-published version. I published already 15 versions. Most, it's one more chapter, some more links, and so on. It's growing and growing. What is really nice, the sketch noters and the Zettelkasten community, they all help me writing this book.MR: Oh, great.EG: I don't understand this sketch note. What do you mean with a sentence? I got feedback and okay, it's not printed this book. It's a PDF. It's on GitHub. It's freely available and all this feedback, there's an update and I can improve it. I earned my money as an IT engineer with HR projects. And we put running software to a customer a few days after he agreed with us the contract, and we were improving and improving. Today, it's possible also with books.MR: It's a mindset. It's a living book in a lot of ways. It's almost like software documentation, right? As you build the tool, like pieces are removed and replaced or depreciated, or things or features are added. In software, you have to document this stuff so that it's tracked, and you can go back in time and look at the old version and see, oh, that's right. We had that feature, and because of this and that, we removed it. It's no longer in the documentation.I suppose, in this case, you're doing more adding, but I suspect at some point maybe something would disappear or whatever, and you might have to replace it or something. Like a link, say somebody website in five years goes away, you might have to find a new link to that or something.EG: With Zettelkasten, I started in March '22, with your even bright workshop.MR: That's funny.EG: And then I started writing the book because the idea is not to take notes and to put all these Zettels, as I said in this box. It's a black hole. What do you need? That's very important for all who want to start with the Zettelkasten. You need the goal. What do you want to do with all these ideas in this box?MR: Right. How's it gonna be applied?EG: That's not the final destination. That's an asset. As a proof of concept, I have to write a book. Otherwise, all these ideas would vanish in this Zettelkasten box. And they're beautifully linked, nicely teched, but it doesn't make any sense. What I found in the internet, I think nearly as great as the sketch noting book from Mike Rohde, as great as Sonke Ahrens Zettelkasten it's about "Writing Useful Books." It's from Rob Fitzpatrick. You see, it's full of highlighted text, every page full of nuggets.Yes, yes, yes, the idea that non-fiction books are problem-solving books. You need to know the problems of your potential readers and to show them on the first page, which problem are you looking at, and how you can help them. And if you read the table of contents, there are a lot of promises from the author, how he could help you to solve your problem. And then, this as very short in writing, as you see, it's a small book.MR: Yeah. It's quite thin.EG: Quite thin, but full of value. Other books 500, 600 pages. I stopped in the middle of the book. I had no time in life to read it to the end. And that's the third book in my project, using the contents here of these right useful books to get the Zettels out of the Zettelkasten to create project notes, to create consistent chapters and sub-chapters, and to deliver result from all this syncing behind.MR: I think the other challenge too, that it's important to have a purpose would be if you just did the Zettlekasten just to do it without a purpose in mind, it would just go into an ocean. I think eventually your motivation to maintain it because it takes work to do the linking and all this, even if you get into a rhythm, it takes work. Just like sketchnoting, it takes more work to do sketch notes 'cause you have to really think about it and you're analyzing. So, it takes effort.Unless you have a purpose for it, eventually you're gonna, "Uh, I don't want to put a link, I'm tired, I don't wanna write a link, or I don't wanna do a tag." Then the next thing you know, then you're not adding thing. You know what I mean? It's like, would degrade ‘cause you didn't have a purpose for it.By having a purpose, like in your case, writing a book, it meant that you had something that you were doing. And now everything that goes into your Zettelkasten is likely for future additions of the book, or maybe now some new project that the Zettelkasten serves a purpose for, I would guess.EG: As a process engineer, in my Zettelkasten, I measure the input, I measure the output, I can measure the productivity, the relation between output and input, and I can see is it working. Is the process working? Are there some bottlenecks in the Zettelkasten? What takes the most of my valuable time? Is there connection between the idea at the input to the book at the output? Is it a little bit complicated or is it directly connected? How long does it take to get one idea in and one idea out? If I take this book, it's from 2012. If I would use one concept to improve my output, that 10 years between your idea, your shared to my idea, I shared.MR: The application.EG: Yes. And my idea is to shorten it a little bit. Reading a book, reading another book, connected and having an output and an output of value to solve a problem of my readers. That's more than note taking.MR: It's another level up.EG: It's a philosophy that connects really the organizational part with the Zettelkasten, the visual part with the sketch notes and the value part from "Creating Useful Books" from Rob Fitzpatrick.MR: Overlap of three things.EG: Combining three things and say, okay. That's for me, it makes sense. It's not only a machine, I'm focused on the wheels, didn't have a look at the motor, but I want tto build this car, and it's really working. You can use it.MR: Well, this is great. Thank you, Edmund. And you know, if you've been listening to this discussion, you're getting ideas in the end of the show, of course, have contact information for Edmund so you can reach out directly, but we'll also have links to his book and the other books that he's mentioned so you can do your own work and download obsidian and those kind of things, and try it out. I think this has been very helpful. I'm hoping that it will inspire some people to maybe organize their sketch notes using this method. That would be great.EG: I hope it solves one or another problem from all these guys taking notes their whole life, being a student, being a professional. And so, take their notes, but having ideas to improve this process. Taking sketch notes, not only the written stuff. Remember the old stuff, finding back to old ideas, combining with news, and having the chance to give the ideas a chance. They can meet in a Zettelkasten although they came from very different sources.MR: Right. The opportunities are pretty great there. Well, this has been interesting. Let's shift a little bit now. We'll talk a little bit about tools now. Let's start with analog tools and then we'll talk about digital tools. You've hinted at some of these things already, but let's go more in detail. Starting with analogEG: I already mentioned it I only used this Neuland and the reasons I gave you.MR: They're all there.EG: The only Markers, they really work in a professional context. That are my fine liners on paper. Is it?MR: Yeah. The little guys. Yes. Staedtler,EG: It's Staedtler. I think it's from Germany, but it's a way. The Neuland markers they also sell the Staedtler stuff.MR: Yes.EG: It's the same is only a branded Neuland on it. But it's the same. Perfect quality for me. That was my life before I got an iPad.MR: Tell us about how the iPad changed you. You mentioned that you've made a shift from one application to another. I'd love to hear not only what those two tools were, but then the rationale for switching and what led you to the new tool that you're using now.EG: With my iPad, I looked at the internet and to all the sketch notes and they told me there's only one tool you can use, it's Procreate. I had a lot of experience with Photoshop in the past, and it was not so difficult to understand how to use the Procreate tool. But I struggled a little bit with my canvas. Is it designed for a letter format or for a large poster? It is pixel-based the Procreate and enlarging your drawing means there is all this—MR: The jackety edges.EG: Yeah. It's not so nice. The Procreate, if you say, okay, I'm not sure which format is the best, I plan for the highest resolution and can reduce it if I need. But then the fights were getting bigger and bigger. With a Concept app, it's a vector-based format. I can resize as I like it. At the beginning, at the end, and the canvas is infinite. If there's not enough place, there's place for an extra drawing and I put it together.What I learned is, it's very easy to handle an object library in the Concepts app. Most of my life, I was working with PowerPoint. PowerPoint means use it as a tool putting different visual objects together. This PowerPoint style of working I can use with a Concepts app. If I drawing a house or a special icon, some eggs are very easy, a square or triangle. I can put it on the surface as well.But if it's a little bit more complicated, a stopwatch or so with some details, it costs me a few minutes to do it well. Then I can go to the library, put it together, and it's all my shape. It looks like freshly drawn from Edmund. It's not a library I bought.MR: You made it yourself.EG: I can say from Microsoft. I would say, okay, there are a lot of visuals, but they are not from me. And it makes it very personal to use my own icons, my own drawings. What I have to learn is to write my name with nice letters. And that's not so easy, it takes me most of the time to learn this architect's handwriting.It's all in Concepts. It's now not so difficult to, produce nicely looking stuff. Not only for me but also for others. Also, I'm not an illustrator. I'm not a professional artist. And graceful enough, that was the phrase I got from Mauro Toselli.He said, "The sketch notes must be graceful enough, not more." There's no need for, but if they're really ugly, someone would say, okay, it's hard to read. I do not really understand. Is it a horse or a dog or so? It must be graceful enough. That's possible very easily with pre-drawn objects I use most times.MR: Interesting.EG: Therefore, if you say there's a better tool, okay, I will have a look at it, but at the moment, I'm pretty happy with my Concepts app.MR: That's good. That's good. We'd like to hear that. It's always about finding what fits the way you work. Some people, Procreate just works the way they like to, and they don't have these challenges of sizing in vectors, and it works fine for them, which is great. But if you have other needs, it's great that there are other software out there that can do what you need to do. It's important that we have variety, and we definitely. We are very lucky that the iPad has lots of options available to us.EG: It's the same iPad, it's the same pencil, and everyone can use the tool which fits to his own personal styles.MR: Yeah, I still use the app Paper, by WeTransfer, which hasn't really changed too much, but I've become pretty fluent with it, so I can work really quickly. If I do illustrations, I have to move to another tool like Procreate or Concepts. But for really super quick ideas, for me, it's just really efficient.I've learned that in my career when I'm faced with a heavy deadline, it's wise for me to choose a tool that I'm fluent in because I'm speedier in that tool than if I tried the perfect tool for it, but I don't have familiarity with it yet. That's a lesson I've learnedEG: As I learned in my profession, whatever tool you are using, you have to use it really professionally, and you have—it's not only starting with the tool and being very fluent or very efficient, you must know your tool very well.MR: Yes. Yep. Well, that's great to hear. Really simple tool set both on the analog and digital side. Let's shift a little bit more, and let's talk about your tips. The three tips that you might share. I always frame this, imagine someone's listening, they are visual thinker, whatever that means to them. And they're excited about the space, just like we talked about our excitement about the community, but maybe they've hit a plateau or they just feel they need a little bit of inspiration. What would be three things that Edmund would tell them to kind of encourage them and break them out of maybe being stuck?EG: Starting with sketch notes, that was always the question, how to find a personal motivation going on improving your skills. One of the motivation as I showed you are books. I love it to learn from books. But what is even better learning from other people? With my company where there's self-organized learning groups, we're growing up. I learned this self-organized learning groups are the best to improve yourself.One of your podcasts Mike, there's a team about LernOS. They had a 12-week journey, different stuff. There's also a learning journey for sketch notes, and you have self-organized meetings every week and having a Zoom meeting or so, sharing my report or whatever.It's little bit like there are some examples, some exercises you can do together, but you can do as a homework for the next meeting. That's the way I like to learn. It's better than sitting with a blank sheet of paper at home and reading the book and—MR: Struggling. Yeah.EG: Struggling.MR: That, by the way was for those listening is season eight was an episode with Karl Damke and Raffaelina Rossetti.EG: Rossetti. Raffaelina Rossetti is her name. Yeah.MR: You can learn about that movement there in the podcast.EG: There's a link to the internet also where the Sketchnoting Guide is, and so, and it's amazing stuff. Getting the right people for the sketchnoting Circle. That's my next advice. Typically, they are distributed around the world. That's not your neighbor, the sketch noter, or the other neighbor on the other side of the street. They're somewhere in this internet universe.Some years ago, I found this Sketchnote Army Slack platform you established, Mike. And there's one folder with announcement of LernOS sketchnoting groups, and that's sub organized to find others. They're interested to have on Friday afternoon five o'clock or so, the next 12-week we want to join this sketch noting journey. And they're from different countries, different professions, different skills in drawing that's not only the beginners or the specialists. It's like these schools and former times they are the small and the older, the grownup children, and they help each other.MR: The one-room schoolhouse, we would say in the United States. Back in the days.EG: This one-room schoolhouse you have in the Slack rooms. You find all these people and it's this mindset sharing things, learning together, and so, you would never find them in real life.MR: Yeah. That's two points. That's number two.EG: Two points. The last one, I want to repeat, Zettelkasten is my second brain. Zettelkasten it's also your second brain. You have a lot of experience in note-taking, different tools, but looking at this concept to get a step higher in efficiency, in effective note taking, and making things easier than they are.MR: Great. Well, those are three great tips. Thanks so much for sharing those. And definitely, encourage you to do all those things, both the LernOS and explore Zettelkasten. So Edmund, what's the best way for people to reach out if they have questions about Zettelkasten and sketchnoting or something else, what's the best place to go?EG: Mike, you said you are sharing some links about me.MR: Yes. We'll definitely share links.EG: It's very easy because I look at my posts nearly every day in LinkedIn. In Instagram, you'll see some of the sketch notes, the newer ones. Most of them are sketch notes before they are published in the ebook. On Twitter, there's a chance for communication very fast. Is it one year ago, Mike we had this discussion about sketch note manifesto?MR: Yes. That's been around. I think Mauro has been talking about this for years.EG: Yes. That was an idea from him and I mixed it a little bit up with atrial development. Then we had a discussion about it. That's the style of communicating and Twitter. And yeah. I also have this in your link list a Linktree. Yeah. All the other stuff are from Masterton or from the forums about Zettelkasten. There's a Zettelkasten forum and Obsidian forum. Also, there are new ideas I discussed with others, and they also get the feedback. I'm learning with all these guys.MR: I'll look on the Link tree. You have several links here, LinkedIn, Instagram, medium, Pinterest, Masterdom, and on Twitter, and eBook.EG: On all platforms, there are links to the GitHub platform. There's the PDF file of the actual version of this e-book, "How to Take Useful Notes."MR: Yeah, I see it here. We've got links for all these things, everyone. So we'll put 'em in the show notes so you can see and jump and look at all these things that Edmund has been talking about. Especially, if you really want to get into this Zettelkasten with Obsidian and using your sketch notes, making a way to organize 'em.I'm inspired, I'm gonna do some looking at this because I think there's an opportunity for me to level up, like all the work I've done and make some sense of it. It might be interesting to see, looking back over it what connections there are. Maybe it's a big job though, Edmund. I don't know. That could be a lifetime just organizing all this junk I've made.EG: I will tell you the story. Maybe I published the story about the new situation before Mike Rohde's podcast and afterwards. Or is it worth a sketch note to say, that was my life before and that was the life after?MR: Yeah. Well, as a process engineer, you're gonna wanna know what's the input, which is doing the podcast. And the output is, are you suddenly getting more downloads of your book? And questions about doing Zettelkasting with sketch notes. That would be ideal because you're a pioneer in this space. I think Chris Wilson is another person in the space that's explored, we talked about in his interview, he was starting to play with Obsidian.EG: I listened to this podcast from him. It was the first time I saw some sketch noter using the Zettelkasten.MR: You two need to get together and do a workshop for everybody, so you can sort of walk them through. That could be interestingEG: If you know a female sketch noter from Denmark, Ingrid LiLL.MR: Oh yeah, of course. Yeah.EG: He is also starting with the Zettelkasten.MR: Oh, there you go. Now you have three people to your merry band, so you can maybe do some kind of a teaching.EG: It's a very small community.MR: That's okay. Sketchnoting community is small, but getting bigger every day. So you have to start somewhere, Edmund, you have to start somewhere.EG: It's the 1% of the sketch noters using Zettelkasten.MR: Yeah, exactly. That's okay. If it works for you, then you can do itEG: All things I believe ever starting small.MR: Yes. The best things start small. Well, Edmund—go ahead.EG: No, no.MR: I was just gonna say thank you so much for your participation. I see you on LinkedIn and Instagram and Twitter. You're always so kind and you have such kind words, and I just love that. You could have easily retired and just gone to Majorca and like, just enjoyed your life and not done any of this work, but yet you choose curiosity and sharing and giving, and I really appreciate that and I admire that. So, thank you for giving back to the community and making it a better place. That's so much what we need.EG: Thank you for having me.MR: You're so welcome.EG: It was really fun. Also, the story in the beginning you told before the podcast, it was a wonderful evening.MR: Yeah. I told him my German experiences that made me fall in love with Germans and Germany. Maybe I'll tell that story sometime. Well, everyone, this has been another episode of "The Sketchnote Army Podcast." So until the next episode, we will talk to you soon.EG: Thank you. Have a nice evening. Bye-bye, Mikey.MR: See ya.

In this episode, Mawusi Amoaku, a fashion designer turned educator shares how stumbling on sketchnoting helped her overcome learning challenges which she now shares with students that have special learning needs.Sponsored by ConceptsThis episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.Concepts’ infinite canvas lets you sketchnote in a defined area while still enjoying infinite space around it — to write a quick note, scribble an idea, or keep pre-drawn visual elements handy for when you need them most.The infinite canvas lets you stretch out and work without worrying if you’ll run out of space. When combined with powerful vector drawing that offers high-resolution output and complete brush and stroke control — you have a tool that’s perfect for sketchnoting.Concepts is a powerful, flexible tool that’s ideal for sketchnoting.SEARCH “Concepts” in your favorite app store to give it a try.Running OrderIntroWelcomeWho is Mawusi?Origin StoryMawusi's current workSponsor: ConceptsTipsToolsWhere to find MawusiOutroLinksAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.Mawusi on InstagramMoonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer.Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All by Tom Kelley and David KelleyThe Sketchnote Handbook by Mike RohdeThe International Sketchnote Camp 2021Sketchnote Army PodcastToolsAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.A4 sheets of paperFriXion penMUJI penPaper Mate InkJoy highlighterSTABILO BOSS gray highlighterTombow markerClairefontaine dot grid paperClipboardTransparent clipboardLED lightbulbRhodia Staplebound NotepadiPad ProApple pencilConcepts AppProcreateTipsContinue feeding your mind.Even if you go digital, keep drawing by hand.Don't overthink it. Just do it.Be open to trying something new.Listen to other sketchnoters.Share your work.Experience with other layouts, find out what works for you.Collaborate with your colleagues.Ask for feedback.Be intentional and tell someone your goal.Don't give up. Be patient.CreditsProducer: Alec PulianasTheme music: Jon SchiedermayerShownotes and transcripts: Esther OdoroSubscribe to the Sketchnote Army PodcastYou can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.Support the PodcastTo support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!Episode TranscriptMike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike Rohde, and I am here with my friend, Mawusi Amoaku. How are you doing, Mawusi?Mawusi Amoaku: I'm doing good, Mike.MR: It's so good to have you.MA: How are you?MR: I'm doing great. It's always great for me to have someone interesting on the show to talk about their visual thinking journey and the work they do and the impact they're having. And I feel like you're someone who definitely is doing that. And I love to share those stories.I think that's the core reason why the podcast exists is to just reveal really interesting people all around the world doing great things in the visual thinking space. So, with that, why don't you tell us, give us an introduction, who you are and what you do.MA: Okay. My name is Mawusi Amoaku, and I'm originally from Ghana. Grew up in Northern Ireland, hence my accent. I work in education supporting learners with additional learning needs, and I love it.MR: As I understand, in our chats that led up to having you on the show, you've pretty recently discovered Sketchnoting. I would love to hear your origin story around that. Where did that come from? And maybe look back to when you were a little girl, like, have you been drawing since you were a little girl? And how did those two worlds and your teaching all overlap into where you are today?MA: I think I'll start by telling you a little bit about me growing up. I've always loved drawing. When I was younger, I wanted to be an artist. And I love hand lettering and I love making zines. In terms of drawing, well, I try to draw something every day.I stumbled across sketchnotes in 2020 and it really transformed my learning experience. Although I work in education, I had to do a course as part of my job role to help me support my learners with learning needs. And I was finding the course particularly difficult because when I would read my textbook and make notes, when I came to writing the assignments, I would just forget everything. And I was so frustrated. Like I started to fall behind with my assignments, which I thought, this is ironic because what I do, I support learners to get their assignments done. Here I am, I can't even do my own.I didn't wanna tell anyone that I was struggling, so I just kinda had an idea. I thought to myself, "If this was one of my students, what would I say?" Like, I would encourage them to keep going, but I would encourage them to find another way. So, one day I just thought, right, I'm just gonna Google it.I was so behind with my work, I really didn't have time to be doing this, but I thought, I'm gonna have to try and find some answers. So yeah, I went on the internet and I researched and I came up with mnemonics, memory palace, mine maps, and finally, sketch notes. And that changed everything.So, for me, the first sketch note I made was of a "TED Talk" because I bought your book and I wanted to find out like, straight away, does this thing work. Should I continue with it or not? 'Cause I need to know that I'm investing my time wisely.And I sketch noted, I think it was called The Greatest Ted Talk Ever Told, I think that's the name of it. I was like, 20 minutes long. And I was like, I don't even know if I still have the sketchnote, but I remember the video. And I sketchnoted that and I thought, "Oh, wow."And then when I read my textbook, there were certain topics that I was really struggling with. So, I decided, I'm going to sketch note this, but I set myself boundaries 'cause I used to write pages and pages of notes and never read it, even though I used different colored pens, et cetera. I thought, okay, I'm gonna limit myself to an A4 sheet of paper per topic.I went to the glossary in the—when you talk about creating an icon library, I thought, okay, so for each topic, I'll look at the glossary and write down what those keywords are to create my icon library. And then I'll read a chapter and then I will sketch note it and that's it.I did that for each of the chapters, particularly the ones I was struggling with. Then I used those notes to write my assignments. I have to say, before I started doing that, I just thought, why am I not remembering this information? Why I'm not understanding this?But then when I sketchnoted it, I was so encouraged because I realized I do know it, I do understand it, and I can do it. So, it really helped me with my confidence. And I did the work.I have to say I was really behind with my work, but I did it. I got it done, I got my assignments in on time. And I remember thinking, you know, I actually do love learning, but that experience was so negative for me that I thought, now I kind of understand how some of our students feel when they can't understand a piece of work because it does knock your confidence, it does make you feel stressed, it does make you feel isolated.For me, I was too embarrassed to tell anyone because that was actually my job was to help other people. And I couldn't help myself. When I got to the end of the course, what I couldn't understand was I—the course was not finished, but I wanted to keep learning 'cause it was just so addictive. Like to do the sketch notes it was such a fun activity to do.It was right at the summertime, so I kept learning it. I kept researching effective ways to learn and reading different books that inspired me. One of them was "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Josh Foer, I think is how you pronounce his name. He talks about using the memory palace as a way to remember information.I was just fascinated. I was hooked. And then I thought, "Oh my goodness, I wouldn't mind doing another course." From not wanting to do the course that I did, I wanted to keep learning. Well, I started looking for opportunities. Any opportunity to sketchnote.At that point, I hadn't shared my work with anyone. It was just for myself. Towards the end of 2021—no, end of 2020, 2021, my New Year's resolution, I kept it pretty open and creative, was to invest in myself. That would primarily be learning a new skill and also, trying things that I probably wouldn't normally try 'cause I would be afraid to do it.One of them was actually public speaking. You know, do a workshop for my colleagues because I am a shy person. I'm an introvert, and the idea of speaking in front of any group of people scares me. So, that January, like that whole year actually, I started thinking, what if, what if? And starting to do different things, and showing my work.In terms of the sketch notes, I didn't actually use it at work initially. I tried to fight the urge to sketchnote. I really wanted to do it, but I was kind of worried what people would think.My background is art, actually, it's fashion design. Everyone knows that I love to draw, but I thought that if I drew at work, maybe people would think that I wasn't taking my job seriously. Or like, "Why is she doodling? Why are you doing that?"One time in a class I was supporting a group of students and nearly all of the students in the class had a learning need. I used to find it really difficult to support the group 'cause the needs vary a lot. I remember observing one student in particular who really struggled to understand what he needed to do.In the class, the students would rely on me to take notes. And I remember thinking, well, my handwriting's not great, and if they don't understand the notes, probably my handwriting. But I kind of thought I'd like the students to read the notes, use them, understand them, and become more independent.I thought if I sketch note this—it was partly 'cause I was struggling to write down the traditional way, but I thought if I sketch note this, maybe they'll be so curious, they'll want to read it. I really wanted them to want to read it and use it.I started to do it. And I shared that with the teacher because I was supporting the students in the class, I wasn't the teacher. I shared what I wanted to do with the teacher. I told them that this is a new thing that I'm learning. I would like to get better at it. Perhaps could I do it in this class? Because I feel that the more I do it, the better I get. And if I do every single day, I'm definitely gonna improve.He was really supportive and I started to use it. At first, the students didn't really know what to make of it. They're like, "Mawusi, you are drawing? Oh, my goodness. Like, what is this? This is serious."I thought, oh dear, I have to tell them this is really important. You're supposed to use this. So, I give them a little speech. I said, you know, "Yes, it took a lot of effort, but I'm doing this because I want you to do well. I really want you to enjoy your learning, but I want you to use the notes, understand it, use it, but not to rely on me to learn that you can do these things for yourself as well."And so, I did it. Then the next day I was like, oh, I might have to reinforce that. I started to do my little speech, and they said, "Mawusi, we know you told us yesterday." I never mentioned it again. And so, I kept doing it.It was during the pandemic, so we were in our bubbles. That meant a unique opportunity. I got to stay with my students in the various classes that they were in. And I continued to sketch note in each of those classes. They got used to it.I didn't have to say anything.What happened was the teacher would deliver the lesson and I would have a clipboard sketch note the lesson, scan it, and share. We use Microsoft Teams. I would share it on Teams and all the students would have access to those notes.One of the unexpected dividends, I guess, of doing that was it meant that students who have learning needs could use it, but everybody could use it. Whether they have a learning need or not. And if someone misses a lesson, they have those notes to help them to catch up.It was tiring, and a part of me wondered why I even started because I didn't actually have an end plan for when I would stop doing this. So, I would ask the teacher, "Would you like me to stop?" I kind of secretly hoping he would say, "It's okay, Mawusi. You can stop." And he is like, "No, keep going. It's all right. Keep going. And I said, "But they're not using it". He's like, "They're using it. Walk around the class."The first student who we went to, I hadn't said anything and within minutes of me sharing it on Teams, he had printed the notes and he was looking at it. I should actually clarify that this was a media lesson and so they work on computers. He was referring to the notes and doing his work.I hadn't had to say anything to any of the students. They knew the pattern, this is what happens in class. Then he said, "Okay, keep walking around." I noticed that they were all using it, but in their own way, whether it could be on the screen or on their phone or if they printed it out, but they were just doing their work.And I was like, "Oh my goodness, it actually works." I was so happy I just wanted to do a happy dance, but obviously, I was working so I didn't. But yeah, so that's kind of how it started in the classroom.I made some revision notes because I wanted to encourage my students to revise 'cause not a lot of them would revise for their exams. The exciting thing about the sketch notes was that I later found that they were being shared by other tutors. It gave an opportunity for me to talk about my work.And actually, one of the key things was, although I made the sketch notes for the students, I didn't really know what I was doing. It was an experiment. And I asked them for feedback. And the feedback from the students was invaluable because that's how I improved it.For example, one of the parameters that I set for myself, which was limit the information to one page, didn't necessarily work for the students because it was actually too much information on one page.MR: Really?MA: Yeah. So, with each sketch note I made, I would make changes because they were giving me constant feedback. And then tutors gave me valuable feedback. For example, because my handwriting's terrible, I used to write in capitals because that's my way of writing neatly.One of the dyslexia specialist tutors said, "Well, actually that's really hard for someone to read if they have dyslexia, 'cause it's the shape of the letters that helps them to differentiate the words."Well, had to kind of retrain my brain to write in lowercase as well. It was just really useful to share the sketch notes as a way to improve, but also yeah, to share my skills.But Mike, I have to say you did influence me a lot in that because I attended the sketchnote workshop, or no, the sketchnote camp that was held online in 2021. And your keynote speech was about care and service and community.And how we as sketchnoters 'cause we are a global community as Sketchnoters can do good to our organizations that we work for our communities. We are in a very specific situation in the pandemic and it's affecting all of us in different ways. How can we use those skills to benefit others?That was what encouraged me actually because up to that point, I was doing it for myself, but then I thought, well actually there is a community of people who are doing this and I'm going do it in my workplace and I'm gonna share it.I'm not online, but I'm gonna share it in the space where I work. And I hope that it'll benefit other people. But really the driving force for me to share sketchnotes is that I was really desperate when I find it. And I was thinking somebody else might be in a similar situation and I hope it helps them.MR: It's really funny because that's my origin story. I was desperate as well. The way I was taking notes was just so frustrating and I'd forced myself like you to l to limit myself to a small notebook and switched from pencil to pen.The experiment that I first did really set me on the path to say, "Hey, this is working for me. I really enjoy this. I can't wait for the next workshop or event that I can go try this and experiment with. "So very much similar in that way. And hoping, you know, if this is working for me, there has to be somebody else who this will help. And then also, you know, sharing it with other people and getting feedback was a similar experience.It sounds like yours was even more, I guess, accelerated because you didn't have a lot of time, you just had to keep working and then taking feedback live and then incorporating it as you worked, which is probably good for you.You almost got into a mode, it seemed to me like where you were just doing the work, you're getting feedback, you're making modifications, and next thing you know, you're writing upper and lower case, you're modifying the structure and you're serving.It seems to me like you're someone who, if you're serving someone else, you're willing to kind of jump through hoops and go over fire and do these things because you know it's gonna help your students.In some ways, doing it for yourself, you sort of run into a point where like, "Uh, I don't feel like doing it anymore. Who's there to hold you accountable?" But you found an accountability group, which were your students who actually gave you the feedback and held you accountable and pushed you further to really accelerate your learning. And also, it ultimately benefited them, right? Because your sketchnotes started to align for what their needs were. Is that a fair way to think of that?MA: I would think so. I think the desperation I felt at the beginning was something for a long time that I actually tried to forget. And I remember telling my boss this, and she said something to me, which was quite profound. She said you know, "It is giving you more empathy for your students." And that is exactly it.I've always loved learning, but I've never struggled to the extent that I struggle that time. But I'm really glad for that experience, well, because I share that with the students. I tell them I struggle.But when you struggle, you always have a choice. You know, you can find another way. You don't need to give up. It's kind of like if you see it as an opportunity to do it a different way, basically that is what I learned. And that is one of the reasons why I am so passionate about this because I'm so lucky I stumbled across it.It was actually when I read a book about the memory palace, it was a free book on Apple Books. And then I found another free book about sketch notes. It was basically a compilation created by educators and they were talking about the benefits of sketch notes and they shared examples of theirs.And that's where I heard about your mini-workshop, which was on YouTube. So, I watched the video and then I was like, that is actually why I bought the book. 'Cause I was like, "I need to do this. This is it."I have to say thank you to those people for putting the art there because I would never have found it. One of the other reasons why I was confident that it would work with my students was your episode where you interviewed Laura Kazan, I think you pronounce her name.MR: Yes, yes, yes.MA: That episode actually—I have listened to every episode of your podcast. I'll just tell you that, and the reason being, I wanted to learn as much as possible from your interviews with different people of and how they've used it. But her interview really stood out for me because I thought, "Those are my students. Those are my students, and I think they will benefit from this."One of the things she said at the end of her interview was, in her three tips, she said, "Is your school special education department willing to support sketchnoting."I thought as a department that I worked for in my college. So that is what give me the confidence to share it with my team because, you know, it made such a difference to her son, and I thought, well, it might just help our students as well.So, your podcast helped me a lot because there was something that I was doing by myself, but in listening to your interviews with other podcasters or other sketchnoters, I kind of felt like I wasn't by myself in doing this. I was so encouraged. So, thank you.MR: Oh, that's really great to hear. You know often doing podcasts can be a lonely business because you do these interviews and of course, they're enjoyable in the moment and you publish and there's often not a ton of feedback that I receive back from the episodes, but I keep doing them because I enjoy it.I think that's the driving force. And I know that there are people, and I know that because I hear like you and others who will say, yeah, I've listened to all the episodes. I can't wait for another one to come out. So, I know there are fans out there, which is, you know, really exciting and helpful, and especially when I hear it in the context of your—I would call your experience a journey, right.You sort of definitely went on this journey where you kept on discovering something else and that led you to something else and that led you to something else. And you continued to follow the thread all the way to kind of where you're at now, which is really cool because I think so many, you know, with the internet especially stumbling onto something can lead to something else if you allow it to if you're curious and you follow that path.I think that's a good reminder for us that sometimes it's just being open to something and taking it one step further might lead to something that you could never have expected. Your story, your origin story here sounds exactly like that. That string, you just kept pulling the string and now here you are.MA: Yeah. Actually, one of the reasons why I'm excited is for quite a few years, I have been looking for a passion. You know, my background is fashion design, I like to sew, and I love education, but I was looking for something that I would be really passionate about. And this is definitely it. So yeah, I love it.MR: Wow. Well, I love your origin story. Thank you for sharing all the detail and giving us insights and where those pivot points were. I would love to hear is there a project of any kind may be that you're beginning that you're excited about that you'd love to share with us.MA: I guess I would say is I've had more opportunities to share sketch notes with my colleagues and I've been in training staff on how to sketchnote. For me, someone who I said is kind of an introvert. I find it really hard to talk to people. This is like a watershed moment.I have to say the sharing of sketch notes has just helped me develop more confidence in myself. So yeah, that's something. And this year, in particular, the college that I work for the focus is on inclusion.So, as I started to share my sketch notes, last year we had a guest speaker and he's an inclusion expert. And I decided long before the event, I am definitely gonna sketch note this. Only I didn't wanna tell anyone because I didn't wanna put pressure in myself.So, I sat at the back and I made some sketchnotes, worked on it over the summer, and then my goal was I'm going to share it with my colleagues because I wanna tell more people, but I wanted to sketchnote something that we had all attended so that it would be more meaningful.And the exciting thing is this has led to more opportunities to sketchnote for different departments. I've done collaborations with colleagues who are specialists in different fields, and we've combined our skills to train other staff.So, yeah, it's such a fun thing to do, but it's a really useful way to communicate things that might be quite difficult to communicate in words basically. It's very engaging and I'm excited that I did it and that it's being shared.MR: That's really great. I love your approach of doing something that would be meaningful to the entire group so they could benefit from it. That's a really great way of layering two things you're passionate about sketchnoting and also about this opportunity to learn. And then making that as a service to your colleagues, right?Because I'm sure that they're seeing how this is having an impact on students and how it's helping them to learn and retain. So, they definitely see the benefit, and now that's now opened up even the opportunity to teach them these concepts so they could start to think like, "Well, how could I use it in my curriculum for my students in an interesting way." Which is you're just becoming this real true advocate inside your college. Which is pretty cool.MA: I think also part of it was in terms of—I would say when someone's sketchnoting, I know this is actually a tip, but I'll just say it in advance, is feeding to your mind because when I was doing this quietly, I was reading a lot of books about innovation and sketch notes and various things.There was a book called—oh, have I written it on somewhere? I have it here. The book is called "Creative Confidence: Unleash the Creative Potential Within All of Us" by Tom Kelly and David Kelly. That book was pivotal for me as well, because they have an organization called, IDEO. I don't know if you've heard of it before.MR: Yes.MA: IDEO is responsible for promoting innovation, I guess is how to put it, by taking a multidisciplinary approach. That is what has encouraged me to collaborate with my colleagues because when we think about organizations and how we can benefit our organizations when we work together and share our different skills, we bring different perspectives as well, that is powerful.So that is one of the reasons why I'm sharing it with my colleagues because although sketchnoting is my skill, I'm learning so much from them and I hope they're learning from me as well.MR: I'm guessing, just judging by the little bit that I feel here, they're probably learning a lot from you. Which is great. I think that's so admirable for you to not keep it to yourself, but spread it further and offer it to your colleagues, which is great to hear. Well, let's shift…MA: I was gonna attribute that to you too because you have created a community of sharing. That is, for me, one of the things that drew me to sketch notes because it's such a friendly environment and people are very encouraging of one another.MR: Definitely, something that I saw in other communities that I was involved with. In the web design community, there was a very welcoming and open environment there, and I just wanted to model that.It seems to me like, because we modeled that early, that it drew other like-minded people, and we seemed to have built a community that's sort of sharing and open and helping each other all the way down. So, when new people come, the culture is just, hey, this is a space where we share and we teach each other and we help each other.I always say, there's so much opportunity to share this idea. There's no reason why we should be thinking that we're fighting over table scraps when there's so much opportunity for everyone to have a place at the table and do work and have an impact. There's just so much work to do.I'm glad that you've sensed that. It's definitely something intentional and I hope that it just continues throughout the community. So that's really great to hear. Thank you.MA: Thank You.MR: Yeah. Well, we all do it together, so that's great to hear. At this point, I would love to shift to something more practical, I guess. Not that the other stuff isn't practical, but the people on the podcast love hearing about tools and how people use their tools.So, let's shift into the tool discussion and let's shift in specifically to analog tools and then follow up if you use digital tools with what digital tools you use.MA: Okay. I would say use what you have, start with what you have. For example, well, I used to use A-4 sheets of paper because I sometimes destroy my work if it's not very good. Yeah, I have a habit of that. But I started with A4 sheets of paper and a pen although it was a refillable pen—you know the FriXion refillable black pen?MR: Mm-hmm.MA: Which it's kind of the best of both worlds. I always think of a pen as the tool that makes me fearless and the pencil that makes me cautious. But the FriXion pen is a pen, but I can rub it out. I'm kind of contradicting myself anyway.I started it with that one because if I'm in the class and I'm sketchnoting, sometimes I make spelling errors and that helps me to fix it really quickly. But lately, actually, I haven't used that as much, so maybe my confidence has grown. I like to use Muji. Have you heard of Muji pens?MR: Yes. Of course. It's a famous Japanese store, which I've been to the one in New York City, but I know it's worldwide as well.MA: I love Muji. The Knot 0.38 and the Knot 0.5, my absolute favorites. One of my colleagues introduced me to the Paper Mate InkJoy Gel Pen.MR: Oh, yes.MA: You've heard that one.MR: Those are good as well. Yeah.MA: That one's amazing. And actually, just recently stumbled across—I didn't realize that you could get gray highlighter pens, so I used the Stabilo Boss highlighter in Gray. Well, I was using the Tombow markers, but they're quite expensive. So, I like to buy a box of the Stabilo Boss. They're really good.But paper-wise, I highly recommend dot grid paper because it makes my work look neat. Some people say, "Oh, Mawusi, how do you do such straight lines? Or, you know, that's so neat." I'm like, "If you zoom in, you will see the dots." It really helps a lot.In the classroom, I use a clipboard, which is quite handy. But also, if I'm doing a finished sketch note by hand, I use a transparent clipboard. That's a little tip. If you use a transparent clipboard and then you use one of the, you know the flat LED light boxes, you can trace your work. So, it's just really handy.MR: Interesting. So, you have a light source behind this clear clipboard, and then you can lay the rough sketch underneath and then do your finished on top of it. Am I understanding that right?MA: Yeah. And those things are very cheap to buy, but perfect for what I need. The dot grid paper that I absolutely love is Clairefontine paper. It just feels really, really nice.MR: It works well with those pens that you've mentioned. A question, for those who are dot grid connoisseurs, I know that there's different levels of dot grid. Like I know some have very light gray dots and some are darker.Where is the Clairefontaine fall on that spectrum? Is it relatively light dots so that it's, you know, kind of goes invisible at some point? Or are they a little bit darker?MA: I think it's kind of light because people don't really notice it. I kind of feel like I'm cheating 'cause I'm thinking, they think I'm really neat, but I'm not.MR: Well, I suppose if you're using the Stabilo Boss gray marker, I guess you could adjust your exposure, say in Photoshop or whatever your photo tool is, and increase the contrast. Those dots would probably drop away and you wouldn't even see them, right? So, that's probably another option as well.MA: Oh, actually another tip. I find when I was sketchnoting in the classroom, I was taking too long with preparing the page in advance. What I did was I had a template, the original was dot grid paper. And because I'm in the classroom, I just photocopied that page. And so, the dot grid was even less noticeable so when I scanned it, nobody knew. So, yeah.MR: Interesting.MA: That's another little tip.MR: Cool. That's pretty cool. We're getting free tips here. This is pretty great. Now, does the Clairefontine paper come in like a block, and then you tear off sheets as needed? Or is it bound in some way? How is that paper? How do you work with the paper?MA: It's in a block and then you tear it off. They say it comes in A4 and A5. I think that's the European size. But when you tear it off, it's slightly smaller.MR: Oh, I see. Because there's perforations on the edge probably.MA: Yeah. But I think they provide the paper for Rodeo Notebooks. Is it Rodeo?MR: Yes. Yes, exactly.MA: Yeah, I think they have that same paper, but basically, I like loose sheets because I can then arrange it in whichever way I want. And it's much easier to scan your work if it's not in a notebook.MR: Good point. If I'm not mistaken, I think Clairefontine and Rhoda are both French companies, so it would make sense that they would collaborate in some way. Maybe they're owned by the same parent company for all I know. I don't know. But I think Rhoda Notebooks work in a similar way where there's a—and maybe they calculate this, right.So actually, the part you tear off is maybe A4 and they add a little bit. So, when the perforation tears away and what's left in the notebook is a little bit taller than A4. You know what I mean? Like, when you tear out the sheet, it's exactly A4. I don't know if that's true, but I've used Rodeo paper—MA: No, it's smaller.MR: Is it? Okay. So, it is—MA: It's annoying that it's smaller, but I still like the paper. It's still like the paper, but it's smaller.MR: Got it. Okay. Good to know. Good to know for those who find that important, little tip again there. What about digital? Do you have digital tools that you use? Are you using an iPad or some other tool like that?MA: I've started using the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil. The first sketch note I did with that was one of the guest speaker because I just wanted to take the sketch notes to a more, in my view, professional level.Because when I was having to trace it for a finished sketch note, I wanted to kind of take away some of those steps and do more of a rough sketch and then do the illustration. I use Concepts. Oh, my goodness, Concepts is so good.MR: It's a great tool. Yeah.MA: And Procreate, obviously. Yeah. Everyone uses it. I have to admit, I don't know how to use both of them really, really well, but I use them enough to get the finish that I would like. That's something to explore later. I have to admit, I prefer working on paper. I just love the feel of paper. That's my go-to.MR: Yeah. I think many sketchnoters will use a paper-like, or some of other similar matte screen protector, which sort of approximates the feel of paper. I mean, it's not exactly. I think paper-like, probably achieves it the best with the best clarity, but there are other screen protectors that also do the same. Which helps, but still, it's not quite ink on paper, it's closer.MA: It's good. But I have to say by going on the iPad, it makes me more of a perfectionist and I don't like that because at least when I sketchnote in the classroom, it feels hot off the press and I haven't had a chance to make it beautiful because my objective is to make meaningful notes that are useful. So, I think when I do my digital sketchnotes, I'm thinking too much about aesthetics. I'm trying to break away from doing that 'cause it's very tempting.MR: Yeah. It's almost as though paper and pen puts emphasis on the process. Because you have less control. Whereas when you go to an iPad or something, you end up inadvertently being maybe even more focused, a little bit more focused on the output. Because you have the ability to undo or to redo things or to change things, or to move things.Heedlessly, if you allowed yourself to, and there's something about the paper that, you know, maybe the friction of the paper in the sense of if you do it hot off the press, right. And even if you redid it, let's say you wanted to do it a little nicer, like if there's some friction there, right?You've gotta redraw all this stuff on another sheet on your clear clipboard with the light coming from behind and it's a little bit of friction. You wouldn't wanna do it a third time, right? So, you would probably stop at that point. Where with the iPad, it's very easy to just keep noodling and noodling and noodling and never finish. So, I could see the definite different feel for them.And, you know, I always think of the two, sort of provide different purposes. So, I often use the iPad for illustrations where, you know, it's gonna be printed or there is some final output that's important. But I found this recently on a project, just to point out this.I was doing the iPad with—I use paper and I was doing sketches and I had sort of built a little template for myself for this illustration project. And I found myself getting really rigid and I was resisting drawing and I was taking longer on each piece.And I got to the point where I said, wait a minute, I need to just change this up. So, I got the manuscript for the book project that I'm working on, and I just got my little pen and all I could fit were in the margins, little thumbnails along the edge of where the text was. So, it was very limited space.I just started doing these little thumbnails and started drawing concept. And it was amazing how much it freed me up to just think, "Oh, a little thumbnail, big deal. You know, that one didn't work. Draw another one. Oh, that didn't work. Draw another one. Boy like that. What if I do another one?"Next thing you know, every one of these ideas I was having to illustrate for you know, I was doing three or four different concepts or little variations, right? Suddenly the floodgates opened, and I was just like moving through the manuscript like crazy. And all it was, was this shift from, you know, sort of the rigidity or the perfectionism or something on the iPad back to paper and a pen with limited space.Again, coming back to limitations and embracing them just keeps proving itself as a really effective tool for, at least for me, freeing my mind to kind of focus on the content and really get into the process and stop worrying so much about the output. So, I definitely can resonate with what you're saying here.MA: I agree. I also would say that I find that as I've—I hope I go back to how I was before. When I started Sketchnoting and I didn't have anything to go by, any previous sketch notes, basically all I thought was, I'm just gonna do it. I'm just gonna do it.Now that I've been doing it, I'm starting to be more cautious. 'Cause I'm like, what's happening? Because I'm almost scared to do it because I feel that people expect it to be good. What if it's not good? So, I just need to just do it.MR: I think it would be interesting for you to actually ask someone to do some, you know, user-testing and ask them what do you expect out of it. And you probably would find that they would think like, whatever you're doing is amazing.They wouldn't care either way. They just love that you are thinking this way if you get to the core of it. I mean, the beauty of it is we often sort of find ourselves, like the story I told you about the illustration, I sort of boxed myself into this situation.It finally dawned on me like, “Wait a minute, I'm in charge of this project. Why am I feeling as though I have to follow some rigid template that I made? Like, I can change anytime I want to. I’m just going to grab the manuscript and a pen and forget the iPad. I'm not touching the iPad.” We have the opportunity to have you know, the ability to make those changes and to try and experiment and sort of work our way back.So that's really good news that if you ever find yourself bound and/or you've painted yourself in a corner, well, you know, your shoes might get some paint on them, but you can walk out of the corner and just start over again.That's always good news is you have the opportunity to shake it up and try some new things or go back to the thing that worked for you and start again and see, what did I learn from the other one and how can I apply this now knowing it, which is sounds like a little bit of where you're at as well.MA: Yeah. I wanna say one of my daily practices for sketch notes is that I sketch note sermons online. There's a church that does a daily devotional which is like 15 minutes long. I don't do it first thing in the morning, 'cause I'm not a morning person. I do it later on in the evening.I find that those sketch notes are more real because nobody sees them except me. Actually, I've moved from single sheets of paper to a notebook for that. So, I have a whole notebook full of them. What I like about them is they're just themselves. I have not tried to make anything beautiful. I just quickly got that information done. So yeah, even if you go digital, keep drawing by hand.MR: Maybe that's your first tip since we're now sort of heading into the tips department.MA: Oh yeah.MR: And I guess I should frame it. I always frame this. Probably regular listeners like you will have heard this a million times, but, you know, give us three tips that you would say to someone who feels stuck. Someone who feels they're on a plateau. Just these little inspirations to kind of break out of maybe a rut. And I think if you wanna go further in this, what you've talked about, you know, go back to drawing by hand. This could be your first tip, I think.MA: Okay. I have many tips, and it's hard to choose one to three, so might give a few more. Is that all right?MR: That's fine. Yeah, please.MA: Okay. First, one is don't overthink it. Just do it. Just do it. I tried to talk myself out of it when I was doing it at work, but I have to say when I did it, what a sigh of relief. I really enjoyed myself. Even though I was getting paid for it. I was like, "Wow, this is fun." So just do it. That's the first tip.If you can't do something, don't worry. Find another way. Be open to trying something different. And if you're struggling with your sketch note, listen to the podcast. Listen to the different interviews with different sketchnoters, find out how they're using it, and especially make note of their tips. What are they doing that? And just try it.Next one is share your work. I am not online at present, but I will be. So, share it at work. Share it with friends or even just sketch note in a diary or something. But yeah, share it with other people. Experiment especially with the layout of the sketch note. Find what works for you. Actually, this is way more than three. I'm gonna give you a few more.MR: Okay. Go for it.MA: Collaborate with your colleagues. That is golden. Collaborate with your colleagues 'cause then you get to make really meaningful connections with colleagues. I know working with people that I wouldn't have an opportunity to work with or our path and way not have crossed, but sketch notes has kind of opened the door for that. So, collaborate.Ask for feedback. Another golden one. Because that is how you're going to improve. If I had sketchnoted and sketchnoted and sketchnoted and nobody saw it, how could I improve? I might have improved, but maybe a lot slower. So definitely ask for feedback.Tell someone your goal. If this is something that you wanna start doing, share that with someone. Because what really helped me, what was so pivotal, was that teacher. He encouraged me because, you know, my very first sketch note, I have it in the classroom that I did it, it's not wonderful.I thought he was gonna laugh, but he just encouraged me. And that kind of helped me to be accountable because I've told people, this is something that I wanna do. So be intentional and tell people about it. If it's a New Year's resolution say, you're more likely to keep it if you've told people you're gonna do it.I'll give you a bonus tip. Don't give up. Be patient. Be patient because when you sketch note, say for example at work, people may not understand what you're doing at first, they might think it's a bit strange, they might wonder why you're doing it, they might actually tell you to stop doing it. Nobody told me to stop doing it. But just say somebody might, don't let that determine whether you do it or not. Keep going. Do not get discouraged. Just do it.MR: Well, those are fantastic tips. I'm glad that you added some additional ones because it seems to me like this is a great series of tips that you've shared with us and directly from your own experience.I can tie them all back to the story you told of how you began sketchnoting at work and, you know, with your students in mind. And next thing you know, you're collaborating with colleagues and sharing information with them and having an influence, right?This one little experiment led to influencing your whole college, it seems like, and probably leading in that direction, which is pretty cool. So, thank you so much for the tips and offering them to us.MA: Thank you.MR: This is the part where we typically ask where we can find you. And as we chatted just before we began recording, you're in the middle of developing probably a website and working out social media stuff. So, if you don't have anything yet, that's okay. We will put that in the show notes if it's available when we come to this.Maybe in lieu of doing that since we'll just do that in the show notes. If you're listening, just peek in the show notes, and if Mawusi's got some information, we'll put it in there for you so you can find her.I just wanted to let you know that I'm so impressed with your story and how you've just moved yourself forward with a servant attitude serving your students and how this led you to where you're going and you continue to serve. I think you just a really great example of our community.You really represent our community, and I'm really proud to have you as a representative where you are and so encouraged by your story. Thank you so much for taking time and spending time to share it with us. And I'm so excited to hear how this will influence the next person who hears it and all the influences you're gonna have in the place where you are. So, thank you so much, Mawusi.MA: Can I say a big thank you to you?MR: Sure.MA: You have encouraged me so much. You didn't know that I was listening to all of your episodes. You didn't know that I attended your workshop online. When I went to the sketchnote camp that was online, you could only see my illustration. I wasn't visible. I did all those things quietly and, you and your community has encouraged me so much, even when I was doing this by myself. So, thank you so much.MR: Well, thank you.MA: I'm forever grateful.MR: Well, it's an honor. It's an honor to serve, so thank you. Sounds like we're in a good place and we continue to have our influence. Sometimes it doesn't seem like you are, but you are having an influence. So, keep going. Just as Mawusi said in her tips, keep going.Well, this has been so much fun. It's been so enjoyable to talk with you and hear your stories, and I'm just excited to see where this all goes for you and how you're gonna fit into our community. For everyone who's listening to the podcast, this wraps another episode of "Sketchnote Army Podcast”. Until the next episode, this is Mike and Mawusi signing off for today. Talk to you soon.

In this episode, Ty Hatch, who started sketchnoting as a practice to pay attention and stay awake shares why he still loves the art and his work on creating headshot illustrations and creating sketchnotes for meetings and conferences.Sponsored by ConceptsThis episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.Concepts' vector-based drawing feature gives you the power to adjust your drawings — any time you like. You can nudge the curve of a line, swap out one brush for another, or change stroke thickness and color at any stage of your drawing — saving hours and hours of rework.Vectors provide clean, crisp, high-resolution output for your sketchnotes at any size you need — large or small. Never worry about fuzzy sketchnotes again.Concepts is a powerful, flexible tool that’s ideal for sketchnoting.SEARCH “Concepts” in your favorite app store to give it a try.Running OrderIntroWelcomeWho is Ty Hatch?Origin StoryTy’s current workSponsor: ConceptsTipsToolsWhere to find TyOutroLinksAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.Ty's websiteTy on TwitterTy on InstagramTy on LinkedInTy on MastodonTy on PinterestTy on Artist Trading CardsTy On DribbleUX Week 2008 SketchnotesInktoberTy’s Son’s Pokémon DrawingsToolsAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast. Mechanical pencilBallpoint Rotring 600 pencilKaweco fountain penPost-It-NotesGlobal Art Materials SketchbookMoleskine Art sketchbookSketchnote Idea bookPaper by WeTransferiPad ProApple pencilProcreate Adobe FrescoTipsEverybody is creative in their own way, and that's okay.Enjoy what you do. You can like a range of different things, and that's okay.Set boundaries for the things that are really important to you, in your life that are not work-related. Set those boundaries, talk about them, and live your life in a way that reflects your priorities. CreditsProducer: Alec PulianasTheme music: Jon SchiedermayerShownotes and transcripts: Esther OdoroSubscribe to the Sketchnote Army PodcastYou can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.Support the PodcastTo support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!Episode TranscriptMike Rohde: Hey everyone, this is Mike, and I'm here with Ty Hatch. Ty, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you.Ty Hatch: Thanks, Mike. It's great to be here.MR: Ty, we've known each other for years and years. We were talking about when we thought we connected, you had a pretty pinpoint accurate time-point.TH: Yeah. It's funny. Back in 2008, I went to a UX Week, which was a conference put on by, for those that remember Adaptive Path, I think they got purchased and became the in-house UX department for Capital One a few years ago. I was there and I was like, "I need to pay attention." Did some sketch notes, or just did notes, I wasn't thinking about it. Got an email from you after I posted them up on the OG photo-sharing Flickr, and you're like, "Hey, can I put these into my Sketch Note Army?" And so, we just stayed in touch throughout the years since then, so.MR: Yep. Well, that leads right into telling us a little bit about who you are and what you do.TH: You bet. I am a UX manager for O.C. Tanner, which is an employee recognition company. I help create the space for employee recognition. I Work with a team. I have three people on my team. We're part of a larger experience group, and we focus on how can people feel appreciated at work by the employers. It's a really fun thing to do. I also, as you know, do sketch notes at times and random doodles and whatnot when the time allows. That's me. I enjoy UX design. It's a fun problem space to be in.MR: Well, I can relate to that as a UX principle, UX designer. I find it fascinating as well. I focus on software, but there are tons of opportunities to make things better, always, seems like. It's good to hear you're focusing on that, and that's such a critical space, especially now with all the challenges of hiring people and maintaining employees, and having them not leave by recognition. Huge, huge opportunities there, I would think.TH: Yeah. It's huge. You, like me, it's hard to feel sometimes like you're moving the needle and you're making a difference for people. One of the things that really gets me going is knowing that the work that I'm doing is actually helping people feel that appreciation, that they get that recognition from not only their peers, but from their leaders and whatnot.MR: Yep. Super important. It's something that often goes under the radar and managers might not think much about it, but is so critical. Often it doesn't cost you much other than time and a little bit of thoughtfulness. So, that's really cool. I would love to hear a little bit more about how you ended up in the space where you are both professionally, but also as a sketchnoter. Had you always drawn since you were a little kid? What's been your history? Let's start from when you're just a little guy.TH: I spent a lot of time outdoors growing up. I grew up in Southern Idaho and southeastern Washington. Miles outside of my small town. There wasn't much to do there. We were too far out to get TV reception. We often joked we got matching ants on our TV screen because this was back in the days before cable. We had terrible TV reception on our black and white TV. We did have indoor plumbing, and electricity, so that was always good.My brother and I, we would leave the house, go out in the backyard. We didn't have neighbors at the time, and so, we would just go out sometime after breakfast and typically we'd come back around dinnertime 'cause we were hungry. We would always have some sort of adventure and whatnot. I think at some point, a friend of ours introduced us to Dungeons and Dragons and I became a really big fantasy nut.This was the early days of D&D. I used to have a first edition, Monster Manual and Player CanBall and DMS Guide and all that. We colored them, I coloring books 'cause they were all just black and white illustrations. I loved it. Got into reading books and whatnot. Wanted to play football, but didn't seem to get enough interest for college people. We were in a small town, nobody really knows what's going on with a small town.I served a mission for my church for a couple years and then returned home. I was visiting my grandparent's house, and this is probably my favorite story about what got me into what I do today is there was this really awesome a couple of these burly looking pirates on it. I was like, "Well, this is cool, visual stimuli to get someone board at grandma and grandpa's house, right? It said the white family, I said, "Oh, that's a Piratey name."I was like, "Oh, let's read about these pirates." It wasn't pirates. It was a story about the artistic legacy of NC Wyatt and his son Andrew, and his grandson Jamie. I just got hooked and in fact, I have a self-portrait from that issue that I took out of the magazine. I think I found a couple copies over the years. But there was a really little self-portrait that he did that I have hanging on my wall.There was some painters tape. And I was like, "Oh, you get paid doing art? What? Completely radical concept for me. I'd always loved comic books. My brother and I collected comics over the years. I figured, I was like, "Oh, what can I do with art?" I started exploring the different art-related careers and I stumbled upon graphic design because as I learned about illustration as a career, I was like, "That's really competitive. I don't know that I'm good enough to compete there, but I can definitely think visually and solve problems." So, I tended toward that.That was about the time I was a junior at state school in Washington State where I'd met my wife and I applied for an art school in Portland and I'm like, "There's no way they'll let me in." But surprisingly, they did. I finished a BFA in graphic design. My senior capstone project there at the time was a website, this is what? 1998 I wanna say. Right about the time my oldest was born. And my senior project was an informational website on typography, which is still out there.I did a really quick redesign of it the next year 'cause it was a hideous thing when I got looking at it in reality. But it's still fitting there, 20-some-odd years later. It was an informational website about typography. Cause actually, I fell in love with typography in school. That's one of the things I absolutely loved. I was like, "Oh, could I make money doing typography?" I was like, "No, I can't." Type is another one of those professions, it's a very niche specialty.MR: Yeah. You can do it, but you have to really work at it.TH: Yeah. But I love design. I love the visual solving of problems and communicating clearly with design. For several years, I did that and slowly over time morphed into more of an interaction UX designer. Just as the industry changed, I'm like, "This is a good thing. This can provide for me and my family and I enjoy doing it." You slowly over the years gravitated into technology and doing UX.That was the thing that got me where I'm at. Particularly doing sketchnotes, like the sketch note that I did at UX Week was the first time that I actually shared anything that I'd done like that. I would do 'em in my sketchbooks 'cause it helped me process what was being communicated, presentations that I would go to.I really took off though, I wanna say about 2014, 2015 when I got my first iPad. There's this little app that was really cool. I'm like, "This is cool." I was trying to use it with my finger, but the company that made the app, which is Paper. The company at the time was called, FiftyThree.MR: FiftyThree. Yep.TH: I think I got one of their styluses, which looked like a carpenter's pencil. I was like, "This is cool." But I didn't like the drag of the rubber on it, but it made my finger drawings not as crappy. I'd used that stylus. I tried to play around with it a bit more. Then Apple introduced the pencil and it was a game changer for me.I've dabbled a bit with other applications, but the Paper is still my go-to when it comes to sketchiness because of how it works. I still maintain sketchbooks. I have one now. It's more random skulls and patterns and headshots. Like you see I participate in October each year, which is a drawing challenge. If you go over into my Instagram, you'll see that I have a few. I think I actually made it through all 31 days this year.MR: You did.TH: Which is like maybe the second or third time that I've done it. I've completed Inktober. But that's just fun. It's a good challenge to just do random headshots. I enjoy the personalities that come out of those headshots. That's a bit of how I got into it, what I've been doing.MR: Wow. And now, do you still do sketchnoting from time to time?TH: I do. I haven't had as much with the pandemic. Right before the pandemic, I was actually doing a fair amount of it. I was getting contacted by conferences to help with that. I did a Mind the Product conference and did a plural site live as well. They were a lot of fun. Did the thing with—what I like about—my particular process with sketchnotes is I prefer being in person at any one event 'cause processing that real-time is the thing that I did. I've tried to do it with different random, YouTube presentations and stuff like that, but I don't get quite the energy and the vibe off of a live event.MR: Interesting. When I look at your style, I see you have a very unique ink style, I dunno how to describe it, but it looks like you're using a brush pen or something. There is some single-line work, right, but there's some that looks like it's kind of thick and thin. What is the tool that you're using to achieve that? I assume you're still on Paper, right?TH: Yeah. Looking at the ink over stuff, I typically, I'll pencil it out, I'll sketch out in pencil and then I just use fine liners. I use a fine linear and then like a 0.8. Sometimes I'll go in with the smaller one. One little tool that I saw, a Kaweco.MR: Oh, yeah.TH: I was like, I put it in my cart and it's really hard to justify that experience. Not a cheap thing, hey. But it got low enough and I'm like, okay, it was my birthday. And I was like, I told my wife, "I'm gonna splurge and get this." And like, okay. I love it. I haven't done much drawing with it. I got an extra broad nib and it's a little too thick for me. My pen addiction, my writing instrument addiction is breathing and well, and I collect art supplies when I'm trying to figure out something I wanna do. I ordered a broad nib off of Jet pens, which is not a good site if you like ready instruments. It's not good for your wallet. It's a great size.MR: Great site, and yeah, you spend a lot of money there pretty easily.TH: Oh yeah.MR: Paper now is owned by, WeTransfer the file transfer company, and still is maintained and has had some updates. Like you, I use Procreate for illustration work, but if I'm doing sketch notes, I go right to Paper. At this point, it feels really natural, the tools, I'm very aware of them. When you do sketchnoting in Paper, what are the tools that you like to use there? I'm just curious about that. Looking at, just have one of your samples up here on my screen. Looks like you're—TH: I have an iPad Pro that I use with an Apple pencil. Typically, when I do it, I'll—what I love about Paper is the intuitiveness of the tools. They have a paintbrush, they have a ink pen or fountain pen. They have a couple different types of markers and a pencil. Typically, I like to do a little sketch of the presenter. And so, if you look at it, you'll see that most frequently. Then notes around the topics they're talking about.Often, I'll get the sketch of the presenter. I do that in the quiet moments of their presentation. I'll either use the ink pen, the fountain pen version, a medium nib. It's relatively inexpensive to pay for the pro version for Procreate or for the Paper.MR: Right. It's $12 a year, I think.TH: Yeah. I'm more than happy to pay that 'cause it's given me a lot of opportunities. The thing that I love is the color mixing. They've nailed color mixing like nobody else has, and I think it's one of the best things that they've done in software. I'll use that or I'll use a one the fine liner to do the block letters and whatnot.Every now and then, I have little people pop up that are just a head body and arms, legs to sometimes self-characters and concepts that the designers are doing. Because the thing that I found really interesting with sketch notes is that it's that real-time synthesizing of the concepts that they're presenting that I get the most out of 'em. Largely, it started as a selfish practice to pay attention and stay awake, but I found that I still love doing that because it really helps me to get something outta these presentations as well. But yeah, Paper is hands down the most intuitive tool, I think, for just sketching out in general. I love it.MR: I agree. Well, we're talking a little bit about Sketchnoting specifically. We've done who you are and what you do. We got your story of your origin. Tell us a little bit about something you're working on now, whether it's work or personal that you're excited about that you can share with us.TH: Well, let's see. One of the things I'm really excited about, I have no clue how to do it, is I want to try and figure out how I can work a little bit more in conversational device. Conversational device seem to be taken a lot. There's the ChatGPT bot that everybody's talking about. All these AI-based tools, which have their place, I think. But how can I build a conversational way to present my work or to present myself?I've done some really terrible things. Experiments that will never see the light of day. One of the things I love about design is that's experimentation is part of trying to figure out a solution. You and I both know as designers, it's like, you can't really come up with a good solution unless you know what the problem is. And so, trying to figure that out from my perspective, like, okay, how can I make something like this happen and in a way that I can somehow manage, right?I will fully admit to being an old school. It's like my personal psych is there. I think I got a redesign out last year that I'm really happy with. That was the seven-year cycle of refreshing a personal site. It seems like seven to eight years is about the time it takes for me to get around to saying, "I should probably redesign my personal site." And actually, finding the time to do it.I want to, being able to maintain that in a way because with all the different social media things, it's really hard to improvise where your content is in a good way. 'Cause if you post on social media, you don't have a real centralized location for any of the content that you can put out. You have to say, "I'm gonna focus on this platform."That's really the dangerous thing, I think. How do you position yourself not only as a working professional, a design professional like we're as an artist you know, and give yourself a home where people know, "Oh, if I go here, I'll be able to find and go look at all the other things."'Cause as much as I love social media and Instagram, I'm tired of seeing an ad every third post in Instagram as I scroll through my feed. Then you have other social media services that kinda self-destruct. I want to have a good centralized location, and I haven't been able to get that fully done yet.'Cause as much as everybody loves WordPress and it powers so many sites, you have to really want to put in that time and effort to make WordPress work. There's other platforms and stuff too, but it's like, how can you make your content your own and have it in a place that everybody can know, "Okay, if I go here, I'll find their stuff." I'm trying to figure that out for myself.MR: That's something that challenged me as well. Years ago, I decided to go to Squarespace just because I could build what I wanted and not think too much about it, and constrained me a lot. Paper does provide, and it's grown to meet my needs over time. That's been really good to secure as well. I had an instance where I ran websites on WordPress and didn't update, and someone was running a legal pharmaceutical site buried in my website, and I was like, "All right. Not doing that anymore."I was out on WordPress self-hosting and switched to Squarespace, and it's been a good experience. But yeah, I felt the same way you talk about, you know, scrolling through Instagram, it feels like more and more of its ads and less and less of its actual content. I have to really fight through the ads to actually get to my friends for interesting things, and that's frustrating. Someone's going to hopefully solve that problem soon.TH: There's a lot of different platforms out there, you know, Mastodon is taking off, but it's like, in my mind, it's a little too complex for the normal person. Just about everything, you have to feed the algorithm. You have to continually be putting stuff out there to maintain any audience. People have lives outside of posting on social media.One thing I think in general that people don't think about too much is I have a life that is very important to me with my family, and it's like, I'm not gonna be posting all the time for these different platforms. It's great. I love doing it, but it's like, that's not my primary, one of my key focuses.MR: That's the question everybody has to ask, right, to what am I gonna feed this thing? What are its expectations of me? 'Cause sometimes you come to realize that these platforms have expectations for what they want you to do that doesn't align with what you wanna do. You have to make that decision because you only get so much time. It keeps going away. That's really fascinating. Well, I hope that redesigning your website goes well. I know what that feels like. I haven't done it for a while, so I know what a challenge it is.TH: I appreciate that. One thing I'm really interested in trying out, and maybe I'll be doing it a little bit this week a bit if I can, is AWS has this thing called Amplify Studio where they've pre-built some components and whatnot, in React powered by a Figma template. And so, you change your components in the Figma template, connect your account, and you should be able to launch out some app or whatever.I have the template, it's been taunting and mocking me for several months since I discovered it. An inanimate software can't do that. AI might be able to do that, but inanimate software doesn't necessarily do that as you're constant saying, "Hey, you got this, are you gonna do something at some point?"MR: For those who don't know, Figma is a design tool, vector-based design tool where many designers build often their prototypes and their mockups with. What Ty's talking about is he would build a mockup of his site and then use React, which is kind of a backend technology, I think is a fair way to describe it populated by—TH: It's a JavaScript framework—MR: Framework, that's the word I was looking for.TH: Yeah. Just help build out components. AWS is Amazon Web Services, which is the—basically simple way of looking at it is they provide a lot of the Cloud hosting services for a lot of providers. When your services aren't working, there might be an AWS outage somewhere causing some of that stuff. When the internet services go down, sometimes there's outage with some of these cloud providers—MR: Well later in the show, we'll definitely have a link to your website. Maybe by the time this episode launches, you'll have a new site up there that people can look at.TH: It gives me a goal to work on.MR: There you go. There you go. Let's take a little shift now and talk about tools. We've hinted at some, you talked about Paper by WeTransfer as a digital tool. Let's jump back into analog, and more specifically, are there brands of pens that you like, brands of paper, notebooks, pencils, so that people who are listening can dig them up and maybe experiment a little bit?TH: Absolutely. Right now, if I look at my desk, I have a mechanical pencil, and I'll send you some links so you can put these in show notes. It's a mechanical pencil, 0.51 with a metal coral is by Uni. The nice thing is, when you have a metal pencil, you'll often have this little nib that kinda gets bent and breaks. But what's nice about this pencil is that it retracts. It's fairly affordable. I think it's like maybe about 15 bucks. It's not a polymer is on the back of it.I also love fine liners. I've gotten the rounds with a whole bunch, I have some, Copics. The current one that I'm using is a Uni pen fine liner. I've found that I really like these really good waterproof so I can lay down watercolor washes or alcohol on so on. I got this one earlier this year. We did a team offsite. We got a rotating 600.MR: Those beautiful pens.TH: It was a Ballpoint. I'm not such a huge fan of ballpoint pens. But I discovered that Kaweco makes a gel pin insert refill, and so, I got a Kaweco gel pen insert in there. Then have a Kaweco fountain little porch fountain pen. The thing that amazes me-- yeah, it's tinier than I thought it was, but the thing I love about it is that the ink just flows and it's beautiful. It's really great.As far as what do I draw on, in the day, it's often post notes, making lists, and whatnot. I have sketchbooks. Right now, I'm using one. I've been experimenting a little bit with what I want to use for sketchbooks and stuff. This one's by a company, Global Art materials. It's just a generic kinda sketchbook.For years and years, I've used Moleskin's Art sketchbooks, which are great. I love that size. I got a eight by eight, or seven and a half by seven and a half watercolor sketchbook. I found that that was a little too precious. I was like, "Oh, I gotta do art in this stuff." I got the Kickstarter for "The Sketchnote Idea Book."MR: Thank you.TH: I love it, Mike. It's fantastic. The pages are bright white, which I absolutely love and they held all sorts of things. I got some watercolor in my old one. I have one somewhere, an Emergency Kit in case I have to go somewhere. I have another one somewhere that I'm like, lemme experiment with this stuff, and then maybe I'll get back to the Idea book. I found that that notebook that you guys put together was really one of my favorites in recent years.MR: Great.TH: The quality of the paper and the whiteness and the thickness made it really, really flexible. The only thing for me is maybe it was a hair too big, a little too wide. I like a little bit smaller, but I absolutely love the paper quality you guys did on that. Then like sketch notes or not sketch notes, but on the Ink Tobra drawings, I found a five by seven Strathmore 400 pad of paper that's really thick that I absolutely love.All of the years, and 2021s, I only did like 16 of them. I have all those originals hanging out on a piece of paper somewhere. One my goals with my personal site is to be able to set up a way to sell some of these 'cause that's fun or good if this is just sitting and collecting dust in your house. If you do it, I think that one of the real choices of making art is sharing it with people and helping them appreciate it. One of the things I wanna get going as well.MR: That sounds good. As far as digital, you talked about, of course, Paper. We got into that a little bit already. Are there any other tools that you like to play with? Or is that your go-to for pretty much everything?TH: I do have Procreate on my iPad. My kids use it a lot more than I do. One thing I found is I don't like the glossy slide of the Apple pencil on just a make a screen so I have a textured screen protector on it to give it that textural fill of paper. I found that that makes a huge difference for making marks on iPad. That's really it. I've toyed with, Adobe Fresco, Concepts app. There's one that the Icon Factory does, I can't remember it's Ben's go-to tool.MR: I think Ben Crothers likes that—Ben Norris likes that one.TH: Norris, yeah. I dabbled that a little bit. What I like about Paper is the ability to go from pencil to ink to watercolor. The brush that they have in Paper is fantastic. How you can lay your color, make it deeper and rich if you want.I haven't been able to get Procreate to do that. Procreate's a fantastic tool. I love it. But for Sketch notes, to me, it feels like it's a little too powerful. What I love about Paper is Paper's really good at just capturing your flow of thinking, whereas you have to be a lot more deliberate in your usage of Procreate. Although, if you're a Concept artist or somebody that's doing stuff like that, then absolutely that's a great place.My son does a lot of—he loves Pokemon, he loves Mario. He's been doing it. He's gonna be turning 25 this next year. And I'm like, "Dude, you could do commissions of people’s Pokemon on teams." He does this fantastic stuff. I'll send you a link to his Pokemon stuff. He'll do characters and whatnot. He's drawn so many Mario things. He's drawn hundreds of Pokemon and he gets them scaled. I just absolutely love looking at his stuff. I'm like, "Dude, you could probably do something with this. "But he's like, "Yeah, I know Dad, but I do this for fun." Which is great.MR: That sounds like a great variety of tools. You had quite a span. Some that I hadn't thought about, especially the Kaweco. I think it was the Kaweco insert that goes into the Rotring, I think you talked about. 'Cause I'm not a ballpoint fan either. There's a Schaffer insert that I use in my Retro 51s that I really like too. Probably a similar insert, I suppose.TH: I really like the Kaweco one. There's another one that seems to get pretty good reviews that I've seen on, I wanna call it Otto.MR: Oh yeah. Otto. I've had otto. Yeah, those are great. That's Japanese, I think.TH: Mark-making on a budget is a big deal for me. It's not necessarily the tools that make the person, it's what you do with the tools that you have. I think having a widely available set of tools is really important, but also making sure that they're budget-friendly, right?MR: Mm-hmm.TH: Is an important thing too.MR: Yep. I totally agree. Let's make one last shift into tips. The way I frame this is to imagine someone's listening. Maybe they're kind of at a plateau, or they just need some inspiration, little inspiration, little boost. What'd be three tips you would give that person to encourage them in their sketchnoting or visual thinking or just thinking, doing visual work experience.TH: The first tip, and I think this is a pretty important one. I've had a lot of people, when they find out I'm a designer, they throw, "Oh, I'm not artistic." And to me, it's not about being artistic. It's about being creative. I like to tell people everyone's creative in their own way. How you express your creativity is going to be different than how I express my creativity.My creativity comes out in the form of sketch notes and these random headshot illustrations that I do. Your creativity may be that you are a fantastic accountant and you can come up with really great ways to make things better and more efficient. Other people may just be fantastic books or bakers. Everybody expresses their creativity differently.It's not about being artistic, it's about expressing yourself in the work that you do. I think it's perfectly okay to admire for somebody's work and say, "Oh, that's fantastic," and be a fan of it, but also not beat yourself up like, "Oh, I'm not that good at because I can't draw like my sorority and illustrate all these school books." I can draw my own thing and I can be happy with it. And so, I think my first one would be, everybody is creative in their own way, and that's okay.With that, it goes to what I would say is my second tip is enjoy what you do. That it's really hard, I think, especially today for people to feel like, oh, I can enjoy this. I think you need to give yourself permission to enjoy those things that you find pleasing. There's so many things out there today, it's easy to get overwhelmed with them.I think it's okay to be nerdy and geeky or really into sports or, you can like a range of different things. If my kids were tell you what I like, they'd rattle off a list of dozens of things 'cause I don't think it's good to limit yourself to liking just one thing. You can like a range of different things, and that's okay. That would be my second one.The third one is, there's a script quote from Iron Glass. You've probably heard this. You can find a YouTube video on it somewhere, but he's talking about the work that you want to do when you—everybody has a particular taste and style in their head that they imagine. But then when you try and do it, it doesn't meet those mental expectations, but you can get there by working at it.I really think that everybody's capable of doing really great stuff, but you need to work to get to that point. Don't give up, but that's the whole—and I think follow your passion is really bad advice, but I think do what you enjoy because it may be that you may not enjoy your job which is providing for you and maybe your family. But if there's something outside of that that brings you joy and that you enjoy doing, do that in a way that helps you be happy.Over time, what you do with that will match what you see in your head. There may be opportunities that come up as a result of doing that because you never know. Opportunity—I forget who said this quote. Opportunity is often masked as hard work. If you're not doing the work to prepare for the thing that you want to do when that opportunity comes, you're gonna be ill-prepared to do that, that you want to do.And so, it's important to do the things that you feel are important that you love and you'll have an opportunity at some point. Timing is really important. I'll do a fourth one because this one I feel—and I've mentioned a little bit. You need set boundaries for yourself on what you do. You need to be able to say, this is what's important to me, and these other things aren't so important.And so, when it comes down to it, you know, I won't be doing this, this, or this because it conflicts with my more important thing. For me, personally, my most important thing is my family, and everything that I do, I do—I love design. I find that an extremely fulfilling, rewarding career, but it's a means to be able to provide for the family and make sure that they're taken care of.I think that a lot of people are like, this is my hustle. This is my thing. If you put so much of yourself into that, that you identify that with that, and if that thing goes away, where are you left? Set the boundaries for the things that are really important to you in your life that are not work-related. Because I can guarantee you everybody has something that's very important to them, that it's not work-related.Set those boundaries, talk about those boundaries, and live your life in a way that reflects your priorities because as you do that, people will see that, they'll understand that, they'll respect that. And as you do those things and you express yourself through whatever creative means you have, you'll gain those opportunities to be able to do those things and then lead a more fulfilling life and that you're you're happy with. You won't be living with regrets if you do those things.MR: I love the fourth tip. That's really great. Really encouraging. Well, thank you for all those tips and we appreciate your wisdom for all of us here. It seems like just minutes and suddenly we're near the end of the show. I'd love to hear where's the best place for people to find you? Websites, social media, whatever you think would be the best place to start and connect.TH: You bet. I do have a personal site as we were talking about. It's at tyhatch.com. That's gonna be where you can find me. I have links off to all my socials. I'm on Twitter for however long that's still up. I'm on Instagram. You can find me at both of those. Most social media, you can find me at Ty Hatch. Instagram, Twitter, those have been my mainstays. I do have a profile on Mastodon as well. You can find me there tyhatch@mastodon.online. And then also most of my schedule archive of at this point in time lives over on Pinterest. You go to pinterest.com/tyhatch.com/sketchnotes. I think I have a collection of about 300 different sketch notes that I've done.MR: Oh, that's great.TH: You can find me there. I'm always happy to field any questions. If you see something you like, send me a note. Say, "Hey Ty, I really like this sketch. Do you have it?" And if it's something from October, happy to do that. I did a thing years ago, oh gosh, it's been almost 10 years. Really, Mike, I'm getting old. I did this thing about 10 years ago called Artist Trading Cards, or ATC. I think it might still be up if you go to apcs.tyhatch.I did a bunch of Artist Trading Cards. It started off ostensibly as like, "I'm gonna do a little Christmas present for coworkers." And it turned into a four-month project that I had a daily post of thumb little sketch that I did. I'm happy to sell these or trade with you if you want to trade physical objects. There's a whole range of those out there as well. It's fun. I enjoy doing random doodles and I think some point, there will be an opportunity for 'em, but until then I get to enjoy them.TH: Yep.MR: Cool. Well, we'll definitely get show notes put into the episode. So if you're anything in or any of these things pique your interest, you can go check it out. We have links to it. And thanks so much, Ty for being on the show. I'm so appreciate the work you do and the representation you put into the world and your leadership really need people like you doing that. And I'm so glad that you do it.TH: Thanks, Mike. It's been a pleasure. It's been fantastic talking with you today.MR: You too. Well, and for everyone listening, that'll wrap another episode of "The Sketchnote Army Podcast." Till the next episode, this is Mike. Talk to you soon. All right. I'm gonna stop my recording.

In this episode, Julia Knyupa shares her visual thinking journey, the war in Ukraine and her journey fleeing war, and how she came to be where she is now. She also shares how the sketchnote community came through for her in her time of need.Sponsored by ConceptsThis episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.Concepts’ infinite canvas lets you sketchnote in a defined area while still enjoying infinite space around it — to write a quick note, scribble an idea, or keep pre-drawn visual elements handy for when you need them most.The infinite canvas lets you stretch out and work without worrying if you’ll run out of space. When combined with powerful vector drawing that offers high-resolution output and complete brush and stroke control — you have a tool that’s perfect for sketchnoting.SEARCH “Concepts” in your favorite app store to give it a try.Running OrderIntroWelcomeWho is Julia?Origin StoryJulia’s current workSponsor: ConceptsTipsToolsWhere to find JuliaOutroLinksAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.Julia's websiteJulia on instagramJulia on LinkedInJulia on FacebookYoutube TEDx Talk in UkrainianNatalia TalkowskaThe Sketchnote Handbook: The Illustrated Guide to Visual Note-Taking by Mike RohdeToolsAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast. iPad ProNeuland Marker pensA4 Printer papersProcreateCanvaToonlyDoodlyTipsFake it till you make it. Work-life balance. Just continue learning every day, getting inspiration from everywhere, from your colleagues, traveling, and following people from different industries.Authenticity is the most important value nowadays so allow yourself to be yourself and be very kind o yourself. CreditsProducer: Alec PulianasTheme music: Jon SchiedermayerShownotes and transcripts: Esther OdoroSubscribe to the Sketchnote Army PodcastYou can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.Support the PodcastTo support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!Episode TranscriptMike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike Rohde, and I'm here with my friend Julia Knyupa. Did I say that right, Julia?Julia Knyupa: Yeah. More or less. Everyone, even in Ukraine struggle with pronunciation of it, so it's fine.MR: You mentioned that it's even an unusual name in Ukrainian, so maybe you can give it a little tidbit in that, in your origin story, but before we get to that, let's first say, Julia, who are you and what do you do?JK: Yeah. Hello, everyone. Hello, Mike. I'm very happy to be here with you today. My name is Julia Knyupa. I'm 32. I'm Ukrainian, and last year I felt like I became even more Ukrainian. I speak to you from the United Kingdom where I temporarily based, and we'll see where life will bring me next. Originally I'm from Ukraine. I'm a visual practitioner, sketch noter, graphic facilitator, whatever you call it. I help to translate ideas into visual language.MR: An interesting question would be, I know that you use digital tools. Do you also use analog tools like large boards and markers and such? What does your practice look like when you do that work?JK: Actually, I need really to come back in time to talk about this because mostly it happened in Ukraine and before COVID, and of course, before the war. I worked as a graphic recorder on event. Mostly they were conferences and sometimes strategic sessions in organizations. Little and big, no matter. Mostly I worked being most attentive listener in the room and trying to keep all the ideas put on the paper, or like phone board. This is another type of paper I use.This was since 2017, I started my journey in my native town, Turka, and then moved to the Capital of Ukraine, Kyiv. I spent wonderful few years doing this to different conferences and I never, never put any efforts to promoting myself. I still don't have a proper website. It was always word of mouth sharing information in my contact. This is in short.MR: Interesting. Well, I've always believed that word of mouth is always the best kind of advertisement even better than having to send someone to a website. But of course, websites do provide good information and are valuable as well if you wanna branch out.It sounds like you started in the analog space in Ukraine, and now that you're in the UK, are you still doing analog practice? Do you, like many practitioners see a shift towards digital for a variety of reasons? Is that true for you as well?JK: Last year brought me one chance to do analog graphic recording. It was in Moldova in October, two days of educational forum. Mostly, I do now digital sketchnoting and graphic recording. As I still mostly work with clients from Ukraine and sometimes from other countries. But mostly it's very, very convenient for all of us and cheaper for organizers of events. Of course, it kills the magic of being present in the room with other people, but if they're all also are present digitally, so it has no sense.MR: Then the last question I have around this is, have you experienced the case where you're doing your work on the iPad, and then it is being projected on a screen to the side? Is that something you've experienced yourself?JK: Yeah, I tried it with a few organizers, but we found out that it not focuses people, but distracts them. Now I offer organizers both options, but after explanation, most of them come to idea of having it afterwards. Sending participants via email or somehow else. Because if you want to see a person who is talking to you when it's digital because it's so many distractions and it's better to be focused on people, not on drawing. In analog world, I would say the opposite.MR: I wonder too, if it's with the analog world, because you're in the front and the scale is smaller for someone, say in the back. They see someone's doing something, maybe they catch a tidbit here and there, but if you're far enough in the back, you can't really read anything and you're not tempted to. So, you know it's happening, but your focus and attention is on the speaker.Whereas with digital, a lot of times you might have a pretty large screen, and then if you're like me, I'm zooming in to do work. And they're probably seeing this zoom-in and the zoom-out. It can be very distracting in that regard where you can actually sort of see a little more. It almost draws you towards that in a way that analog maybe wouldn't.I'm just asking these questions because as this transition is happening and I encounter graphical recorders, I'm curious to see their experiences 'cause everyone seems to have a little bit different one, and it's really great to hear your perspective on that.Let's shift into, I wanna hear your origin story. How did you become the Julia that we know? That we see your work and you're doing this work, right? You didn't just come out of kindergarten and suddenly you were a graphic facilitator. You had to build up and probably experience a lot of things. Tell us your story from when you were a little girl, what are some of the key moments that directed you to the place where you are?JK: It's a very nice question. Bringing me back in my memories. You said about kindergarten. I never was in kindergarten. I spent my childhood with my granny. It was very calm and nice, and she was very, very nice and creative person. I remember she spent a lot of time with me playing, showing me how to find a way in the forest. Drawing as well as her dream was to become a painter like an artist.Unfortunately, she didn't have this chance in her life. I feel when I'm drawing now that I'm kinda a little bit helping her to fulfill her dream. I had a pretty basic childhood, very common for post-Soviet countries. Nothing really special. And it was pretty boring by the time I became a student.My first degree is in publishing and editing. As when I was a kid, I liked to read books so much. My dream was to create books and to help people to get really interesting and important information in a nice way. I liked to write things, so I was really happy to play with wording, with editing.Of course, when it comes to English, I'm not so good at explanations, but in my native languages, I'm much better. Believe me, just believe me. Also, when I became a student, I found out that there is not much happening in my little hometown. So I started to look for opportunities to grow and to travel as well as my family didn't have a lot of money, so I never left my hometown till the time I was 17, 18.I started to apply for different trainings, projects, and conferences, and that's how I discovered that a lot of youth is participating in something like non-formal civic education. And I was really, really excited about this. That's how I decided, like deeply in my heart that I want to become a facilitator, a trainer, and not to be only a participant of this, but also to guide other people.By the time I finished the uni, I already was a facilitator in youth programs. I'm really, really grateful for this education through Theodore Hoch College. This is a German program. Also, a nice and interesting part of this story is that I was a journalist, a TV presenter, and in newspaper when I was a student.It was a very fun experience for me. Also, my granny was very proud that she can turn on TV and see me on the screen. This was something exciting about this. It also taught me that people really like when information is set up nicely and that time is money. Because on TV you suddenly realize that one minute is very expensive, so you start to put words in short which is also a very useful skill to what I do now.Seven years of facilitation of youth projects gave me a lot of nice opportunities to learn about people, diversity, social projects. It gave me a chance to travel a little bit around the world, not like the world, around eastern Europe, let's say. It was a very great experience when I started to think that the world is something much more interesting than my little hometown.MR: This reminds me a little bit of a interviewee we had last season with Natalia Talkowska who grew up in Poland, in post-Soviet Poland, really similar experience where she was just really hungry to see the world and to get out. Probably a little bit of a similar personality. We'll make sure and put a link in the show notes. If you wanna connect to between Julia and Natalia, you can listen to both of those interviews. Anyway, continue. Please continue.JK: Yeah. Cool. This brought me to the moment of my life when I was practicing, doing seminars with young people. And I saw that my colleagues, especially from Germany, are using wonderful skills, drawing while explaining something. And I was really excited. I never saw anything like this. It was a totally a new world for me, but I thought that it's absolutely impossible to learn how to do this as I never draw before I was 25.It was just kind of a dream, but I never even tried because I didn't believe that it's possible for me. But in 2016, it was my birthday and I was very lonely that day, so I decided to scroll Facebook and I saw that there is a training in Kyiv, in the capital of my city on visual storytelling.It takes three hours to get to Kyiv from my city. So I bought myself a ticket and went to this training and I was so excited. It was the best birthday present I could give to myself. I tried that basically I can do this and I can use it on trainings. I started to put it in practice.At the end of the year, I created my first big visual recording. And participants were excited because in Ukraine that time there was only one person who did this professionally. No one was really acquainted with this kind of, I would say, social art. That was amazing. It gave me an inspiration and gave me confidence that I'm able to do this.I decided from the first day that it's a very difficult thing to do, it's not like hobby so I need to do this for money. So I set up a tiny, tiny price for it, but for me, just to know that I'm doing this to grow and to be a professional and not just to play with it. I took it very seriously. But I didn't get any support from my ex-partner. He saw my first picture, and he said, "Oh, such a shame. I don't think that anyone will pay you for this."MR: Wow.JK: That made me so angry. To be honest, anger is a power which really can bring you very far. So I decided to prove--MR: Him wrong.JK: That he's wrong. Yeah.MR: Good for you.JK: I decided to create visual notes. Now, I do visual notes digitally and if needed offline. I do explainer videos, and animated stories, and I also teach sketchnoting people in Ukraine in the Ukrainian language. For few years, I think few hundreds of people learned it with me. And I always recommend them your books, Mike.MR: Wow, that's great. My book is in Ukrainian, by the way. I think you know this, right?JK: Yeah, yeah. Of course.MR: I don't know how well it's selling. I haven't gotten a report on it, but anyway.JK: I'm sure I was a great promoter of your book, Mike.MR: Thank you.JK: Half of books in Ukrainian are sold because of me--MR: Right. I like it.JK: Lobbying.JK: You may not be wrong, actually. Well, we'd have to see. Along this story, I dunno where this fits in, but we met each other in Portugal when we went to the International Sketchnote Camp. That's when I remember first meeting you and chatting with you really briefly, because a lot of people were talking and stuff. But it was really fun.And I thought that sort of brought full circle for me, knowing that the book had been translated into Ukrainian and I have copies here. Honestly, I'm pretty aware of the world, but Ukraine was sort of a blind spot for me. I just never thought of it separately from Russia simply because when I grew up, they were kind of the same thing, right?MR: That's probably my own blind spot. I was really excited when I learned that there was this, well, there's really like a separate language. Then as the more I learned, like actually this culture is really old, it's a really old culture, and it's this whole different experience. That was kind of my first awareness that. Of course, then I met Yuri Malichenko, who I learned as Ukrainian as well.Then suddenly like all these Ukrainians started popping up in my experience, like you and I think there's some others that I've met. It was kind of a fun awakening for me. Like, wow, there's this whole country. I was not aware of it, and now it is and there's these really cool people.My book is in this language. It was a fun way to be introduced to a country in a really positive way. Anyway, that's somewhere in this story, we met each other, I think that was 2018 in Portugal where we met.JK: Yeah, I think so. This was my first time ever I met visual community.MR: Really?JK: Yeah. Because Ukraine is really, really far from what is happening in Central and Western Europe. Yeah. I felt like I'm really the first person who came from so far to sketch note camp. I was excited. And I remember it was very expensive for me. This was my first time I asked the community for support. I said, "I can volunteer, I can do something there. So please just give me a chance to come. I will be really, really excited to see all of you."Because on the time, I only could follow people on Instagram, and it was unbelievable to see all them offline. That was great. When I saw you, I even didn't have words. I was so scared to approach you, and I was so happy then when you approached me. Like, "Oh my gosh."MR: That's funny. I remember you being very quiet and then we were chatting, I think it was after a session, I don't know which session, maybe it was Michael Clayton's session potentially or something. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I remember we had a good discussion. There are so many people in those camps. You're sort of lucky if you get maybe 30 minutes with somebody unless you intentionally spend time together. So yeah, it was really great to meet you there.JK: Yeah, that's for sure.MR: Well, that's really interesting. Go ahead.JK: Coming back to what you said before about Ukraine and the Ukrainian language, I also had a feeling and in my childhood, it was a very common narrative that Ukraine is a part of brotherhood, of big brotherhood. Also, my family has some roots, or not roots, but history is connected with Russia. My granny and my mom were born in Siberia, which is very far and it's a very cold place.But life circumstances brought them to Ukraine so I was born there, but I always knew a lot of facts about Russia, and Russian culture. We spoke Russian in our family, and even my school studies were in Russian. I grew up on a lot of very propaganda narratives, let's say.It's a very common story, unfortunately, for a lot of citizens of my country, but the good thing, which is happening now, we are finally becoming very, very independent. The freedom of thinking, the freedom of expressing your culture. I would say that being Ukrainian is not about your origin, but about what you feel yourself, about your soul, about your values, and how you identify yourself.Even it came out that I don't have any Russian origin, I'm Jewish, which is another funny story. I feel so much Ukrainian these days. I feel like I'm so much with my country and it is in my heart every day, and it made me even more Ukrainian these days.MR: I can imagine. I can't even imagine what that would be like. It's not even in my ability to imagine what it would be like. I'm so glad that you made it safely. Now, I guess, it's somewhere in this origin story. I'd love for you to tell what happened when you were there and how you got to the UK and all that stuff. It's really important for us to hear.JK: In Feb, on February 24th 2022, like a lot of people in my country, I woke up from explosions and sirens in my city. And the first thing I did, I thought this is a siren of ambulance because I was sleepy and I didn't realize what is going on. And I thought that all the explosions are also happened in my night dream. I didn't take it serious, even I was very worried before.I was anxious. Few months before the war happened, I kinda had a feeling that something gonna happen. The first thing I did, I opened the chat with my friends and then saw a message, "Oh my God, girls, the war has started. I remember that I had a very, very clear thinking, and I managed to do it very quickly.I mean, I realized that I cannot stay there because I'm--in short, I have some mental disorder, which is anxiety and I couldn't stay there because I knew that, unfortunately, I couldn't manage to--MR: Yeah, too much.JK: --be productive, and yeah. So I decided to move from Ukraine the same day.JK: Wow.JK: It was a long journey as I live in the very center of Ukraine. By the way, I think that a lot of listeners even don't realize how big is our country. It's the biggest country in Europe. I don't remember if it's bigger than France or France is bigger, but we are kind of the same size. It's a huge country. It took me one day to get to the border and I spent two days on the border.It was 36 hours in the car with my friend. My friend helped me to escape. She was driving. I spent one month in Poland. And it is an amazing country. Thank you all Polish people who are listening to this now. You are really great and your support of Ukraine is priceless and what you need to help our country is amazing. Not to underestimate the help of other countries, just we could really feel that this is a real friend now to us.Later when the United Kingdom started a governmental program which allowed Ukrainians to come because early it was very, very difficult to get visa to the UK for us. It's really an amazing chance to start your life somewhere in safe place with all the support provided from this country.So they offered local people to host Ukrainians. It is an amazing thing. And all last year was about feeling how world is supporting. A wonderful family in the UK offered to host me. So I still there. I still here. I'm very, very grateful to this amazing family who has eight children in total.MR: Wow.JK: They call me the ninth kid, and I really can feel it. I can tell this. And all other people who I met here, also very supportive and amazing. I even met here an amazing partner, like the best person I ever met in the whole life. Andy, I know you're listening and watching this. This is an amazing journey even it sounds horrible because of all this difficult circumstances like millions of people had to go through.Some of us really suddenly could feel that our dreams came true. A lot of us wanted to travel, and we got this. A lot of us wanted to try something new. We have all this, but unfortunately not in the way we usually plan to have this. It took me half of a year to feel where I am, what is going on in general, to find out myself standing steadily on the ground.And yeah, I started to look for chances to continue what I was doing, because I remember that it's such an amazing thing when you do what you love, it supports you. I don't want to share it as a long story, but what I was doing in Ukraine, like visual facilitation, et cetera, it's helped me to overcome depression. Of course, combined with the help of specialists, but it is an amazing thing.If you can do what you love, it really helps you to be focused on your goals and your dreams. That's how I found out that, oh, my old iPad is not working anymore like it's used to. I dunno how to say this in English. So I cleaned it from the dust, and I found out, oh my gosh, it works only like 30 minutes even being plugged in. I cannot provide quality services to my clients anymore.Unfortunately, it was not so popular last year in Ukraine to have visual facilitation as not so many conference has happened. So I had to start looking for new clients. It was a very stressful moment. However, one day I decided, oh my gosh, why I am struggling so hard trying to earn really little money if I can ask people to help me, because I remembered that if you ask, you have a chance to get it. If you don't ask, you will never get this.I decided I will try. I didn't believe tha it'll be fast. I didn't believe that a lot of people would love to support an unknown person, really stranger. I would say I wasn't a part of English speaking visual community for a long time. I was very focused on Ukraine and people I worked with. It was really needed that time so I never invested a lot of efforts and time to be in touch with English-speaking visual practitioners.However, it was an exciting moment when I realized that, oh, I can message some people I know. And that's how I messaged you and you were so kind to share my request. I created a fundraising campaign on GoFundMe and I just ask people if they will be so kind to support a person who has to start a new life from the scratch. And yeah, it was a magical period of two weeks when I was like sitting and realizing that unknown person from Malaysia sent me $5. A person I don't know.I really was sitting and sending mental love and kindness and gratitude to people I never saw before for the support and help. In two weeks we got the amount I needed and I bought myself an iPad and I was able to create again.It was a wonderful, wonderful experience. It made me think how much community matters and how we can really support each other. In my goal list is one day to pay it back or pay it forward. However, today I need to be focused on helping my country, and I try to do as much I can to work for Ukraine and to donate to support my people.MR: Well, that was a great story. I remember when you reached out and I thought, well, "This is exactly what our community is supposed to be here for. If we can't take care of someone like this, then what are we doing? Why are we even here?" When I posted it and encourage some friends, I just felt like, "Okay, come on, community. You gotta show up here 'cause this is what it's about."Everybody did. I haven't looked at the campaign, but I think we exceeded whatever--you had a a minimum requirement. I think we exceeded it by the end, which was really good feeling and a lot of people contributed. There was a variety of people, quite a list. So that was really encouraging to me to see that.JK: If you're listening now, this wonderful people, I'm sending you my best wishes and gratitude for supporting me. Thank you very much again.MR: It was exciting. It was really fun to see that happen and know that we were making an impact because we could all see what was happening. I think the other thing too was, I did some donations toward Ukraine for food and other stuff, but you feel like, especially in the U.S. maybe not so much in Europe, I guess, you sort of feel like it's so distant.Then the problem of the news cycle means, you know in a week you forget about it because it's not on the front page. The fact that I knew Ukrainians, it was more on my mind pretty often, but you feel a little bit like, how can I have an impact? You can donate, but it still feels like so distance. Having a person who started her life over and needs this help to do the things that we all do, that felt like, wow, I can actually apply something to a person who's doing the work that we do and she's part of our community and I've met her.That was a really great feeling to have that direct impact. Often the donations, you don't see the people getting fed, or the whatever you're donating to is sort of distant. So this was great to see it directly go to you and to help you move forward.As much as it helped you, I think it also helped us. In a community, it's really a win-win situation where you win because you can move forward and we win because we feel like we're making a difference in your life. That's a really great, great way to be.JK: That's like amazing. Since that time using this equipment, I already like finished more than 20 different projects for Ukraine. A few animations, a lot of visual notes. I was surprised, but by the end of the 2022, a lot of conferences had happened and most of them are now devoted to the topic, how can we support each other? How can we develop our country even in these circumstances? How can we rebuild our country?That made me think about what should I do when I come back to Ukraine. What will be my next step to support my country? I decided while I'm here in England, I have a great plan to make a master degree in illustration. It's a very strange choice for a visual practitioner to choose illustration because it's kinda what we are moving from because the idea of illustration is very different from what we are doing.It's about ideas not art, but I found out a very nice program which helps to design your learning path. And showed them what I'm doing and they said, "Okay, we're gonna support you in learning what whatever you need." Now I'm applying for university and this is a dream. I never told anyone except of my few friends about this. And today I'm sharing with everyone about this.I hope that when I come back to Ukraine, I will be able to illustrate something really important. Something about social issues, strategic sessions, how to rebuild the country, et cetera, et cetera. I want to really come back and being well prepared to this and have all the skills to show how much we can do when we work together and think visually.MR: That's really great. That's such a great wrap-up to that story. And it's not the wrap-up, right, because you still have it when you return, that will be the next phase of the story. It's great to hear that story and to hear that you're investing in yourself. 'Cause I think investing in yourself will eventually lead to investing in your country. That's a really great way to think about it long-term, I think.JK: I think every visual practitioner, going into metaphor is kind of a prism which accepts a light and helps to spread the light.MR: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.JK: If you can be a really sharp prism, you can do a lot of change in the world. I hope to be a nice prism for Ukraine.MR: Great. I love that imagery. I love that imagery. Well, it's hard to shift away. Just wanna keep on enjoying hearing about all the work that you're doing, but I think it's really important that we continue with tools. At this point, talk a little bit about what are your favorite tools. We'll start with analog tools, which I know maybe you're not using as much, but maybe they're still part of your practice. Then, of course, digital tools. What are your favorite software and other things that help you do the work you do?JK: Yeah, of course. Talking about analog tools, I'm not original. I use what master visual practitioners in the world use. I use quality markers like Neuland because they're available in Europe and phone board because I guess it's more thick and it stay longer than paper. I know that some companies I worked with still have this board in their offices. It helps to prolong the effect of session, which is visualized. Also, sometimes I use just usual paper like usual A4 paper and Pilot pen.Nothing really original. I always compare it to like, cooking our favorite Ukrainian dish, borscht. So if you come to a person who, usually it's a woman who made a nice borscht, you don't tell her, "Oh, you maybe have a good pot." Because it's all about skills.The same about visualization. Good equipment is important, but it's mostly dependent on skills and love and knowledge, not about only--when people learn sketchnoting with me, I always say, "No matter which instruments you have today, we'll draw anyway even if it is a toilet paper, I don't care. Please just bring some paper and some pens." When it comes to digital instruments, I use iPad Pro with a pencil and Procreate.I chose them just because a lot of visual practitioners in Facebook community advised it so I just started to use them and never switched to anything else. It's very unusual, but I would recommend a online service Canva, which is for non-designer. Because it's so well developed nowadays that you can really create something visual note style, even without drawing if you don't have anything like a tablet. It's very easy nowadays.For animations, I use Toonly and Doodly, which is kinda the same company who produces them. This is a very basic software. I'm pretty satisfied with what you can create because I didn't want to invest too much because I was not sure if I will continue doing this.But yeah, people are very satisfied with what I produce because it's very quick when you, for example, create an animation with cool animations today, it takes months. But I can really create it in a few days, which is amazing nowadays.MR: That's great. All the power is right there in that iPad with some software, which is great.JK: Yeah, that's true.MR: Cool. Well, I love that you have a simple tool set. I believe in being able to go to the drugstore and find your pens and your paper and be able to work. Again, it's really about your skills and your love and your soul, and not so much about the tools, but good tools do help, right? Bad tools can definitely distract.JK: Yeah.MR: Let's shift into tips now. The way I frame this is, imagine someone's listening who's a visual thinker, whatever that means to them. They feel like they're on a plateau, they're not growing, and they need some encouragement, they need some inspiration. What would be three things that you would tell them, either practical or theoretical to help them think about ways they can move forward?JK: It's a very nice question. I'm a person who needs a boost now because I start to work with absolutely new audience for me, English-speaking audience. I'll give this tips, first of all to myself, and I hope that they will be useful to someone else. The first principle I always use when I try to do something new when I need to learn something is like, fake it till you make it, but I change it a little bit. I do it as a game.You can pretend being a master in this and doing this, or you can think that you are a YouTube vblogger and you're telling to your audience how to do this or teach five-year-kid how to do this. I kinda try to pretend that I already know how to do this because I find it much easier to advice to someone than to do it myself. So I pretend that I'm just advising. So fake it till you make it with the first principle.The second one is about work-life balance. I never understood it earlier, but now I realize how it is important to observe beauty and consume quality content. I really recommend to get inspiration from everywhere, from colleagues, from traveling to follow people from different industries. For example, I found a lot of inspiration in design industry, psychology, coaching, facilitation. Just continue learning every day and follow good people on Instagram. Let's say this is the second tip.And the third one is a very important gift of allowing yourself to be yourself. What I mean by this that for example, I'm a very slow thinker and slow doer, so I give myself permission to do it in my own pace and with my own style is sometimes I think, "Oh my gosh, it's so ugly. Why people at all should like this or should pay for this, even."I know now that authenticity is the most important value nowadays. Authenticity is very important so please allow yourself to be yourself and be very kind to yourself. It's very easy to say, but it's very difficult to do. But it's a moment where you are healing your inner child and be just very kind to what you're doing. Talk to yourself as a caring parent and support yourself. It's wonderful what you can reach when you kind to yourself.MR: Those three are great. I love those tips. All three of those. The last one I especially like, and I often tell people, give yourself grace especially new learners who are doing sketch noting the very first time, like, "Okay, look, you've never done this before, how can you expect to be amazing?" It's gonna take time. Let yourself be yourself, in that sense. So I love that one, especially. Well, Julia, like we thought was gonna go really fast. So here we are at the end of the show. Can you believe it?JK: No, this is crazyMR: Now what I wanna do is let people know where they can find you, your social media. I'm gonna make the bet that your website will be done by the time this episode comes out. If it is, we'll make sure and put all these in the show notes. So if you wanna contact Julia and reach out to her to connect with her, if you've got projects for her. What is the best place to start?JK: Yeah, any social media, like Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn, you can find me with the name Julia Knyupa. Hopefully, I will have a working website by the time when this episode will come up. Also, if you want to kinda learn something and to hear some inspiration from me on YouTube, there is my TEDx Talk in Ukrainian, but with English subtitles. It was in 2019, and I talked there about creative confidence. If you want to learn about this place, find this on YouTube.MR: Julia, we'll have you send some links to us and we'll make sure those get into the podcast show notes so people can click on it and watch that as well. Last question is, do you know what your website domain name or URL will be for the website yet?JK: Not yet.MR: Okay. Not yet. Normally, I would've had you give the website and then people would just type it in and go there, and maybe by the time they hear this it would be live, but that's okay.JK: I want to thank you for this wonderful chance to talk to you and to all of your people who are listening to this now. I know that it's tricky, but I want to ask you to continue to support Ukraine because the war is not over and we are fighting for the whole democracy and freedom in the world. So please continue to support Ukraine and I will be absolutely happy to work with people from different countries. Please reach me if you want to support Ukrainian artists.MR: Yes. I love it. I love it. We definitely will. Thank you, Julia, for your time. And for everyone listening, that’s another episode of the “Sketch Note Army podcast” wrapping up. And until the next episode, this is Mike and I'll talk to you soon.

In this episode, Lai Chee Chiu and Ferry Timp — two members of the organizing committee of ISC23NL in Leiden, The Netherlands — talk to us about the event that will hold September 1-3, 2023.Hear details about the full organizing team and a bit of the history of ISC. Learn how they decided on Leiden for the event’s location. Get a sneak peek of what to expect, what to do, and places to visit in Leiden. Prepare yourself for a festival vibe in this year's ISC!Sponsored by ConceptsThis episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.Concepts' vector-based drawing feature gives you the power to adjust your drawings — any time you like. You can nudge the curve of a line, swap out one brush for another, or change stroke thickness and color at any stage of your drawing — saving hours and hours of rework.Vectors provide clean, crisp, high-resolution output for your sketchnotes at any size you need — large or small. Never worry about fuzzy sketchnotes again.Concepts is a powerful, flexible tool that’s ideal for sketchnoting.SEARCH “Concepts” in your favorite app store to give it a try.Running OrderIntroWelcomeWho are Ferry Timp and Lai Chee?Origin Story - ISC23 Leiden organizersWhy Leiden? What's exciting about ISC23NL?What's exciting about the city?Sponsor: ConceptsTipsWhere to find more about ISC23NLOutroLinksAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.International Sketchnote Camp Website International Sketchnote Camp on Instagram International Sketchnote Camp on LinkedInSketchnote Army Slack Channel Check out the #isc23nl channel!TipsCarry along the right shoes because you'll need them for a walk around the city. There will be guided walks facilitated by the tourist bureau.Museum visits with the support from Leiden Convention Bureau.Canal boat trips. Bike riding around the town.Lots of pubs, restaurant, theaters, and small band performances.CreditsProducer: Alec PulianasTheme music: Jon SchiedermayerShownotes and transcripts: Esther OdoroSubscribe to the Sketchnote Army PodcastYou can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.Support the PodcastTo support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!Episode TranscriptMike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike and I'm here with my friends Lai Chee and Ferry Timp. How are you guys doing?Lai Chee Chiu: We're good, thank you. And you?MR: Doing well. Ferry doesn't know what to say. He's too—Ferry Timp: No. I was trying not to speak, the both of us at the same time, but I'm okay too. Thanks, Mike.MR: You're so welcome. The reason we have Lai Chee and Ferry on the call is they are some of the organizing team, there's more team than just them, organizing the International Sketch Note camp happening in Leiden in September of this year. We're super excited. I am attending the event. My flight is purchased, my hotel is booked. I'm excited to get back to the Netherlands. I think I was there in 2014 in Amsterdam and really had a great time, so, I'm excited to come back.And we thought it would be helpful on this episode to talk a little bit about the International Sketch Note camp. We can talk a little bit about history. Specifically, we'll talk mostly about Leiden and how the team was formed, why they decided to choose Leiden as the city, some of the benefits of Leiden, the things that they're excited about, and maybe some tips. I think we understand Ferry's got some tips around places to see if you are in the city.FT: I have the shirt already, so.MR: He's got the shirt, he's ready to go. For those who are listening, he's got a beautiful Leiden football team sweatshirt that he's wearing, representing the city. Let's get into it. Let's first start with—people may remember Lai Chee from a previous episode where she was focused on, but we may not know who Ferry is. Let's start with Ferry and then we'll go to Lai Chee, and tell us who you are and what you guys do.FT: Okay. Well, I'm Ferry from the Netherlands. I'm educated as a certified public accountant. I've worked for 12 years at PWC in the Netherlands. And after that, I decided that it was time for me for a next step so I started to work for the City of Leiden as an internal auditor, and I did that for seven years. Why did I end up at ISC and stuff like that?That's because in 2018, it was, I guess, I was looking for this powerful tool to communicate all my findings, because yeah, auditors are good at one thing, it's writing reports that no one can read. All these difficult sentences. I was really looking for how can I do this differently.I tried to find some nice images on Google, but if you find one, basically, something is missing in it. Then I discovered this amazing tool, and it was holding a pencil, start drawing again. It was really helpful in making simple and clear images of key messages.What I found out was that it was really nice to see how the other parties, like I was in the council, and they were trying to read my reports, but when I came back with just drawings, they were enthusiastic. They got immediately what I meant and it was very nice. That's why when I started with drawing and I never stopped.MR: Really great.FT: Just to keep it short because I don't do short very well.MR: Well, it's good to hear an accountant who's excited about using visualization.FT: Exactly.MR: The longer I'm doing this, I see more and more variety of people doing this work, which is exciting to me because when you do the principles and you put them out there, you don't know who's going to pick it up. You just assume for me, other designers just make sense. But beyond that, maybe teachers, but now I've got physicists and accountants and business people, and all kinds of other people, because I think we're visual creatures.I think it really helps. It provides another way to look at something, especially if the stuff you're doing is really important. If people are blowing off your reports and not really understanding them, they're losing value that they could gain so that's, you're helping communicate those ideas.FT: Exactly.MR: How about you, Lai Chee?LCC: I have a background in drawing, but I didn't do anything after school. At some point, I was looking for a team event and we figured out that I was drawing for business and pizza and beer. That was the perfect team event. That's what we did. And that was around 2016, I believe. And then we didn't do anything about it till I came across the de tekenende actors from the de betekenaar, where Ferry works at this moment.And I met Ferry there because we were taking the online course and joined the community together. We've been talking and drawing together ever since. He started to draw for work, and I started to draw for work. I'm currently a freelancer and drawing is a communication tool for me.I'm not a graphic recorder. I do graphic facilitation, but not recording. And it's just a way of taking notes. That's what we call sketch notes.MR: Exactly. Exactly. Well, that's really great. I wondered what the connection was between the two of you, and now it makes so much sense.LCC: We go a long way back now. Yeah.FT: We go a long way back, yeah.MR: That's pretty cool.LCC: But we also did face-to-face courses together.FT: Yeah. It was visual facilitation, four-day course.LCC: Yeah, visual facilitation.MR: Super nice. Tell me now a little bit more about the remainder of the team. I think there's three or four other people, I can't remember the number. You have a pretty relatively large group for an organizing team, which is great because you spread the load. I know the French team was a larger team. And I think that really helped them compared to, I think the first team in Hamburg was four.And then Luis had a partner that he worked with in Portugal. His advantage is that was his business, running workshops. He had that advantage. But if you're a team of people and you can spread it out across a lot that helps. Tell us about the other team members.FT: Shall I do it, Lai Chee?LCC: Yeah, sure.FT: Okay. We are in total with seven people, so besides us, it's five more. To start with there are two members that were originally the initiators of ISC23. Those are Claudia Unseld and Henk Wijnands. They started to look for others to join. I believe that Vincent Kober, he was the third one because he also attended last year in Poland, the ISC.He had asked for something like, "Is there a program, or how do you start such a thing and organizing?" He had asked Chris Wilson this question, like, "Is there something you can hand over?" And he was like, "No, there isn't." But the fact that he asked was for Chris, something nice to tell to Claudia, like, "Okay, Vincent is also looking for maybe the possibility of organizing."After that, I believe Lai Chee who also was there, was asked to participate. And Corine Matser, my colleague from De Betekenaar, she was also there in Poland. Then there was a group of five, and they thought, "Well, that's not enough. We need a couple more."And then Ingrid Nouwens, she's in the south of the Netherlands and New Henk already. So, Henk asked her. Corine came to me and said, "Ferry, we have this great idea, just a small project. Do you join us?" And I said, "Well, of course, I'll join. And then we had this team of seven. I don't know what you want me to tell more. I could go on for hours about that.MR: Well, I think it's good to state the names of the other team members. Everyone's working together. Again, I think that's great that you have a large team. It probably makes communication more challenging. Anytime a team gets larger, that just is a natural challenge, you can't avoid it. But the benefits are that you can spread the load which is really important for a big event like this.It's good to hear other names. Thank you everyone on the team for what you're doing because I know it's a lot of work. I've spoken to lots of these teams, and I know how much work it is. Maybe let's shift a little bit toward how did you decide? Was it Henk and Claudia, who made that first move? How did this all come about?And secondly, how did you choose Leiden? Because there's lots of cities in the Netherlands. Amsterdam being one, although probably expensive. Talk to us a little bit about that too. What led you to Leiden? Maybe we'll talk a little—let's let Lai Chee take this one.LCC: We all look in our own neighborhoods, and because Ferry worked in Leiden, he knew Leiden pretty well so he came up with Leiden but I, of course, was with them and who came along. Claudia and Vincent don't live in the Netherlands. Those are the cities that we choose from. And then of course, we looked at the cost, but also what happens when we don't sell the tickets, so till when can we cancel, those conditions. The PLNT in Leiden was so enthusiastic, and they really, really convinced us, and the price was good and also the services and the whole team is thinking with us. There was just actually a no-brainer too—it was quite simple, right?FT: Yeah. Agreed. Agreed.MR: It sounds like Amsterdam really never was an option. Is that mainly because of cost? I mean, you get the advantage. The beautiful thing about Leiden, from my perspective, looking from the outside, is it's just a train ride from Amsterdam. So, I can fly into Amsterdam, I can get good rates on my flights, and then simply hop on a train or whatever, and then make my way to the Southwest, and here I am. To get the benefits of Amsterdam without the chaos of Amsterdam, maybe, I don't know, or the pricing.FT: Yeah, I guess that's—LCC: But it's also practical that you have someone who knows the city very well.MR: Yes. Yes.LCC: Of course, we've been in Amsterdam, but we know our own city the best.FT: I get lost in Amsterdam.LCC: Yeah, me too.MR: Well, that's good to know. And I think that's an interesting pattern as well. Thinking all the way back to Hamburg. Not all the team members were from Hamburg. I think they had two who were local. Who knew the city, they knew they could talk to venues, they knew the place. They found this really cool place that was reasonable. All those things had to line up. Same thing with in Portugal, Luis knew places that he could go.Same thing with Paris. Many of the members on that team were with BNP Paribas. They found out that everybody's on holidays in France in August. We have this beautiful meeting center we can get access to. Again, I think that's really important. Is there someone there locally who—'cause there's also logistical things, right?Like, who's gonna order the bread to show up at three o'clock? Or who's gonna make sure the coffee is there or the whatever. I'm sure there's all these questions, and having somebody local who knows the city and knows people there, it's really important. So that's good to hear.Maybe what we could talk about now, and I'll point this one at Ferry and then Lai Chee, is what has you excited about this version of the ISC in Leiden? What's the thing or things that you're most excited looking forward to? Is there some part of it that you're excited about? We'll start with Ferry and then we'll go to Lai Chee after that.FT: Cool. It's cool. What's not to be enthusiastic about at the moment? Because at the beginning when you start organizing this, then it's all like these things, like, okay, are we a team? And the second question is, do we want to go for this? Do we have dates that we're aiming at? After that it's like, can we do it? Can we find a venue? Can we find a caterer? How does the budget look like? Do you think we can do it?Those are all very important questions, but it's also like, yeah, it's tough to get there and it's also I think, the most boring thing. Right now we are on this train. We have all these ideas about how do we want to organize it. You see at our backgrounds if you're not just listening to us, but see us on the screens, on YouTube, then you can see like we want to go for this festival vibe.And I think that's something really cool because for me, ISC, I've never been there. I was planning on twice. The first time that I wanted to be part of it was the online version in Brussels, but then life happened. The last time, I was all set up to participate and something happened. I don't want to talk about it right now, but yeah, that's what happens. For me, it's like really to meet all these like-minded people, to learn together, to be inspired, to get new ideas. That's what I like about it.This year in our team, we are all really an enthusiastic about what can we do next to it. Because a lot of us have attended to previous editions and they're very enthusiastic about what you guys did there. But then it was also like, "Okay, can we do a next step? How can we make the connection more or professionalize a little bit?" I think Lai Chee is going to mention something about that later on.For me, this festival thing, to do it slightly different. To ask Mike Rohde to come to it and to let us present him as a rockstar. And now we have a second rockstar, Ben Crothers is going over to the Netherlands. That's so nice. And just to get the excitement about this and all these ideas that start to pop up, because it's in Leiden, it's in the Netherlands.We want to go outside when we're there because Leiden is a rich city with a lot of ancient buildings. There's an old castle on a hill in the middle of that old ancient city center, so let's go out. But then again, it's the Netherlands, because, you know it's September, it could rain. So like, festival vibe maybe have some ponchos over and pimp your poncho workshops. I don't know, we go crazy like that.But in the end, it's not all just about having fun, it's about connection, it's about learning new things. Also, the rockstars we get, we want to see if we can deepen more on the field of visual thinking, working with a pencil, sketchnoting. That's for me. Lai Chee.LCC: One thing that we all had in common is how can we go to the next level. Many of us are already couple of years. Even if you are a newbie, you watch some videos or things. You have an idea what this is about. But what we all felt a little bit is that often people think it's some sort of a hobby that we have, and don't even realize that we have really jobs next to it.Some of us are accountants or consultants or teachers or whatever. And if you bring a group together like that, then you have massive brain power. So why don't we use it and why don't we see how can we help each other? I know a couple of people, Ferry knows a couple of people, or you probably know a lot of people, but do we also know who can complement us?So, if I need someone or certain skill, I know what Ferry is capable of so if I miss that skill, I know I can come to him. There are so many sketch noters. I don't know what the talent is for people. So, we came up with a theme. So that's the past, the present, and the future that will go through the whole event but also nourish and flourish.Even if you're a newbie, so what do you need to nourish your skill and what is the future? Especially with the AI and all the technology coming up, so what does that mean for our things and how can we embrace it? This is also why our theme is also key to discover new horizons because the world is changing and it's changing very, very fast. What does that mean for us? Not only for sketch noters but also all the occupations and professions we have. That's a little bit what we are trying to do. So, the past, present, and the future.MR: I really like this idea. I would describe it as a holistic festival. So, you're not just doing one thing, like a narrow thing just for professionals. If you're not professional, don't come. Like, it's not that. It's, we have a professional thing. If you're doing it for fun thing, we're expanding your thinking. We're having you think about the future, we're not forgetting the past, like all these things, we're having fun. That's exciting. That makes me wanna come even more. That it's gonna be a fun event.LCC: I hope so.MR: Being part of it, right? Honestly, you think about what we've been through with the pandemic where we've had to go online, you need to think about events, like if you're doing an in-person event, you need to think about it in that way, that it has to be multi-dimensional. It has to have multiple angles that will attract someone.As with many of these events, you might be really excited about one part of it and totally get into that and maybe you're not as interested in say the professional thing, I don't know. Or maybe you're really interested in the professional thing and you don't wanna do some other thing. You've got that option.I tell people you know, in many of the past events, all I did was just sit around and talk to people for the whole time. I never went to a class. I would do my keynote and I would just sit around and I finally get to talk to Ferry. I finally get to sit down and talk with Lai Chee. I finally get to sit down and talk with whoever, right?That was my whole time was just—and I loved it. It was great just talking with people the whole time, understanding them, seeing what they're doing. That was a great result for me. And then hanging out with people at the end at nighttime or whatever.Some of my best memories from the past events were not only the event, but then we would go wandering around Hamburg or something, and looking for a place to eat and having fun as a group. I think a lot of it even is just providing the environment in which things could happen.It's almost like being a gardener in some ways. Like if you prepare really good ground, you can grow anything you want to. That sounds a lot like what you're preparing from my perspective, which is a really exciting.LCC: Yeah, exactly. That's the whole festival feeling, so you're not stuck to one lecture or whatever. So you have to move. That's the whole point.MR: Yeah. This is really great. We've talked a little bit about what's exciting about it. We talked about the history and how it came about. Talk a little bit about the city itself. You sort of hinted at this before. What is a city like? What I know about the city is it's a university city, I believe. It's southwest of Amsterdam, so it's a train ride or I guess a taxi ride if you had to go to Amsterdam.FT: Yeah, train and taxi.MR: What else can you tell us about the city? Sounds like it's old. I'll stop there and get some—FT: Yeah, it is old. Yeah, it's old.MR: Which is cool.FT: That's where it starts. Leiden, it is a city. It is a truly Dutch city. We have canals that you also find in Amsterdam, the famous canals. Also, the buildings next to the canals, like the different kind of houses that you'd like to see the staircase, the shaped roofs. Yeah, exactly.Leiden is everything that Amsterdam has, but just a little bit smaller. A lot smaller, I guess. It's like really this typical Dutch vibe. If you live abroad and you think of Holland, you always see pictures of us wearing wooden shoes and living next to or in a windmill. But a windmill is also there in Leiden.If you step out of the train station, you walk towards the city and you look to your left, there's a windmill. So, if you're a tourist, you want to see that. Leiden has it all. The fun thing is, like you said, it's very close to a lot of large cities in the Netherlands. It's located at, I think it's slightly more than just 50 minutes from Schiphol airport. It's where you arrive. It's one-stop with the train. It's really easy like that.Amsterdam is close, and on the other side, if you go a little bit to the south, there's the Hague and Rotterdam. Those are all also very large cities in the Netherlands. Leiden, it's like ancient. There's a lot of culture. There's an endless list of museums. That's also nice. We can fill in the whole program of the festival also by visiting several museums with a lot of topics that we could choose. So that's nice.As you mentioned, it has a large university, and it is the oldest university we have in the Netherlands. It was the first one. I think it was the Spanish possessor that started this university. And it has a rich history, of course, but it's also, therefore, Leiden is a city of students.There's a lot happening. If you want to grab a beer somewhere or eat something, there are a lot of clubs. There are a lot of restaurants next to the canal. There's choice enough for everyone to blend in, to get a really good taste of the Netherlands, but also being among young people. That's also very nice.Also, Leiden has one of the biggest bioscience parts in Europe that's also there. Science technology is also richly there. A lot of the great national and international companies are situated there. It's also an international town, so they are used to people walking around in the city during daylight talking French or English.It's also not just a city that's like, "Oh, oh, is that a foreigner." No. You hear English a lot on the street. That's very nice. This culture thing, I can go on forever, as you have noticed. It's also the city where [unintelligible 24:35] was born. If you have painters and look at his paintings, it's a lot of inspiration from that side.Okay, last thing is, Albert Einstein lived there. Not his whole life, but he visited, I think it was—I wrote it down because I thought, let's try to give you some factual data thing. He came first to Leiden in 1911. He was so enthusiastic about Leiden that from 1920, every year he lived one month totally in Leiden because he loved it so much, and he worked on the university there.There was a fun fact that when he needed some rest and some time off, he visited the Observatory of Leiden. Leiden has its own observatory. You can just reach the stars and go outside. Is this enough about Leiden? Or do you want more?MR: That's great. It sounds like anytime I hear a university city or college town, that always has big advantages. Austin, Texas is one of those. University of Oxford is there. If you ever go to Austin there's lots of options for eating and drinking and activity, and it's usually pretty reasonable because students have to pay for it so the cost is low. You have all the advantages of Amsterdam without all the hassles of Amsterdam.FT: Exactly.MR: Not that there's a lot of—I mean, when I was in Amsterdam, I had a great time, but it is big to navigate. I think I rode a bus to an event and it took a little bit of a ride across the city. Probably in Leiden, I would just walk there because it's not so big.FT: Yeah. That the biggest advantage of Leiden. You don't need to worry about, "Oh, can I get a taxi cab from my hotel to the venue at PLNT where we are hosting this? It's at walking distance. Almost everything is at walking distance. And also, if you stay a little bit longer, you come over a day earlier, maybe it's also a bus ride away from the beach. Leiden at sea, it's not the name. It's Katwijik aan Zee but they call it Leiden at the beach in Leiden. This is also nice if you want to go out, you're just a bus ride away from the beach.MR: Lots of options and lots of variety of—FT: Lots of options. Yeah.MR: It fits everybody.FT: Come over for two weeks and you'll enjoy yourself.LCC: Exactly.MR: For a holiday. Make it a holiday. Well, that's really great. I'm excited to see what you have planned. I didn't mention before the idea of pushing it further. I'm a push-it-further kind of guy myself. Always experimenting and trying new things. So, when you say that, that really attracts my thinking, that means we can do some new things.I think a lot of times—and I like reason experimentation is we have so much opportunity and flexibility and capability available to us that we don't use it. We just do the same thing over and over again, and there's opportunities to do really cool new things if we just give it a try.Especially, I think there, it's like, "Well, what if I fail?" Well, so what? The experiment didn't work. You learn something and you'll do it a different way next time. I think hearing that is pretty exciting to hear that there will be some things pushing the boundaries a little bit, and we can have some fun.Thank you for sharing this sense of things. I'm gonna go back to Ferry one more time. And this is for those who are coming to Leiden. We asked Ferry if he could give us what would be three things you should make sure that you should do when you're in Leiden. You can go more than that, but three is only required.FT: Okay. Well, first thing, of course, you need to come to ISC. But that one doesn't count, because that's too easy.MR: That's assumed.FT: That's assumed. I think first thing that you need to do is take along the right shoes because you need to go for a walk. There's this nice park around the canals. It's all the way surrounding the ancient city. You can walk really like in a circle. It's new since, I guess for two, three, maybe four years or now. It's a really nice walk around town.We also make sure that we will arrange with the tourist bureau because they also have guided walks. We will provide all the participants with those tips. But this is really nice to walk around visit the castle on the hill, like I already mentioned, is you have a great view of Leiden on the rooftops and see that. I think that's the first thing.There's also this really cool, but small I think it was some sort of museum, but like on Rembrandt vaan Rijn. You can do also things like that. I think for us, sketch noting, and if you want to draw something, but really like, get inspired from his kind of style, that's also something really nice.I can mention all the museums, but pick one. There are multiple museums, so we will make sure—we have support from it's called Leiden Convention Bureau. They have created a landing page, especially for us, for our participants. So, if you click on it, and the link is on our website so everybody can see. There's a rich amount of museums with tips. You could go here, and this museum is about this and stuff.You could go on a canal boat trip for some people who like to just really sit down, have a glass of drink, and just without having to walk, you could just see a lot of the city. And of course, you're in the Netherlands, and we all ride bikes. So, we have possibilities to ride bikes explore the city like that. So that's also an option.Of course, when you've done all that, there are multiple, like pubs, restaurants. There's a theater, I don't know. They have also a small like theater where bands—it's not the large bands and large musicians, but yeah. Also, international acts, that could also be a possibility. I'm more than three, right?MR: That's okay.FT: What I'm trying to say is like the festival vibe you have on ISC, you could easily take it with you if we close down, like say at the end of Saturday, take it with you, and go into the city and we'll have more fun like that.Yeah. That's great. That's great. Well, I think this has been helpful. Tickets as we record this, are about to go on sale. We don't know what sales will look like by the time this releases. We encourage you to go take a look and find out for yourself if this is encouraging and exciting to you.We suspect there's people who've already booked their tickets who are listening to this to get a more of a feel for the organizing team and the thought behind it and those kinds of things. So, whoever you are, we would love to have you in Leiden in September.FT: Definitely.MR: Any final thoughts from either of you before we wrap up and point people at the website so they can have a look at tickets and details? Maybe I'll start with Lai. Lai Chee, do you have any final thoughts, any encouragement for someone who maybe is considering it?MR: No. I mean, I'm not really objective. I am super, super excited. Last year in Poland, I was already excited because it's not only the event, but you also meet all those people you just only know online. We are gonna meet you for the first time. I know you are all ready for four years or something, but this is the first time I'm gonna see you live. That's the other thing. What we also will try to do is to make connections in the before phase. Before we go to the event that we know each other a little bit better than when we actually will meet. So, just come.FT: Yeah. Exactly. I think that's a good point, because for me, that's also, it's like the most fun thing is it's a live event and we can do that again. We haven't been able to do it a couple of years. Last time in Poland it was already happening again. I think that's nice.Like Lai Chee mentioned, I think it was our idea as well to like it starts in September, but what if we do a before phase? What if we ask Mike Rohde if we can use Sketchnote Army Slack to meet upfront online, do some stuff. We have really fun things planned out. Maybe some sketch note or no, it wasn't the sketch note. Try to make a picture together if living close and post them online like that. So the community building will start up front.I think that's really nice. This festival fight, we try to take it creatively. Sometimes we brainstorm and we get all the crazy ideas. What's the most fun part of part about organizing this, you could go crazy and think of all those things. And then, of course, it's not just two of us because we go crazy a lot, but then we have the others that say, "Okay, let's get real. Let's get real. Okay, this is not going to happen because it's too complicated. But I like this and how about this."That's also nice. Everybody should go because it's like a mini break. It's a holiday, a mini holiday break and it's investing in you and in your skills and growing as a professional and expanding your community with all these cool people, like-minded visual people, your visual friends, I guess.LCC: Exactly. Exactly. Nourish and flourish. Those are the two words you have to remember for this event. Nourish and flourish.FT: They're not on our posters, but those are key values that we try every time to incorporate in our program. If we decide like, okay, do we want this for a workshop? Then we all say to each other, okay, does it contribute to nourishing or flourishing our community, our guests, our participants?MR: Those two words are great because it focuses on improving yourself and then improving the world when you flourish. That sounds really fun. Well, thank you both so much for being on the show and sharing all your excitement. I can feel it coming through the wires. If someone is interested in checking out the event and seeing if tickets are still available, what would be the place to go for them? Is there a URL that you would recommend? Or maybe should they go to social media location first, and that we'll direct them to the site?FT: Yeah, we have a website. It's www.sketchcamp2023.nl. This is the website that we've launched. I believe if you go to the website, sketchnotcamp.com that was what the team used last year. There's also a link that directs you to our website. For the socials, we are on two social platforms. We are on Instagram and we are on LinkedIn. We are not on Twitter at the moment for this year, but we've posted there also a message that "Okay, this year we're not there, but we'll hand over the Twitter account to the organizing team of next year."MR: Good. We'll, of course, put links to those things so you can just look in the show notes and click away wherever you're at. That'll be the easiest way to jump in and check things out. We'll make sure that's taken care of. Well, thank you two for being on the show. It's really good to hear your excitement again. Especially, Ferry with so much experience being in the city itself makes me wanna visit.It's like the way I am with Milwaukee when people tell me they want to come here. I can spend an hour telling them all the great things and where they should go and what they should do. I feel that same thing from you. And then Lai Chee, I feel the excitement for you around the programming and the experience as well, right?LCC: Yeah.MR: Being from another city, you can appreciate all the benefits. Probably, the last thing I would say is don't discount the value of relationships. That you might come for the programming, but the relationships—like some of my most treasured friends I've met at ISCs and was an opportunity, and led to in some cases work opportunities or support opportunities where they gave me advice or help me out with something. Networks are valuable and you should always build them before you need them. So, this is your opportunity to build your network. That would be my pitch.FT: Amen.LCC: Yes.MR: Well, that wraps another episode of the "Sketch Note Army Podcast". Until the next episode, this is Mike and Lai Chee, and Ferry Timp signing off for now. See you soon.

In this episode, Maria Coryell-Martin shares how her passion emerged out of collaborating with scientists to help tell their stories through art.Sponsored by ConceptsThis episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.Concepts’ infinite canvas lets you to sketchnote in a defined area while still enjoying infinite space around it — to write a quick note, scribble an idea or to keep pre-drawn visual elements handy for when you need them most.The infinite canvas lets you stretch out and work without worrying if you’ll run out of space. When combined with powerful vector drawing that offers high-resolution output and complete brush and stroke control — you have a tool that’s perfect for sketchnoting.SEARCH “Concepts” in your favorite app store to give it a try.Running OrderIntroWelcomeWho is Maria Coryell-Martin?Origin StoryMaria’s current workSponsor: ConceptsTipsToolsWhere to find MariaOutroLinksAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.ArtToolkitArt Tool kit on InstagramArt tool kit recommend seriesArt Toolkit NewsletterJuneau Certified Research ProgramBrushmaker storyGet 10% discount at arttoolkit.com with code SKETCHNOTE10 through June 1st, 2023.ToolsAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.All-in-one Zipper pouchPentel water brushesWaterproof penSketchbookSharpie penPentel brush penPelikano fountain pensCopic multilinersHelvetica pencilsRosemary & Co travel watercolor brushescollapsible cupNo-needle syringeBinder clipsRubber bandsPaper toweliPhone miniProcreateTipsUse a timer and set yourself a very small amount of time to do something.Give yourself the opportunity to play with color, what you see, and don't worry about composition.Paying attention to the world and just letting yourself start with notes just to start that attention.Trust the process.Practice not perfection.CreditsProducer: Alec PulianasTheme music: Jon SchiedermayerShownotes and transcripts: Esther OdoroSubscribe to the Sketchnote Army PodcastYou can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.Support the PodcastTo support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!Episode TranscriptMike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike and I'm here with my friend Maria Coryell-Martin. Maria, it's so good to have you on the show.Maria Coryell-Martin: Oh, I'm thrilled to be here, Mike. Thank you so much for having me.MR: You're so welcome. I had an opportunity to work with you on your YouTube channel, I think, was that last year or 2021? I can't remember now. It's so all a blur. We had a blast working together and you popped in mind for this season, and I said I need to have Maria on to talk about the work she's doing because she's a really interesting person. It's gonna stretch our listeners' minds a little bit further, which is always a good thing. Why don't you begin by telling us who you are and what you do?MC-M: Great. Well, my name is Maria and I'm an expeditionary artist and also the founder of Art Toolkit. I wear a lot of hats in my work.MR: Exactly.MC-M: Business owner and artist. The expeditionary art part came first. I've always been passionate about art, science, and education. And using a sketchbook is really how I've interpreted the world, and going out and just nonstop sketching ever since I was really little. I brought a few things to share so those of you who pop over to YouTube later.My father was a scientist and so I grew up really curious about his work and the scientific process. Part of his work brought him to the Arctic. He was studying the formation of sea ice. We grew up with Arctic parkas in the closet, and I remember big maps on the ceiling of my room.His work also brought him to Japan where he was invited to teach. This had a big influence on me because we lived down the street from a brush maker in Tokyo. The brush I'm holding up right now is one that he made out of my own hair before I left when I was, I think 11 years old. I would go up there and paint with him and my mom would help, but we didn't speak much of the same language, but the connecting over art was a really important part of my experience.He made this brush as becoming of age gift for me out of my own hair which he told me was a tradition in Japan. Ever since I was young, I've really known that art has this important place and who I am and how I experience the world, and how I can interact with it. That's where that idea of art as a tool started for me as a tool for communication, for education, for learning, for connecting, and haven't really stopped with that.MR: That's really great. And that's led, of course, to Art Toolkit, which is your business that sells materials that encourage that expeditionary art mindset or activity.MC-M: Yeah. With expeditionary art, I went to Carleton College. I grew up in Seattle, Carleton's in Minnesota, and really enjoyed traveling in part, maybe to get away from some of those Minnesotan winters, but had the opportunity to do some terrific study abroad programs, including the South Pacific, which was an art and printmaking program, Mali, West Africa, to study French and local culture and dialects languages. And took myself on some independent projects.Everywhere I went, the sketchbook again was such a part of what I did and how I experienced the world. After graduating Carleton, I had what's called a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to travel and paint for a year. The Watson basically funds dreams for unique opportunity for 50 select graduates of this consortium of colleges.My particular dream was to travel to remote regions and paint and learn about how the landscape impacted me and the artists I can meet, how the landscape was reflected through their art. Long story short, I got a lot of practice in painting and traveling, and really my passion emerged outta that of collaborating with scientists whenever possible to help tell their story through art 'cause I've always loved science.The Art Toolkit came because I had this puzzle of traveling with art supplies and needing to keep everything portable. As an artist, part of just who I am is I really like to make things and to try and make things better. I was always tinkering every trip with the tools I had.I'm holding up now my first little watercolor palette I made, which just of out of an Altoids tin. And inside it is Sculpey, which I pushed a pencil in to make little holes and spray paint it. You see, Sculpey is really heavy, and so, it's not really like a backpacking pallet, and it's a little bulky.I thought, "I want stuff to be all in one, what can I do better?" Here's another one. This pallet is out of a Lamy safari pencil box or open box. I used this time little plastic pans that I could glue inside the tin. Some of them I put on magnets and held a lot more colors. It's lighter weight than my old mint tin, but still heavy.I had a trip to Eastern Greenland in 2010 with a walrus biologist. It was just really fun trip. We did a lot of sneaking up on walruses to observe them. The scientists were taking tissue samples, which was a cool process because they basically modified a crossbow to shoot a little tiny metal plug into—like imagine the tip of a pencil, you know? That was hollow.It'd take just a little plug of tissue out of the animal to get a little DNA sample. The walrus were sleeping in the sun, and they would grumble when they got poked. And then they'd fall back asleep, like, not a big deal. But sneaking up on these animals, we'd wear these zipper suits like machinist suits over our big warm gear, and we'd be crawling into sand so we wouldn't scare them.This is where the quantity of gear I had with me was really confronting practicality because I had my camera and an audio recorder and my sketchbook and my trusty watercolor box, but it would wiggle down as I was falling in the sand and keeping track of it felt like a challenge.That was the summer that Art Toolkit really started where I came back and my final watercolor palette that set the stage was this little business card tin, I'd adapted and found, okay, now I've got a pallet that can fit inside a zipper pouch and I can take anywhere a lot easier. I started making them myself with the help of a local company that helped with the pouches and making the little pallets. That was over 10 years ago.MR: Wow. Wow. That's really cool. That's I think the best kind of tools where it's not just something you make up and hope that it fits. It's like you actually field-tested everything to get to the point of like, okay, this is really working. I'm sure you field-tested that little business card thing as well to make sure everything worked. Just your nature, right?When you buy something from that a company or a maker, you take advantage of all that fieldwork that you've done, so you know it's gonna work when you get in that situation, it's not gonna fail you.MC-M: Yeah. I try and solve problems for myself. Then there's a point at which you think, with my work as an expeditionary artist that was around my passion for art, science, and education and wanting to go out, but I kept thinking, hey, I really wanna help share this with others and wanna help inspire and empower others for their own education or their own adventures and just going out.And so, I wanted to make tools to share and then kept making them better. Since then, we've done a lot of adapting to this palette from modifying it and changing the materials. We have them in three sizes. As if that wasn't small enough, we've got this really one size because it's so cute. I really like cute little things. My daughter teases me 'cause I'm always seeing your little cute things. Then we've got one that is about twice as big, but still slim.MR: Pretty thin. Slimness. I've got one of your kits, probably your smallest kit which includes a notebook. It's got a pallet and a water brush, and then it's all inside of a nice, pretty small, like a nylon zipper case. It all fits in there. Yep. Right there.We'll have links to Art Toolkit so you can go—if you're listening and you're not looking at anything, you're in the car or something. When you get to your destination, you can pop up a link and look at the breadth of tools. I think the other thing I like about the way you approach things is, well, of course, you're making tools that are tested and purpose-built 'cause that's really cool.The other thing I like is that you really focus on education. Like, having me on to talk about sketchnoting with people that like your tools or you're always doing stuff and then sharing. I think that's a really big key. It's not just that you're making tools, but you're actually showing them in practice and how to use them. It just makes for a whole integrated way of looking at what you're doing, which is really cool.MC-M: Oh, I'm so glad you appreciate that. It's been just central to our values and then the values now of Art Toolkit, you know, it's grown much beyond just me now about, I don't know what it was now, maybe when my daughter was two or three, she's seven and a half now.I realize I needed help with shipping and assembling and brought my mother-in-law in so to be my shipper, and she's still our primary shipper. Finally, got my husband on, and now we've got a team of about eight folks who work, some full-time, some part-time in making it, but really trying to keep those core values.I just think it's so neat. I get a little thrill when I see people out in the world and I get so inspired by other people's work. I suppose it's a little bit selfish in wanting that inspiration, but then the fun of sharing it and delighting.I tell you, Mike, the words that were mantras for me through the whole pandemic was just community and creativity. It was just like nourishing. I know that was the point where we connected. It's been something that's really grounded me.Well, that's great. I know sketchnote community is in a similar place. We all care for each other and lots of sharing and support and encouragement. The same thing happened for me kinda leaning into that community when the pandemic happened, knowing that there were other people like me that needed a connection, and so, well, let's make stuff, let's provide that.It sounds like you're on a similar path. That's really cool. You talked a little bit briefly about living in Japan with your parents and getting a brush made from your hair. I'm gonna now switch into your origin story. Now, you don't have to go and tell us every detail, we talked a little bit as we prepared for this. What were the key moments in your life that led you to where you're at and maybe some that specifically, I guess, integrated visual thinking into those decisions?I'm sure that living in Japan had a huge impact on the way you thought about visual thinking and observation and the way different cultures are and probably led to your interest in travel. There's probably a bunch of things that it probably influenced. Maybe start from when you were a little girl and became aware of the world and you're traveling with your dad and take us from there.MC-M: That's a great question. A few key moments come to mind. One was, so I've been to Japan four times and the first trip I was in grade school, I think. I don't know if it was summer after third grade or first grade, I can't quite remember.But the sketchbook for me then was just such a direct communication tool because I'd be sitting around with kids and I was out there with my family, but we spent a lot of time with other families and kids of that my parents were meeting and working with. I just remember describing things like, how we got to school. And they'd draw a picture of how they got to school, and I draw a picture of how I got to school or like what we ate.It was such this means of connecting and just like you said, that visual language. That stayed with me because it's brought joy and connection, and just like having conversations through a sketchbook. In high school, I loved art and I did a lot of outdoor education, but I really vividly remember, and I wish I'd grabbed this out of my files to show you, integrating art into my other classes as much as I could.For example, I had a mythology class where we'd have to write or review stories and instead of just, typing up or writing up a report, I put together a little book out of greeting cards, which I like sewed together and drew tiny little cartoon pictures with the whole stories for the whole assignment. Then I stuck in an envelope and gave it to the teacher who really enjoyed it.For me, it was a way of storytelling through art in my own way, and it helped me learn also. Which I think really relates to like the sketch noting of just visual processing and attention. Then another really formative moment was I spent two summers with the Juneau Icefield Research Program in Southeast Alaska.Each was a full summer one as a student in high school and one later coming back to help be a staff and artisan residence. That first summer, especially the ice field was this really stunning environment of rock and ice. Living in this environment, in these little cabins and traveling with a really neat group of people, science-oriented, also learning about field safety, so doing a lot of practice around crevice rescue and skiing and being safe in this place.And I just remember really coming away with, meanwhile, I'm always sketching, that idea of just coming at a subject from different perspectives. As an artist appreciating light and shadow, shapes, this sort of visual vocabulary. Then as a scientist, thinking about the why and asking questions.For example, crevices and why they're forming where they are, these practical elements. Then from this wilderness experience of how to safely navigate it, and travel it. Then also there's this emotional experience of this space that could change dramatically from this really wide-open landscape where you're skiing 10 miles and you can see your destination, but it feels like you're moving at the snail’s pace or having the fog come in and all of a sudden, you're on the inside of a ping pong ball.Emotionally can be this entirely different feeling may be from going from this vast spaciousness to just this insular world. That made me just think a lot about how much I enjoy learning all these different aspects, and that's really was brought me to this expeditionary art of art, science, and education.MR: The sense that I'm getting from you to this point is you have a real fascination with layering. It's not enough that you learn, it's not enough that you're observing scientific phenomena, it's not enough that you're experiencing something emotionally, then you're layering on this art layer to try and capture it or express it or explain it. There's all this layering going on from what I hear.MC-M: Yeah. It's really neat when you get to be around people who are experts in those other layers because people of all sorts can just be the most delightful nerds, myself included. They're so passionate about little things that they know so much about, and just find it a delight to connect with those people and try and hear what they know and understand and use art as a jumping-off point to try and share that.MR: It's gotta be interesting to be able to express their nerdery about their specific thing in art, and then they see it and like, "Yeah, you get it." That's right. Maybe you even observe something because you're doing that art that they maybe didn't make those connections or maybe it sort of became clear for them. I imagine that's probably happened.MC-M: Yeah. Yeah.MR: That's really cool. Cool. Well, let's jump into what's the project that you're working on now that you're excited about to bring us right up to the present and share some detail.MC-M: Well, all sorts of projects going on. On the art level that's been something for my personal art practice that comes in and fits and starts now. I had a really lovely residency over the summer in Norway, which was an opportunity just to sink back into some of my painting practice. And so I'm excited to take some of that Norwegian work and develop it into larger paintings.I often like to work in the field, you work really quickly or might be filling up little sketchbooks. Here's an example from little small, just playful sketchbooks. I'm holding up one from some sketches in Alaska I did with a scientist that are—MR: Oh yeah, look at that.MC-M: Very much kind of little storytelling elements of about the project. Then in my studio I like to work on a much bigger scale often to try and catch some of the emotional sense of what I feel. Then on Art Toolkit side, there's all sorts of nonstop projects there, but I really enjoy developing new products and collaborations. I'll have to just share that there's some new paint-filled pallets that we're working on. We've got some variations on—oh, I don't even know if I should say yet, but if you stay tuned to Art Toolkit.MR: You'll find out. Yeah, get on the mailing list.MC-M: This spring, there's some a few things coming out that I'm really excited about.MR: Sweet. That's really great. That's great to hear. You're like me, you got lots of irons in the fire keeping things moving, so that's pretty cool.MC-M: Yeah. Yeah. I will say will be announcing our early spring workshop soon, and that's something I'm excited about too, is getting to connect with other artists who may wanna come and help inspire our Art Toolkit audience.MR: Excellent, excellent.MC-M: We'll have those coming up soon too.MR: Great. Let's switch to tools a little bit. You probably got lots of tools you could show. I guess we do have to remember this is typically about an hour show, so I'll have to cap you a little bit. But maybe you put in the context of someone's listening and they're like, expeditionary art or visualizing nature.Maybe they're in an urban environment and they don't think about nature, but the reality is nature is all around you, birds and trees, and it would be interesting maybe the start observing like, well, what nature is in my urban environment that I could capture? Or maybe I get out of the city and I take a sketchbook or something along.Maybe talk—when we talked before you were able to provide me with a little starter kit to try. Which is really great. Maybe talk about if someone's interested in getting into it, what would be the right tools that they might consider? Maybe that's the way to go about it.MC-M: Well, I think like the sketchbook it's similar to what people say about a camera, that the best camera you have is the one you have with you. The best sketchbook is the one you're gonna be able to have with you. For me, that's where having this little all-in-one zipper pouch of the Art Toolkit, which we offer in two sizes really came in because I just wanted this like no excuses kit.My no-excuses kit is usually the small one. I carry a bigger one when I wanna head out with more goodies and more things to share. But just to be really no excuses. In this kit, one of my favorite things is a water brush. I typically use Pentel water brushes. They're really durable. I find that you don't often clog. Last a long time. If you haven't used a water brush, you untwist the caps, you can fill them with water. Really cold places, you can mix it in with some vodka or gin to help lower the freezing temperature.MR: Your paint freeze.MC-M: Paint freeze. Another perk of the pentel that I like is they're oval, so they're not gonna start rolling downhill as quickly.MR: Fall into a crevasse or something.MC-M: I always find a water brush is handy. The most fundamental, all you need is a pencil or pen and a sketchbook. But I'll show you a little just what is in my kit, I suppose. I like waterproof pen. I often sketch straight with pen because there's just the immediacy of putting your marks on paper, and I really try and embrace practice, not perfection, of not worrying about lines being in the wrong place.If I did something and I stop and measure, I just draw the line where I want it and only color and the lines I want to. It's part of the process. Practice, not perfection is a really big mantra for me. I love a waterproof pen, and depending on where I'm traveling, I might carry one that's—I don't like disposable things in general, but a little Sharpie pen. Sometimes traveling refillable pens can be a little explosive with going over mountain passes or altitude. Another waterproof pen I really enjoy is this Pentel brush pen.MR: I love those.MC-M: A little more like dynamic mark, and they're also waterproof. Then I have a little collection of fountain pens. I'll sometimes carry—this is a little Pelikano fountain pen by Pilot. That's pretty cute and not too expensive too, so if you are not gonna worry about losing it too much. Copic multiliners are another waterproof pen I like. These are kind of a in between, see if I can pop this out. Something that is disposable and reusable. It's got a very large ink cart that you can replace and you can replace the nibs.That's a little variety of pens. I've got pen, water, brush. If I do carry a pencil, I sometimes carry an automatic pencil. This is a little heavy, but—oh, I love these pencils. Mike, they're Helvetica pencils. We have the automatic ones and then we also have just wooden pencils. They're just these gorgeous pencils made in Japan. I have just a gorgeous feel and I'm a real sucker for good aesthetics and I really like their aesthetics.MR: I'm a mechanical pencil fan as well. I keep usually soft lead and like thick. I think I got Faber-Castell, it's like 1.4 millimeter, so it's really super thick. I can show you what that looks like. It's super thick lead and it's soft. If I'm gonna do pencil, I want it to be soft and feel really loosey-goosey. I dunno if that's a technical term, but I tends to like, I can flow around and I don't worry so much. It's not about perfection, so.MC-M: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, this is one I bought years ago with a big lid lead too, that I don't sketch with very much, but I picked it up 'cause it was just so beautiful with a very big lead.MR: I think that's technically called a lead holder. I think it moves beyond a mechanical pencil to lead holder.MC-M: I think that serves it right.MR: The grasping things on it, right?MC-M: A couple other things In my carry-everywhere kit, if I've got enough time, I do really enjoy travel watercolor brushes. A brand that I'm a big fan of and we carry, Art Toolkit is Rosemary and Co. These are made in England by a small family company, not terribly small, they've grown many over the years, but Rosemary still runs the company. They have a whole variety of shapes and sizes, but the big key is that when you're done painting with 'em, you can take it apart and put a cap over the point so that they won't be damaged in transit.To paint with 'em, I carry a little tiny collapsible cup that we offer on Art Toolkit website. I can pour a little water and sit down a minute. Sometimes for my water brush, I carry a little tiny no-needle syringe to squeeze out the water and pop it in my brush. I always carry little extra binder clips, sometimes rubber bands too for wind. They're really useful because you can also clip your palette to your sketchbook. So, if you're out, you can have it on one side and sketch on the other.MR: Got it.MC-M: I do that a lot, sketching standing up, or making sure something won't blow away. Finally, a paper towel to wipe my brush on. The paper towels I use, I've been using these for years and years and years. They're shop towels, blue shop towels that you can pick up at a hardware store. They're just so soft and durable that you tease them out and reuse them. I really like the feel and trying to reuse them.MR: Cool.MC-M: That's what's in my daily carry. For folks getting started, your daily carry can just be as simple as like I said, you know, a pen and a pencil. I think water-soluble pens can be fun with a little water brush just for black-and-white paintings. Just keeping things simple with what feels like you've got space for in your daily bag.MR: Well, I've got my little toolkit right here for those on video so you can see. There it's. I got a little ruler in there, my syringe, and stuff. It's been a great little kit.MC-M: Oh, I'm so glad. I love having a ruler too. Mine has slipped out at the moment, I'll need to replace it.MR: Exactly. Great. I think I've actually done some work. I can show you what I've done. You mentioned the Pentel brush pen. I was playing with this. This is in a train ride in Minneapolis along the river with my kids. Then I think I was standing at the back in the caboose and just captured the tracks rolling away from us. I gotta say, it was really fun. I was really enjoying it. I need to do more of it this summer, so thank you again.MC-M: Oh, that's wonderful. You're welcome. That brush pen is so big and bold that you can capture the shapes quickly and then the watercolor can bring it to life. I think that's something a artist friend of mine told me once was that big tools make for big ideas. That sometimes bumping up the size of your tool, you can fill something up quickly and just—MR: Loosens you up a little bit too. I think. Talking about the size, if you know what the size of a pocket Moleskine is, which I don't know what the exact size is. The kit is not much bigger. Well, maybe I'll take a picture for the show notes. It's big enough to hold it and then the tools. It's actually pretty small, all things considered. Pretty compact, and you could throw that in a bag really easily. I appreciate little things from when I was a kid as well, so I super appreciated how you packed so much in this little tiny package. It fit me. It suited me.MC-M: Oh, I'm so glad. Mine tends to get a little bloated, but the zipper holds, so I'm like, "Oh, I can just stuff one more thing in here."MR: One more thing, just one more thing. That's excellent. Now, typically with Sketch noters, they often will use iPads and pencils and stuff. Are you using any kind of digital tools for the work you do? And what are they if you do?MC-M: I'd say the biggest tool I use is my phone in just taking reference photos. I might be out somewhere and I find like being onsite and doing some sketching sort of activates my attention. It gets me into just active observation, paying attention. It doesn't matter if that's just color studies or notes, but just something to pay attention and get outta my head.But then having some sort of media, additional media, let's say I'm going and need to add more color later or wanna work on some larger paintings, having a camera with me is really helpful. I think a phone is—I just have a little iPhone mini that—I'm not always looking for the best photo, but just for the reference and the memory.Sometimes I'll even do little videos, especially if it's of birds or things that move so that I can get a sense of that motion. I can pause and maybe catch a different position. I will say, I'm curious about playing more with Procreate tools and other things. I had on my residency this summer, another artist was doing a lot of really cool development of his photos into digital images and it was good to see the potential there. But I'm a fairly analog person by nature.MR: I can imagine. The problem that I've had in the field is just when you need a thing, the battery's dead. And if you're cold weather, it's dropping faster and if it's bright and sunny, it's hard to see. There's all these considerations that paper doesn't have those issues a lot of times. I could certainly see why that might be the case.But well, that's a really great little toolkit and we'll, we'll have you send a link to all those things. We can put that in the show notes, so we've got links to all the stuff that you showed, or maybe the package of things that have them all in there. Maybe there's just one link and everything is already in there for someone so they can just buy it and they're ready to go. So cool.Well, now let's shift again. We're shifting away from tools, and this is the tips portion of the interview where I frame it that there's someone listening, a visual thinker, whatever that means to them. Maybe they feel like they've been in a bit of a rut or they're on a plateau and they just need a little encouragement or some inspiration. What would be three things that you would tell them they can be inspirational, can be practical, three things that they might do to help them just kind of shake it up a little bit?MC-M: I love that question because I'm a real process person and I already told you one of my mantras, which is practice not perfection. Another one of my mantras is trust in process. No matter how much painting I've done, I still sometimes look at a sketchbook or start a painting and I'm like, where do I begin? And I need to remember kind of, warm up again.I love having my little process to get started. One thing I love in just all parts of my life, I love timers. I am so hooked on, like, does this feel hard to do? Set a timer. In workshops with people of all ages, I love going through gesture sketches, which are really fast, energetic little sketches to get the big idea of something.Using a timer, we'll so often, start with a ten-second sketch, go to a 30-second sketch, a minute, and even up to two minutes. It's fascinating to see what can be done in just a couple of minutes. let's see if I have a little example here of some gestures. Here's some little, just tiny walrus gestures done with one project.MR: Oh yeah.MC-M: I'd recommend as one tip is, if you're feeling like you need a little prompt to get started is set yourself a timer. I'm gonna do this for three minutes, just to get yourself to sit down and get started. Another way to think about it that a scientist shared with me is the activation energy to get a chemical reaction started is bigger often than like continuing a process.I think that timer can help us have that boost to get going. then once we are in the groove, it can be easier to stay in the flow. My first tip, Mike, is use a timer and set yourself a very small amount of time to do something. Now there's the question of what to do. And that will be my next tip.Another tip I would suggest is if you're sitting somewhere and feeling like, "I need a little boost for getting going here." Would be just to play with painting the colors you see and not worry about composition. You might do this as little circles. An artist friend of ours with Art Toolkit lately has just been doing some really delightful little circle studies, in this vein of creating a little bit of a little wet circle on your paper, dropping a little bit of one color in, and adding a little bit of another color.This could be more formal or you can see this little slouch of color on the other side of just seeing how colors might mix together what you see in front of you. But take away the pressure of I have to like, paint something or, or do something more, I'm gonna put this in quotes, "Official" or "Real feeling." Just give yourself the opportunity to play with color, what you see, and don't worry about composition.Actually, there's a fun thing which I think we put on our website. I can send you a link to this, Mike. If you do this of just mixing the colors you see, sometimes you can go on top and just do a light pen drawing on top of that as well. I can send you a link to a little prompt of that.MR: Okay.MC-M: My last tip would be going the other direction from just looking at color to just starting with words. I think a lot about sense of place and palette of place is something, as an artist I pay attention to. you're building a vocabulary when you're outside of the colors you see of the environment of the stories you learn. if it feels too much to start with the drawing side of things, let yourself do some writing.I often think about, you know, the W's of who, what, where, when, why when I write. I think it can be really fun to play, this is something you do so well. you might play with your writing. This is a little exercise I did on one program where we were imagining the ocean. So let your words be fun where you might play with how you're writing.Then around those writings you might then add in little tiny thumbnail sketches or little icons and then be able to add some color to the page. with all of these tips, out of those three, it's about just simplifying your approach. setting a timer, putting a little limit on kind of your time and expectations, taking away composition, just focusing on color, and then just paying attention to the world and just letting yourself start with notes just to start that attention.MR: Those are great. Those are three great tips. I almost wanna say practice not perfection and trust in the process are almost like free extra tips. I dunno. 0.1 and 0.2, I dunno, whatever. They are also good things to remember. That's really great. Well, here we are at the end of the interview. Crazy enough, it just flows by, it seems like every time I do these.Tell us what's the best way to reach you to get to Art Toolkit to follow you. Are there social media channels where you're more active? What are the best ways to connect and explore what you're doing and what you're offering?MC-M: Art Toolkit, we're at art toolkit.com and Mike, I'll put together a little discount code that you can share with your listeners at the end. We'll put in the show notes. We have an active Art Toolkit, Instagram. Fun community there. And I've got a small team Art Toolkit who helped me with that, which is great 'cause we really enjoy featuring other artists featuring techniques.We have an Art Toolkit recommend series where we just really try and share inspiration and cool stuff to try and help inspire each other. My personal art is over@expeditionaryart.com. I'm a little quieter on the social media front these days personally, but really with the Art Toolkit newsletter is the best place to hear about what is coming up. We announce to our newsletter our new releases or special offers first. We really enjoy that community and so invite you to sign up for that on our website.MR: Great. Those are all great entry points. Everybody listening, definitely check out the code that'll be in the show notes, and then go visit and spend some money over here. We wanna encourage and support Maria and her team for the hard work they're doing and the sharing that you're doing, and you end up with good tools. Everybody wins in that case.Thanks so much, Maria, for being on the show and sharing your experience and it's so good to have you on the show. Thanks so much.MC-M: Oh, such a pleasure. Mike, thanks for everything you do and your work has long been inspiring for me too. Just really glad to share this community, so thank you.MR: You're so welcome. Thanks so much. For those who are listening, this is another episode of the "Sketchnote Army Podcast." Until the next episode, we'll talk to you soon.

Eric Bakey shares how his passion for visual thinking got him promoted from building bridges under rocket attack to working as an elevator apprentice, general superintendent, and construction executive. Hear how this experience helps him solve business blind spots for organizations that he cares more about.Sponsored by ConceptsThis episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.Concepts' vector-based drawing feature gives you the power to adjust your drawings — any time you like. You can nudge the curve of a line, swap out one brush for another, or change stroke thickness and color at any stage of your drawing — saving hours and hours of rework.Vectors provide clean, crisp, high-resolution output for your sketchnotes at any size you need — large or small. Never worry about fuzzy sketchnotes again.Concepts is a powerful, flexible tool that’s ideal for sketchnoting.SEARCH “Concepts” in your favorite app store to give it a try.Running OrderIntroWelcomeWho is Eric?Origin StoryEric’s current workSponsor: ConceptsTipsToolsWhere to find EricOutroLinksAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.Eric on InstragramEric on LinkedInEric's websiteGoogleToolsAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.Sharpie markerCardboard boxCrayonsButcher paperFlip chartNeulandReplaceable nibsFountain pensFeud tipsPost-it-notesWhite boardGoogle DocsProcreateConceptsNotabilityTipsWhat problem are you trying to solve, who is it for, and what is the value of solving that problem?Where are you right now and where do you want to go?Be useful, resourceful, and knowing your five-mile famous world.CreditsProducer: Alec PulianasTheme music: Jon SchiedermayerShownotes and transcripts: Esther OdoroSubscribe to the Sketchnote Army PodcastYou can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.Support the PodcastTo support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!Episode TranscriptMike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's great to have you, and I've got Eric Bakey on the line. Eric, it's so good to have you. Thanks for coming on the show.Erick Bakey: I appreciate you having me. Longtime listener, first-time caller. So, I'm really excited.MR: And I'm excited to have you. We had a little chat just before the end of the year and immediately thought that you'd be great for the podcast to share your story and your perspective. So, let's get that started. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.EB: It has evolved. I'm an entrepreneur. If I'm at the bar, I would just tell someone I doodle for dollars. That gets a rise outta most people, but in a very real sense, I try to solve business blind spots. That feels right when I say it. I've had to go through a few different iterations of how you show up as an illustrator, which is not quite that. Not quite a cartoonist, not quite a whiteboard wizard, or whatever else you wanna call yourself. But that one fits right now.MR: Nice. Nice. Let's jump right into your origin story. I know a little bit about it, but I wanna let you take your time and tell us, maybe start from when you're a kid. Did you draw since when you were a little kid, and did that maintain itself through your life or did it come later in life? How did all that work out and to get to the place where you are now?EB: Yeah. I was drawn to the arts and I drew cartoons when I was a kid, and I actually won some scholastic awards in high school to go to art school, but I was too much of a tough guy. I just wasn't prepared to go take my art seriously. And so, I joined the Army right after high school and got to do the tough guy thing. Learned to blow stuff up, and more importantly, build bridges.When I got out, pun intended, I came up in the elevator industry and I went from stack and steel and spinning wrenches an elevator apprentice and worked my way up to become a general superintendent and construction executive. Really, it was the application of visual thinking that really helped me exceed in these kinds of things.I've brushed over about 12 years' worth my life there in a couple of sentences, but really, it was trying to understand the complexities of what an owner's intention was, what an architect's plan for making the thing beautiful, how an engineer makes the thing actually work, and then getting 80 different contractors to get on the same exact page and try to put the job in on time.I just used the tools that were available to me, which were a sharpie and a cardboard box, and just wheeled this thing into existence by getting everybody literally on the same page because everyone has their own competing priorities when it comes to a project.I used what tools were available, and that happened to be this thing called visual thinking. In hindsight, I wish I would've put a little bit more attention to that ability when I was going into my day job. It probably would've saved me a lot of stress. But, yeah, that's kinda the origin story.MR: Wow. Here's an interesting question because you came up from the bottom, being an apprentice and seeing everything from that perspective, you think that helped you when you came to the point of being this, I guess, a facilitator, I guess is probably the right way to call it, right? You're a facilitator using visual tools to try to get everybody organized and on the same page some ways, like a project manager, I guess, you might even say.Do you think, coming up from the bottom and working up that way gave you good perspective for all those other roles because you would've had to understand all those roles to really make them almost like interpret one to the other, right? Like the architect to the engineer because they might talk past each other. Is that a fair way to guess how that might have been?EB: Absolutely. It was through hard work and going from not knowing anything about anything and just struggling at every face going up. I hated at the time. I hated my job at every face of that experience 'cause there's always problems. But it was just a commitment to craftsmanship and then ultimately, the respect of the guys when I'm in charge.We all made fun of the guys who came straight outta college and started telling these 55-year-old mechanics how to build an elevator. They don't even know to do anything. The same thing, when I actually got on the office side of things, being able to speak from the perspective of the guys but on a more elevated business-like fashion and being able to—just the proper frame based on true experience rather than hypothetical book knowledge. I mean, it's just like street smarts versus taking a class.Fortunately, I've been able to do both, and absolutely, it was just a commitment to craftsmanship and trading cartooning as an honest trade. That's really how I came to this and leaning into it to say, "Okay, I'm not where I want to be yet, now that I've transitioned into this visual thinking world. I want to go there, but I'm not there yet. So what can I do now with the skills and abilities resources? I've got to be a good steward of these resources and solve the problems that are around me with these things to get me to where I'm trying to go in that general direction of what I think visual thinking should be. "MR: Another interesting question. Because you came from this perspective, you obviously had the respect of the guys who did the work. How did management react to you when you came to them? Do you think you had an interesting, where you are this in-between mediator that could speak the talk and yet speak their talk as well?EB: It's hard to be a legend in your own land. Fortunately, I got recruited from the field, I went to the office, I went to the competition. I could not get to the office level from the field place I was at. I had to take the next step of the ladder in a different company so that they would appreciate my knowledge. 'Cause I was just the irreverent kid, elevator mechanic at the one company that, yeah, sure, he does a good job, but he's an elevator mechanic.Those skills were celebrated by the competition, and it was a big opportunity. I wanted to overachieve and bring everything I could from the field but then apply in a new context in the office. It was appreciated at the new company.MR: Interesting. Almost like the place that where you got to a certain point where you outgrew it, and the only way to make the next step would be to leave it behind where nobody has any kind of preconceived ideas of who you are so you could start over again.EB: Maybe that was my own limited ability, but it's like the grass is always greener anyway. There's always ways, even now that I wish I could have transitioned things a little bit smoother, but, for me, it's always been, "All right, well, this is the new thing I'm doing. I'm going here and I'm gonna kick butt and it is what it is."MR: Interesting. Do you find that that's been the true for your process? Obviously, in each one of these, you had to burn it down and start over again. Are you finding this is a trend in your life for you to go to the next level? Has that been true for you?EB: Whether it's wisdom or fatigue, I'm doing less burning of bridges or anything like that. Distilling down with the truth and principles really are to get to where I'm trying to go has been more important. I think I was driven a lot by ego in the beginning. I wanted to go be the tough guy, army guy. I wanted to go be this pipe-swinging elevator guy. I wanted to go be the boss.Then as I started achieving these levels I was essentially climbing ladders, leaned up against the wrong building. I didn't think before actually building a career. If I would've had some visual thinking skills to really plan this thing out a little bit better, especially as I get to mentor some people now as employees and whatnot.It's like when I see that spark in somebody, instead of letting them go all these different directions, I try to channel it towards, "Hey, what are you really trying to accomplish?" I see there's a whole lot of activity, but what are we really trying to accomplish here? And try to channel them towards the best direction and just trying to be the friend or leader that I wish I would've had as I was coming up.MR: That's great. That's great. What kind of work are you doing these days? Are you still in the construction business? Where are you working?EB: I'm no longer in the construction world per se. I do a little bit of real estate development work, which is similar but different. It's before the construction actually even happens. I would argue it's much more lucrative to stay on that side of things. Also, I just got hired by Boeing, the big aerospace engine conglomerate. I'm really excited about that opportunity.I was kind of the wild, wild west of freelancing, whoever would hire me as a visual facilitator of how you show up as a marketer or a sales strategist or all kinds of different ways that you can use these skills. But I saw a real weakness that I had that I want to solve bigger problems and I want to be with a team executing upon worldwide. I just wanna have a bigger impact with these things.I feel like I have these really cool skills that are Ferrari skills for a small little consulting gig. But always, I want to go bigger and deeper with these people and it's hard to do that internally in a small business. I figured I'd go jump in the deep ocean where I'd have a team and ultimately also get mentoring from somebody I really respect.MR: Got it.EB: It is the same thing of—the ego thing is starting to fall past that. I wanted to be this irreverent entrepreneur, but what kind of problems do I really want? Like, oh, I can get, have a much bigger impact with over here, and I have these weaknesses that aren't gonna be used against me. They're actually gonna be strengthened by someone who I actually trust to help identify them. I'm really excited about the big opportunity that I've got going on now.MR: Give me an example. Let's say you're working with a—now you're internally, so let's say you're at Boeing someplace, just make a theoretical situation. You've got a problem that you're facing. You've got your team, you've got all of Boeing or some section of Boeing. How would you approach that? What kind of stuff would you bring to the table and how do you use visual thinking in that context?EB: It really is very important to understand the situation before you try to solve the problem. Slowing down and asking the right questions, it's not about having the right answers, it's about asking questions and truly having a consultative Socratic approach of feeling, where's the pain? "It hurts on the left-hand side of your body here. Is it in your arm or is it more in your leg? Oh, oh it hurts right there."Like, "Right there, right there, right there, right there?" And really taking a frame of, okay, so how does that apply to visual thinking? Drawing it out, asking the questions, capturing the emotion. That's the power of studying cartooning. The extra squiggles that make a cartoon really pop, make it look like it's moving can speak and tell a story that's more true to life than reality itself.I love that ability, and I do it and I show it to somebody and it's like when I get that, when I see the pain in their eyes and they can laugh about it, then I really truly understand. And then it gives me the right to then, "Hey, could this possibly be a solution?" Again, you get that work done upfront before you start prescribing a solution. So, really, it's understanding and doing it visually so that I don't have to have all the answers.I don't have an aerospace engineering degree, and so I'm gonna go—they did a fantastic job of interviewing a whole lot of people and I felt very unqualified 'cause I have no aerospace engineering background whatsoever. But I guess it was just in the way that I approached problem-solving, and that's what I'm excited to work with their innovation team to do that and really understand the kind of problems that a big multi-billion-dollar international company has and solve them with some simple pictures. Sounds really exciting to me.MR: That sounds really cool. I've looked at some of your work and talked to you a little bit. My impression is that the visualizations you do are a means to an end. Your goal is not to produce an image. The image is a step towards solving a problem. So, it doesn't have to be beautiful. It could be, as you said, you drew it on cardboard with a sharpie. Like medium doesn't matter, quality doesn't matter as long as it's communicating those concepts.Talk a little bit about your perspective on the actual work and how you use it and at what point do you just not worry about it, it just becomes a step along the way, or maybe it does become like a map of some kinds that maybe a team would follow over a long period of time.EB: I'm very fortunate that I have put the work in to become a really good illustrator. I've been paid to illustrate, I can draw photos realistically. I can paint portraits, I can do this really cool thing, but so can everybody else and they can actually do a lot better than me. So, I'm like, "What can I do to compete in this industry, the talent level is just unbelievable what people are able to do."I just chose to solve problems that were bigger than just pretty pictures. In the beginning, I didn't wanna share things that weren't super pretty. Like, is that social media envy game of who can get more status and likes and whatever. I just started sharing stuff that I thought was meaningful for me. I've been very grateful that it has resonated with some people 'cause I get people comment and message me very often about how can I do this for them in their organization.It's just me scratching my own itch. The longer I took to make sure everything was picture perfect and drawn out just perfectly, I got no different people either get it, where they don't get it and they're just like, yeah, like why am I so worried about this? Nobody actually cares. No one cares at all. So, it's like they only care about what you could do for them.And once I realize that it's like, okay, so how do I get faster at this and how do I capture these and share these meaningful things that maybe I care about and I thought people would actually care about, and they don't. So, like, huh? It's just been just creating as many—that parable if you wanna create the perfect pot, you don't spend three months making one pot. You spend the next 90 days making 90 pots. I'm just trying to crank out 90 pots and then eventually I'll get the perfect one.And then what to what end? It's ultimately just trying to solve problems for organizations and people that I want to be around. To what end, it's simply to have—I call them visually valuable conversations. I wanna have conversations with meaningful people. That's the end. I happen to use analog tools, digital tools, all kinds of different tools. It just a medium. I could be a crayon a on butcher paper for all I care, as long as I get the kind of impact that I want out of it.MR: And that it communicates. You're connecting your communication between whoever you're working with or the people that you're working with, so you get on the same page. That seems really important as well. That's really fascinating and I think that's covers a little bit of what you're doing. If you're just starting, you're probably not even sure what you're gonna be up to at Boeing yet. That'll be real fun to follow and see, check in with you in the future and see what you're up to.I wanna shift into the tools that you like. You've talked a little bit about using crayons and butcher paper and sharpies and cardboard. Do you have like a go-to set of tools like pens or notebooks or paper or some materials that you like, that you typically will run with? Let's start with analog first and then shift to digital.EB: As I said, I started with just a cardboard box and a sharpie marker. That's effective when you're just quick and dirty in the field trying to just get a point across, explain something complicated to someone who doesn't get it, that checks the box. When I went pro, about 2016, I started doing this full-time and I bought this fancy flip chart all the Neulands and replaceable nibs.I love it and they're super cool and fountain pens and feud tips and like, all kinds of really sweet stuff. And then I let the tools get in the way of doing the real work. I spent all this time practicing my typography. It was fun to take the courses. There's so much stuff to learn. There's so much to this stuff. I have a whole huge bookMR: Your books.EB: I love. I'm a total nerd when it comes to visual thinking and tools and only having the best. But then I stopped being a little bit so precious about it once the pandemic happened and I'm like, "Well now it's like what problem am I really trying to do?" I was so concerned about making sure it was pretty and messing around with like the right tools and everything. It's great. It's hard to do good work with crappy tools, but only a poor craftsman blames his tools.It's just like this dichotomy of, what can you use to get the job done and what job is it that you're really trying to do. When it comes down to it, you can do this job with some post-it notes and a sketchbook or a whiteboard or whatever it is that you have around you. There are some really nice things. There are wonderful resources. But I try not to get too hung up in it 'cause I will nerd out on—like the 0.07 G2 is better than the 1.0, or vice versa. I can totally nerd out on it, but I try not—what am I really trying to accomplish here? So that'd be my only feedback is don't let the tools get in the way of a good job.MR: It does sound like you probably appreciate—my perspective is I like to have tools that I can go into any drug store anywhere in the world and buy. If I can get used to using those tools, I know I've always got a backup. If mine blows up, I can go to the Walgreens or the corner drug store in the UK or whatever and probably buy something that if it's not that thing or it's pretty close.Sounds like Pilot G2 would be one of those things. Do you have any favorite notebooks? I only use 3M post-it notes because the cheap ones tend to curl up and fall off the wall. That's a little tip there in case you're gonna use post-it notes, get good ones ‘cause it's worth the money.EB: I do not leave the house without a little pocket-sized back—my back left pocket at all times with a sharpie, with the fine tip and the regular tip on it and a big like a 0.9-millimeter mechanical pencil because they don't break. I will never leave the house without it because you should always have your tools, especially there's always time, little five-minute pockets time to practice or the things that pop in your head or whatever. I love to just capture these little tiny things and it's just something that it is impossible to forget for me when I write it down, which is why I started doing this anyway.And if I put the words with the visual, it will burn itself. It's like mental dynamite. It's in there for good if I take the time to draw it out, especially in an emotional moment. So, I just have it with me. I don't always pull it out every single day, but it's always there and it's just like, these are my tools and this is how I'm showing up. Those are analogs I gotta have.MR: Nice. Then I assume like the little notebook that you keep in your pocket set, like a field note notebook or something like that.EB: It's a super cheap one. You can get them in packs of 12. They're super cheap and they're just plain. There's no dots or anything on them. Again, just like an Amazon special, I've got super precious notebooks and like sketchbooks that I don't wanna screw 'em up with like, whatever. I bust them out for [unintelligible 00:22:09]. I'll really lean into it when I'm gonna do it, but when I'm just for an everyday carry, it's better to have something that you don't mind messing up and just getting used rather than never using it.MR: There is something to be said about something that's so inexpensive that if it gets screwed up, "Eh, I'll just recycle it and start a new one." It doesn't feel like you're hurting anything. Nothing precious has gone away. It got all bent up or got a little burned in the fire or whatever. Take pictures of the important stuff and recycle it and move on to the next one. There's something really freeing about that. You're not so tied to having to have a special book or something like that. So that's really interesting. What about digital tools?You can run an entire business now with Google Docs. It's just unbelievable what is available for free to be able to do this. I've used Procreate to illustrate a couple books now. I love it. Concepts is really cool. I'm probably gonna transition more to Concepts because I'm running these much bigger projects and gonna need that infinite canvas to be open at all times and continue.When it comes to actually doing consulting work and delivering these things, Notability is just unbelievable. Being able to have a really pretty PDF that's uploaded into it and then you can also draw on it. It's unbelievable the tools that you can get for like 10 bucks.MR: Right. I know.EB: It's just mind-boggling. Because I'm not as seasoned as you are, but I was not willing to pay for Adobe Creative Suite back in the day. It was just not even an option. I just got good at these inexpensive tools and they're just unbelievable how good they really are. The tools are smarter than me. I don't even use them for even a fraction of what their ability to do is, and I'm already just blown away by how useful they are.MR: I've seen that as well. The quality of the tools that we have available to us for the price that they cost, like Procreate and Concepts, and even I use Paper By WeTransfer like that's $12 a year. That's a drop in the bucket. I get value out of that within the first week that I use it, it's already paid for in my mind from the value it provides. Even some other tools that you can get are pretty reasonable as well.I think that's good. It democratizes accessibility to those tools where maybe in the past it was pretty limited. You had to really be in with the old Adobe suite, especially if you bought it. Couple hundred bucks, maybe a thousand bucks if you really needed lots of tools and suddenly you better make use of it 'cause you know, a lot of money. That's really fascinating.Well, thank you so much for sharing a little bit about your tools. Sounds like you're a pretty practical guy like me. Let's shift into tips now. The way I frame this is imagine there's somebody listening, they're a individual thinking, whatever that means to them, and they feel like they've reached a plateau for whatever reason.Maybe it's the beginning of the year, maybe it's just, tired out of something. Just they need a little bit of inspiration. What would be three things you would give them, three tips you would tell them? It could be practical, it can be theoretical things that you might say to encourage them to begin again or start the climb.EB: I'd say first, what problem are you really trying to solve? You're hung up on this thing, you are trying—what are you really trying to solve and who are you trying to solve it for? Are you trying to solve it for yourself? Because sketchnotes are a fantastic way to solve for yourself also get some gratification and edification from other people who think your work is cool.There's a whole community for people who just do sketchnotes. As someone who's gone through several apprenticeships, it's essential to get those basics down 100%. What are you trying to solve? If it's skills that you need to get, just do some sketchnotes and it's for yourself. If you're trying to solve for somebody else, okay, is this a graphic recording kind of question? Is this a visual facilitation kind of question? Then what is the value of solving that problem?For you, is it to just get past the mental block of that, "I'm not good enough to do this thing?" Well, yes you are. There's so many uses for visual thinking and how you can in increase your skills and share them with somebody else because the only way to get better at drawing is to push the ugliness out of your pencil on that piece of paper. There's no way—no matter how many books I read or courses I take, I continue to learn and continue to get better.People are so good at this stuff and even after people are tell me that, "Oh, you're so talented." Still, I'm never satisfied with how much further I could push this. The tip point number one is what problem are you trying to solve? Is it for you or for someone else? And what is the value of solving that problem? So, you get off your butt, actually solve it. You need consequences for it not being solved or a reward for solving it.What is the problem? Who's it for? What is the value of doing this work? You need to get that clear before you're gonna get past your funk. That'd be my first tip. Second is, so where are you right now and where do you want to go? As I said, if you want to build sketchnotes onto and become a professional with this thing, you can. There's also people who I would argue I'm a better illustrator, or arguably they've got incredible businesses doing this thing.It has very little to do with your physical skillset and more about who is the community that you're surrounding yourself with. If you're just trying to be, like just educate yourself on a specific topic. Maybe you're struggling with math or physics or something like that, and you can use visual thinking and sketchnoting to solve for that. Or there's tons of business and personal development advice out there. There's tons of podcasts that, to distill it down.It's a whole problem of itself, there's this proliferation of advice out there. It's too much of it. It's a massive fire hose. And people have made incredible Twitters and Instagram pages and made incredible illustrations and sketchnotes of just distilling down all the stuff. Maybe you'll also see that some of it is bull crap. Drawing it out and seeing, oh, this actually doesn't—that I see it in front of me, it sounded really good, but.That would be, so where are you now and where do you want to go with this? Do you wanna do this professionally? I have now I've got hired by this incredible company that's an aerospace defense company that's unbelievable. And I'm just someone who's like a reformed construction worker turned cartoonist. It'd be really hard to even put your finger on exactly how I got here. It's not something that I intentionally woke up and said, "I'm gonna do this thing." It was something that pulled on.Once I saw it, once I saw your work, I saw there was a whole community, how do I get better at this skill so that I can be undeniable that even that I can solve these problems and work for a company that is on a mission that I actually care about. Cool. My third and final one would just be to be useful, resourceful, and worth knowing in your five-mile famous world.It's not about being the best artist or even being the best listener. It's not being about being the best, it's being useful with the talents that you've been given, the resources that you've got. Resourceful people, use your resources and be useful to the people who are around you. And being worth knowing, I feel is a higher calling than being well known. That's really what I aspire to do. I guess I'm giving myself my own advice here, but that'd be my third tip.MR: That's great. Those are three great tips. I love all three. Thanks for sharing those with us. We're right at the end of the podcast if you can believe it. It just kind of flew by. It was so fun chatting with you. Tell us, what's the best place for people to find you if they wanna connect, if they wanna talk with you where would they go?EB: I post pretty regularly on both Instagram and LinkedIn, and they're under my name Eric Bakery, B-A-K-E-Y. I also have my own little website, Eric bakey.com. The whole online presence, I'm not hard to find if you just type me into Google, I'm sure you'll find me.MR: I hadn't thought about this until you said your name. Is there any kind of background in your family of being bakers? Is that in your history?EB: Funny thing on my mom's side, so not my dad's side, but the Bakey name, my mom's grandfather was a famous wedding cake baker in Philadelphia.MR: Really?EB: Well, my mom makes me a birthday cake where she makes wedding cake, birthday cake for me.MR: Wow.MR: I can't get it at the store. I gotta get my mom's fancy birthday cake stuff. I guess I'm kind of spoiled.MR: There is baking in your history somewhere.EB: There is. Yeah.MR: Interesting. That's pretty cool. Well, Eric, this has been so much fun chatting with you and having you share your experience and your story. Thanks so much for being on the show and thanks for the work that you're doing and how you're sharing and how you're being in the world. We so appreciate it.EB: I appreciate you. You're a huge inspiration. Thanks a lot, Mike.MR: Well, thank you. And for everyone listening to the show, it's another episode of the "Sketch Note Army Podcast." Till the next episode, we'll talk to you soon.

Visual practitioner Filippo "Sketchy" Buzzini shares how he is bartering his skills for other services and learning skills, growing his portfolio, and visiting new places at the same time. Sketchy is a firm believer in creating a broad comfort zone.Sponsored By ConceptsThis episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.Concepts' vector-based drawing feature gives you the power to adjust your drawings — any time you like. You can nudge the curve of a line, swap out one brush for another, or change stroke thickness and color at any stage of your drawing — saving hours and hours of rework.Vectors provide clean, crisp, high-resolution output for your sketchnotes at any size you need — large or small. Never worry about fuzzy sketchnotes again.Concepts is a powerful, flexible tool that’s ideal for sketchnoting.SEARCH “Concepts” in your favorite app store to give it a try.Running OrderIntroWelcomeWho is Filippo?Origin StoryFilippo’s current workTipsToolsWhere to find FilippoOutroLinksAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.Sketchy SolutionsFilippo on InstagramFilippo on FacebookFilippo on LinkedInDrawifyTanya Wehr - SE07/EP01The Sketchnote HandbookThe Graphic Facilitator's Guide: How to use your listening, thinking, and drawing skills to make meaning by Brandy AgerbeckMona EbdrupToolsAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.NeulandOutliners with chisel and round tipNo.One Art BrushBigOne Art brushInk refillersFineOne Flex with flexible tipsGraphic WallyDrone CameraIPEVO cameraAcrylicOne markeriPad Pro 11”ProcreateConcepts AppPost-it NotesTipsBarter your services.Ask your colleagues, connect, share, and give.Prepare your title ahead.Use Post-it notes.CreditsProducer: Alec PulianasTheme music: Jon SchiedermayerShownotes and transcripts: Esther OdoroSubscribe to the Sketchnote Army PodcastYou can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.Support the PodcastTo support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!TranscriptEpisode TranscriptMike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike, and I'm here with Filippo "Sketchy" Buzzini. Tell me about the sketchy word, Filippo. I'm really curious, where did this come from as you tell us who you are and what you do?Filippo "Sketchy" Buzzini: Yes. Hello. Thank you, Mike. It's great to be here. The sketchy word, I guess because I'm a sketchy character. It comes from, my name is Filippo Buzzini. I'm a visual practitioner from Switzerland with my company, it's called Sketchy Solutions. Because I don't want to limit myself to one specific field, as long as I can draw it and help you find a solution to a problem, I'm happy to do it and give it a try. That's why Sketchy Solutions. The great thing of having a company of just one employee is that you can pick your own title. So I am the Chief Sketching Officer of Sketchy Solutions.MR: I saw that.FSB: I'm a visual practitioner from Switzerland. I live now in Bern, the capital city, but I grew up in the Italian-speaking part in Locano in the South of Switzerland. The warmer, sunnier, and palm tree, French part of Switzerland.MR: Ah, there we go.FSB: What do I do? Mostly, I do a lot of graphic recordings. But in general, like anything, as I said, any type of sketchy solution that we can think of. I do always more strategic visualizations. I give visual thinking workshops, and I do also some illustration work, design work. I've been drawing, for example, book covers or book illustrations. I've done some logos or t-shirt designs.I'm also one of the visual storytellers of Drawify. It's a project where for people that don't want to draw themselves, we're a group of visual storytellers from around the world that are drawing templates and connectors and icons that can be dragged and dropped on a blank canvas and adapted.Also, been developing some fonts as well lately because I'm very interested in lettering. That's also something that I've taught a little bit and I'm planning to teaching some more online. So yeah, I think in general, like for many things in my life, I need variety, I need change. I need to be challenged on as many levels as possible 'cause otherwise, I get bored.MR: You're quite the generalist then, I would say. It seems to me.FSB: Yes. Or I'm a multi-specialist.MR: Multi-Specialist. I like that even better than generalist. That's really great. And so, that leads me to my next question. How did you end up in this space? This is my favorite question of every podcast, 'cause I get to hear the stories of all these interesting characters in our space, visual thinkers. Let's start from when you were a little kid. I imagine when you were a little kid, you probably drew a lot, but maybe not. Tell us that story.FSB: I’ve always been drawing and I always had to occupy my time creatively. I think I've always been building things and creating little stories when playing with my Legos and Playmobils. Drawing was always something that I did it to, well, occupy my time or especially at school, when I was bored, I just took a pen and started doodling. Doodling on the page and filling a page. I had more drawings than notes on any given booklet or whatever that I had.I think in general, I grew up and I've always been a quick learner, but it also meant that I was getting bored pretty quickly of things. I always needed challenges in my life. I don't know, I think there's few things that always characterize me is that well, I think creativity. I always need to find a creative output, to be different, to do the things kind of my way.A great curiosity for everything. I get passionate about, really plenty of things and I wanna know more. If I like something, I never get enough of it. I just wanna get further. And adrenaline too is something that I constantly seek. I guess growing up then, yeah, I've been drawing for a while and then been interested in graffiti, in street art, doing a lot of it on paper.I always felt a bit different from the other people and not really fitting in. And I found a good outlet in punk music. Like really punk music where — but I think it was a catalyst as well to my creativity because there was something where you can bend the rules, where you can go your own way, where you don't need to be precise to do something. You just create. You know, just a few chords, a few emotion, and you just get it out.And I guess that's also what sparked my drawing that is like, I was never great a drawing class. I could not work exact portrait, but I always had the ideas on how to do things. I could do it simple. It could be, you know, as long as you have the right energy, you could DIY, you could do it yourself and you can just get going and no matter if you make mistakes.That's the thing, just like drawing, like punk music, everybody can do it. Everyone can do it. So, everybody can feel empowered and try new things. And I guess the creativity, adrenaline, and curiosity, it's something that accompany me as well.In other aspects of my life, for example, I really like action sports, like board sports. I do a lot of snowboarding. I do kite surfing, you know, or summer things, I go hiking a lot, and I'm just wowed by nature all the time. I keep getting inspiration from that. I'm very keen traveler as well. This as well, I guess goes on with the curiosity and the adrenaline.That's for the context. I left the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland for studies. I went to Frieburg in the French-speaking part. I have a master's degree in history of contemporary societies and geography.I think that also contributed to my visual thinking by giving me a framework on how to think, how to analyze information objectively, how to grasp the important topics, how to get to what is important and how can you summarize complex topics by keeping it to the core.And I guess that re-structure my thinking. That is why I kept drawing a lot because well, having a master's degree and every time I was bored in class, I was drawing. That means I've been on class desks for many years. For 20 years, there was like well, many, many hundreds of hours of drawing practice anytime I was bored.After that, I worked for an NGO that was empowering young people to make their sustainable project into life through workshop. Then I was facilitating workshops. There as well, I got an in into the non-formal type of education and different way of learning and teaching, and facilitating. I think that also helped. After that, I worked for the European mobility programs. I was responsible for Switzerland for youth information network.And there as well being at the service of young people. Always young people could come to me or my colleagues all over Europe and just ask information about starting working or volunteering abroad. And there as well would help me, I know always adapting the type of solution to the needs of the person asking.When my contract ran out with this job after three years, the second last week, there was a workshop, two hours workshop during our international meeting on visual thinking given by Tonja Wehr From Germany. And my mission there was like, okay, write down one project you're gonna work on in the future for this network and try to draw it. And because I was about to quit my job, I was drawing, okay, my mission is to find a job. And I drew that.Well, little did you know that actually, the job would've been the drawing that I was doing, looking for other jobs instead of the actual content. Well, the feedback was very positive from colleagues from all over Europe, and say, "Oh, you're good at that and stuff." Was like, "Maybe I should try it. Why looking for a job? Why don't I try to learn more about it, and the worst-case scenario I learn a new skill and among other things."Then I got my hands on your book, "The Sketchnote, Handbook," and it was a revelation like yours and then Brandy Agerbeck's, Graphic Facilitations Guide. They were eye-openers. And then I just started. My partner at the time was organizing an international conference and development corporation in the water sector. And she was like, "We cannot pay you, but why don't you come along and do some graphic recording just to see one, if you're able, and two, if you like it."MR: Good practice.FSB: Yeah. And that was, what was it? May 2017, my very first graphic recording.MR: Really? Wow.FSB: A couple of weeks before, I also took part on Mona Ebdrup From Denmark. She's used to study in Bern, and she was giving visual confidence training. And I really needed some confidence because already my first graphic recording booked up, but I didn't have a clue where to start. And it really, really helped me. Really giving me the confidence to just go out and try. In a very anarchistic way, I just said, "Just go on, just do it."And I wasn't satisfied at all about my results. Like, oh, they can be so much better, but people in the room were wowed. And I'm like, "Okay, yeah, there's something to that. There's something to that." Then in the meantime, I found another job and I said, "I need to reinvent myself." I took an internship in a development corporation organization where among the other things were organizing a conference in Australia, and I was like, yes, I take an internship, but I would also like to develop my visual thinking skills, so I'd love to do a graphic recording at the conference in Australia.I did that. One of my first full day graphic recording was actually in Queensland, was actually in Australia. Since then, well, after that internship was done, I already had several rough recording. I worked with three previous employers in the first six months. I was like, "Yeah, there's something into it."So decided in March 2018 to go all in and invest and starting doing visual thinking my full job. I had zero clients when I took this decision, I just love doing it. I know I could do it in all the language of Switzerland plus English, that means also all the language of the neighboring countries. I see that there was potential for growth. Since then, I don't know, it's been a rollercoaster that full of highlights that doesn't stop since.MR: But sort of fulfills your need for the adrenaline, right?FSB: Absolutely. Yeah.MR: The jumping in without—FSB: The recording, it gives me this adrenaline, this adrenal boost. Also, for the curiosity, it's always something new. It keeps changing. You cannot get bored. That's why it's my icky guy, I guess.MR: Nice, nice. I would guess, you know, for those wondering where the adrenaline comes from, the adrenaline comes from, this could all go wrong really easily, right? It could go bad. I think that's what, oddly enough, I've discovered in myself, like doing things that I never have done before.I'm not a thrill seeker. Like I'm not a snowboarder or kite surfer or anything, but there's something fun, a little bit like improv, right, when you go into a space and there's she possibility that anything could happen is really fun, right? Of course, you could crash and burn, and that might be fun for some people to watch, but that makes the success even sweeter, right?The possibility is you could crash and burn, and then actually, you deliver something. Like you said, the first one you did, you thought was terrible or wasn't good up to your spec, and yet everybody else in the room, because they don't practice that skill whatsoever. To them, it was amazing, right? So that's gotta be satisfying and I think draws you into more wanting to try stuff.FSB: Yeah, absolutely. I think also, just having an attitude of, it doesn't need to be perfect. You can make mistakes. And seeking the thrill, like, just the same way when I get to go puncture when I still go switch stage diving with 37-year-old, and I don't care. Maybe they don't catch you, but it's just about jumping. It's just about going for it. It's going for it.I see mistakes sometimes that I point out mistakes to my clients, maybe in some work that I do. But in general, it's just about going for it and having the confidence that you're doing your best. You're trying to help. You're trying to help and you're trying to provide a service and an added value to your client. Even a not your best work can be extremely helpful.MR: Yes. It can have value. Interesting. I have to tell you, my impression of Switzerland, I've only been there once, is that it's a very buttoned up, very conservative, very structured place. If you're in Switzerland and you're working, you must really stand out, Filippo. Is that a pretty good guess or am I misinterpreting Switzerland? Maybe Switzerland is different than I realize.FSB: Oh, no, no. Switzerland is definitely very buttoned up and let's say, well, boring or reliable.MR: Yes. Yeah, very reliable. The trains run on time in Switzerland.FSB: But yeah, I don't fit in. I guess I've got a bit of leeway, a bit of game, the fact that I'm from Italian-speaking part. We are considered Italians of Switzerland, even though the sports national team we support is not Italy, but still, we have a bit more of a laid-back way of facing work and life. And so, there's a little bit of game there, but even there, I don't really feel like I fit in myself. I get some jokers because of that.I'm selling myself, I'm selling not just my services. I'm selling, my business is me, is my person. So I need to be authentic. I always wear caps, and some clients might not be so—you might not feel so comfortable of wearing caps in between suits, but then I designed my own caps so that's kind of part of my uniform.For example, I went to the United Nations in Geneva, and I went past security, I had my shoes, like nice shoes and gel in my hair and I was wearing a tie and a jacket and whatever, but as soon as I passed security, I put on my hat and changed my shoes for Converse. And it's like, "Nope. No compromising on that."MR: That's great to hear that.FSB: That's my uniform.MR: Well, I think that sets you apart, right? When they say Sketchy, everybody knows who that is. They don't even have to say your real surname or your name at all. It's sketchy.FSB: I guess I don't know. Also, in my work, several colleagues have told me that they can recognize my work from—they can say, "Oh, okay, that's Sketchy. That's Filippo's work." Because I don't know, I guess there are some rules to follow, but I always like to bend them and adapt it to myself. I do not wanna do graphic recordings in the way, like the standard. Learning how to make the—like there are dozens of people doings that could be interchangeable.MR: Yeah, exactly.FSB: I think that my personality, the energy needs to come out in my work and I'm not really compromising on that. Lots of clients like it, some don't, but then I'm just not the right people for those that don't.MR: Yeah. Exactly. The right people find you. Tell me a little bit about something you've done recently that you're excited about. Could be work stuff, maybe it's something else.FSB: Well, what I've done recently that I'm pretty excited about, it's kind of work-related, but let's say I wasn't really paid for that, but I did some graphic recordings in Antarctica.MR: Really?FSB: Yeah. It was a dream of mine to set foot on the one continent I've never been on the seven Continents. I had a chance during one work event to meet some people from a company that offer cruises to Antarctica. And my goal was to reach out and say, "Hey guys, I can do a lot of things for you. Can we make a deal or something?" The graphic recording was not part of the deal, but I've got a very good offer, a pretty massive discount in exchange of some drawings that they can use for the marketing.And when I was there, I'm like, "Well, I have to do some graphic recording. You never know. Does anybody has ever done it?” There were all these presentations on glaciers and on Wales. And like that I was like, yeah, it will be a pity if I don't do it because I don't know if it's ever been done. It was just super great to combine—in general, I've reached a good satisfying level of work-life balance where my life supports my work and vice versa.I've become a big fan of bartering. I know we're in a privileged position in our job because we do something that people like and everybody can use it in some way. I'm always more doing, "Hey, what can I do for you and what can you do for me? And let's just exchange that." I'm going to Japan snowboarding in couple of weeks and I don't need to pay for accommodation because I've drawn the logo of this ski school where I'm staying.MR: Be creative, right?FSB: Or like, I'm not paying for coffee. I have a deal here with my best friend. I just get free coffee and then whenever they need something, some flyers for events, or the blackboard with the menu and stuff, I'll just do it. So, I guess that, yeah.That speaks to your open nature. I would say, you seem like a very open person to new experiences, right? So, when you do that kind of thing, you open yourself up. Like tomorrow, you might come in and they say, "Hey Filippo, we need a big poster for a party next week. Can you make that for us?" Like, "Yeah, go for it." Now you have a poster that you made, right? So, it goes into your catalog of number one, skills, but also number two, now you have a portfolio piece that says, "Yeah, I've done that before." And it just adds to your opportunity.I always thought of it that way whenever there was a problem or something to solve, I always felt like that was good. 'Cause every time I solve a problem, I now have something in my library to help solve the next problem that I don't know is coming. It becomes part of my solution set. And I think it feels like you've sort of approached it in a similar way.FSB: Yeah, absolutely. That's what I said before about the name of the company, Sketchy Solutions. Why? Because if you're an English speaker, it sounds like, "What the hell is that?" It doesn't sound positive, but it's literally what I do, it's sketchy solutions. And if a client ask me, "Oh, can you do that?" And it's something I've never done, usually, I go, "Yes." And then I'll figure out on the way to do it.I like to be open to learning new things, to be challenged to learning new things, and figuring out new ways of working. Of course, then to amplify my portfolio because also curiosity and the need to be constantly challenged and the stepping out of—I don't know if it's stepping out of the comfort zone is the right way. I was thinking about it some month ago, and I don't believe I'm somebody that is very comfortable stepping out of the comfort zone. But I just believe that I have a very broad comfort zone.MR: Interesting. That's an interesting way to think of it, like broadening your comfort zone. So, what maybe in the past was uncomfortable is now just, "I've done that before. We can do that."FSB: What's uncomfortable gives me adrenaline, makes me rush. Like even stress in the end. Adrenaline is stress. So, I'm like, okay, I'm stressing about that. It's good. It's good.MR: You turn that energy. I remember someone when I was first learning how to do public speaking, and his comment was, when you get butterflies, you're going up in front to speak in front of somebody. He's like, "That's good, Mike. That is energy. You're excited about what's coming. You need to turn it into a positive and then give it back to your audience." So, it's just energy, if you redirect it, it can be really powerful. Which it sounds like your motto and your mantra, I guess, that you follow.FSB: Yeah, no, absolutely. In general, I seek thrills in my private life and in my job. And they're intertwined.MR: Interesting. That's really great to hear. Let's do a little shift now. Let's talk a little bit about your favorite tools. We'll begin with analog and then go digital. Markers, paper, notebooks, pencils, I don't know, whatever stuff you like. And then jump into your, whatever you use digitally.FSB: So analog, I’m a huge Neuland fan. They have the whole lot. For a visual practitioner, you cannot hope for more. Everybody's super lovely. Also, the people, they have refillable markers. Sustainable. Say for graphic recording, typically I would have the No.One—No, the outliner, both the black outliner, both with Chisel and a round tip.Then a couple of other colors I know I'm gonna use with black, I always have the No.One, both Art, so brush, tip and chisel, and the big one as well, chisel. And now that there is the BigOne Art as well, that's also. So, I will always have the set for each color and then the refiller of those colors as well.So that I always have a choice of what marker to use. But I also love, for example, for Sketchnoting on smaller formats. Now they have this new FineOne. What are they called? FineOne Flex with the flexible tips.MR: Yep. I love that one too.FSB: Yeah, I really, really like that. They're great for lettering as well.MR: Yeah.FSB: There's a different size of the stroke. I've got the graphic wall. One of my first project in 2018 was a brand filmmaker and another producer storyteller. We did a video where I was filming with drone and everything. We were in the Swiss mountains or in front of the government building or In Geneva at the UN. We were just moving around the graphic wall and telling a story with that and drawing with that.Graphic Wally, I use as well for online workshops. I guess analog, well, there again, it's kind of digital tools, but the IPEVO. I recently got an IPEVO camera. It's a document camera which is great. I use it mostly for making what they call the time loops. No, time lapses.MR: Yeah. They take a shot and then you wait a bit of time and keep taking shots.FSB: No. Well, pretty much I take a video and I speed it up.MR: You kinda squeeze it. Yeah, speed it up.FSB: Speed it up so that it looks really nice as well. I guess pretty much, I guess Neuland has all what I need for my needs.MR: All your needs. Yeah.FSB: I use the AcrylicOne's to draw. My balcony tables are all completely drawn. You could give me a marker in my hand, I will start filling whatever surfaces in front of me.MR: That's great. That's great. And then digital, I'm assuming you must use an iPad as well, and what's the app that you like to use there?FSB: I have an iPad Pro 11 inches.MR: Oh, me too.FSB: Boring as everybody, Procreate. I'm using Procreate. The flow is so nice with Procreate. There's so many option, I guess the force of habit. And otherwise, I also use Concepts for when I need to do something vector-based. But I feel like, yeah, it does not have the same flow, the same ease of use as Procreate.MR: Different interface. Yeah, for sure.FSB: That's about it.MR: Simple tools.FSB: Yeah.MR: Well, that's really great. Let's shift now again to tips. This is the place where I invite you to think about someone listening, who is in the visual thinking, whatever that means to them, but maybe they feel like they're on a plateau or they just need some encouragement from you, Filippo, what would be three things you would tell them can be practical, can be mindset, whatever that you would share to encourage them.FSB: For sure, as I mentioned before, something I really like to do now, and I think that more of us should do that. Barter, barter your services. You have very unique set of skills. Just what do you like from potential clients or from your friends? You wanna go to holidays somewhere, just reach out and say, what can I do for you? And you'd be surprised at all the good deals that might come your way in exchange of your drawings and your skills. So, barter.MR: Love that.FSB: Second one is ask your colleagues, connect, share, and give. I've learned so much. When I started, I connected first with the European visual practitioners and then also with the IFDP, and now we also have some meetings in Switzerland of a visual practitioners in Switzerland just to exchange and learn from each other at any given moment is so extremely valuable because most of us we're working alone.And you don't get real feedback, or you cannot grow much just from client work, because most clients would just say, "Oh, that's beautiful." And you might not even want it to be beautiful. You want it to be helpful. Getting constructive feedback, honest, constructive feedback from peers, it's something that can really help you step up your work.MR: That's great. I like that.FSB: And finally, more maybe technical tip for graphic recording, prepare your titles ahead. Your title, for me, is one of the most important things in your graphic recording. Is the one thing that should not—maybe also with logos and maybe your signature, but the titles is the one thing that should not be done while other people are speaking. You should put thought into it. Say, what do I wanna communicate with this title?Because it's probably gonna be the largest font on your paper, and when people enter the room, they're gonna see that as the first thing. And you want them to keep looking at it and not to just say, "Oh, what is it? Yeah, no, not interested." And turn their head away, because then—so really use your title to hook the attention of the public and to really give the framing of the meaning of your recording.The other controversial tip, I may have an extra one. I know that there's some visual practitioner that might crucify me for saying that, but use Post-it. At least I'm very keen on the truthfulness of the information, of the accuracy that there's no points really missed. That all the essential points are on the recording. And you're always a bit a delay in recording compared to somebody speaking.So, Post-it have been a lifesaver for me. Just pick it up, put them in order. Because it even allows you a further selection level. Once you have four or five Post-it, it's like, yeah, maybe not all of that is necessary. Or, oh, wow, look, this is the flow that I need to follow. So, I dunno, I think the Post-it are a little bit of a secret weapon to have complete and relevant graphic recordings.MR: In some ways, that's like a buffer capture, right? So, you're trying to capture things quickly. It doesn't have to be beautiful, but you can capture that idea. I talk about that in Sketchnoting. I call that putting a stake in the ground. If you're working on a page, like maybe you start the section and then you just guess how much space it will take.Could use a Post-it note there, I suppose too. A little one and put it in, but basically leave the space and come back to it right in, just enough so you can fill it. I like that. Even if it's controversial. I think it's just—it's funny, people will come to me and say, "Well, this isn't Sketchnote." It's like, why not?Using references, using Post-It notes, your goal is to communicate ideas and get those ideas captured. How you do it, I don't care. If it doesn't look beautiful or it's not sanctioned or whatever, who cares. The goal is not for me to do it exactly as someone else told me to. The goal is, if you can come up with a way to deliver that message, then you win.That should be really the ultimate goal is to, like you said, not people looking at it. Oh, I don't care about it, or that it looks beautiful, but does it capture what we're talking about? Does it move us forward? Does it help us to remember so that we don't forget what we talked about, and then it pushes us ahead? That's really the goal of all the stuff we're doing, right? We're communicating visual ideas.FSB: Yeah. The bottom line is does it help? Am I doing work that is helpful? I'm usually paid for it, so I want to give the maximum added value to my client, and I guess that whatever means help you to capture the most and to be the most helpful to your client, that should be used.MR: Yeah. I agree. So, I'm very pragmatic, I guess is the right word. So, if it works for you, then you should go with it.FSB: Yeah. And I think similarly, another thing I've been reading in a lot of books is about, you know, you put down the pen, the moment the person stop speaking. And I feel like you can do that, but I don't think it helps in really having a complete and helpful recording because maybe, you know, the last session, they're like, "Hey, let's collect all the next step. Let's have a quick popcorn brainstorming session."And I'm gonna come up with a lot of information, which might all be relevant, and you still wanna take the time to actually write it down completely and maybe take 15, 20, 30 minutes longer after the end, just communicate it clearly to the client before. If that helps, then why not also take a little bit of time longer, and I'm not saying then finishing at home in the next few days.No. It just take a little slot of time afterwards that agreed upon beforehand with the client to actually get the time to finish thing and not just lock down something if it's something very relevant, you want to give it the space that it deserves.MR: When I do sketchnotes, I try to do most of the work in the moment, but I always reserve at least 15 minutes to look for typos and make sure that things make sense. If I did that staking technique where I started to capture and I didn't finish, to make sure I fill it in, right? So, to plan in a little bit of time at the end, I would think is a normal process for graphic recording too, right?Just to check your work, make sure that things are, you know, oh, I need to cross that T or dot that I, that's something that I'll get caught with sometimes. So, I think it's important to build in not just the minute you stop, you're done. Well, you can come back and fix things, or. I would think that that's a pretty standard thing.FSB: Absolutely. Yeah.MR: I would hope so. Anyway. Well, Filippo, this has been so great. Tell us how we can reach you. Where do you hang out if we wanna reach you on social media or a website, or what would be the best way to reach out to you if we wanna get in touch and connect?FSB: Sure. Well, you can visit my website www.sketchysolutions.ch. You can follow me for example, on Instagram or Facebook as well, Sketchy Solutions. Or add me on LinkedIn. I'm quite active on LinkedIn. It's Filippo Buzzini. I will send you all the links.MR: Yeah. We'll have show notes, everybody, for everything we talk about. It's one of the things we like to do here is have good reference, so you can go check things out. So, thank you so much. It's so great to meet you. Really, I'm so happy to see the work you're doing in Switzerland, and every time I discover somebody new, it's exciting to see that the work that we do is happening all over the world. That's really exciting to me. So, thank you for the work you do. I so appreciate that you're willing to be who you are and you're not afraid of it. That's such a good thing to see.FSB: Well, and thank you so much, Mike for helping so many of us start and putting us in the right direction and keep inspiring us. But it's really a big honor to be interviewed by you and to be able to chat in general, like, wow. If I would've told that to the first-year graphic recording, Sketchy, I would never have believed to say that I would be sharing a Zoom call and having a chat with the Mike Rohde.MR: Thank you so much. It's really an honor. Thanks so much. Well, everyone, it's another episode of the "Sketchnote Army Podcast." Until next episode, this is Mike. Talk to you soon.