Yesterday, I spent nearly the entire day at a Leadership Retreat for our Western Massachusetts Writing Project. It was productive, as always, and yet, I did find my mind wandering from time to time. I decided to try my hand at Visual Notetaking to keep focused.
I tried at Visual Notetaking, but I failed. I began with notes on paper during the meeting and then later, after the retreat, I used the Paper app to draw the visual with my stylus.
Well, first of all, too many words. Too much text. But that’s who I am: a word man. And I wasn’t patient enough, either, for thinking through the visual design element. I sort of jumped in, started and then worked around my starting point. I’m not sure either of these really captures much beyond a pretty note.
Check out Sylvia Duckworth and her art. It really is inspiring how she listens, processes, and then captures the movement of ideas in her artwork. All of it seems logical and designed with an eye towards cohesiveness of the reader/viewer.
flickr photo shared by sylviaduckworth under a Creative Commons ( BY-NC-ND ) license
I’m not giving up on the idea of Visual Notetaking, but I understand that free-hand drawing is not my strength and never has been. It doesn’t help that I have a fat stylus for the Ipad, making detailed drawings more difficult than it probably should be. I am more apt to be creative when I have the art done for me, which has its drawbacks and limitations, and I can work on the writing and design piece. I need a partner!
Still, this opportunity allowed me to dive in and try the process, and I did find some good resources to put into my Diigo bookmarking for later perusal. I like the simplicity of this overview, for example.
Have you tried Visual Notetaking? Have you done better than me?
Peace (in the draw),
Kevin