Last weekend, I had the opportunity to attend the MPR News Top Coast Festival. I thought it was the perfect opportunity to give Sketchnoting the event a spin. Sure, there are lots of small details I could point out and nitpick. But, ultimately, it is about capturing the key ideas and images that made the conference memorable for me. I’m pretty darn proud of how they turned out.
I have long admired the Sketchnotes that my friend Mike Rohde did at conferences. Mike pioneered this style of visual note taking many years ago and I’ve been a big-big-fan from day one. I’ve always wanted to learn how to do it myself but have never been comfortable with my drawing skills. Mike gave a Sketchnote Workshop in Milwaukee last year that I attended. It was fantastic and, between that and his book on the subject, it went a long way for improving both my skills and my comfort level. If, like me, you look at Sketchnotes or drawing by others and say to yourself, “I could never do that.”, I totally recommend checking out what Mike has to offer.
You can check out the full set on Flickr. For those that care (meaning, likely, all of you), I used a large Moleskine Sketchbook, a Pentel EnerGel RTX 0.7 (on day one), and a Retro 51 Tornado Black Stealth 0.7 (on day two).
