“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “to talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— Of cabbages—and kings…”

Ok not really. I’m not talking about shoes, ships, sealing wax, cabbages, or kings. Nope, I’m talking about sketchnotes. Very excited to announce the Sketchnotes Field Guide is now available for purchase!

We have a print version reasonably priced at under $7, and the PDF version is free this first week in January. I hope to sync the two editions together so if you order the print edition, you automatically get a free PDF, but this is something I’m working out with the distributor.

I want to thank my collaborator, Charlene McBride, for making this project an absolute blast. Huge thanks to everyone who supported this book in one form or another (in no order whatsoever)…

Derren Hermann, Erin McCain, Erik Stolterman, MJ Broadbent, Denise Philipsen, Heiko Maiwand, Eugene Siew, Adrienne Dye, Stefani Bachetti, Anjana Thirumalai, Amanda Lyons, Micah Gideon Modell, Boon Sheridan, Lydia Whitehead, Jen Myers, Shirley Tobias, Lynn Dombrowski, Mike Rohde, Austin Toombs, Vidya Palaniswamy, Grant Carlile, Amantha Lott, Jingyu Wu, Jeremy White, Shay-Jahen Merritte, Christian Long, Brad Nunnally, and Brien Tate.

Now go forth! Empower yourself and others to sketchnote just in time for conference season!

creativemornings: I think if we empower people, let them see the world through design in their ways,

I’ve titled this post “Living the Dream” because I think it’s important to note that even though I love being a user experience designer, it was never my dream to become one. Not my childhood dream, anyway.

Honestly, I’m not sure any child dreams of becoming a translator, as it were. A professional who facilitates projects via their soft skills and documentation to ensure features within a holistic system benefit and hopefully delight customers.

My childhood dream was to be a writer. I have wanted to write books for as long as I can remember.

1. Historical fiction books
2. Picture books
3. How to books.

I wanted to create content and have people read it, enjoy it, and feel inspired to make something themselves. As of last Friday, I can now say that I am in the process of doing all three: children’s book, historical fiction, and how-to. I am living my dream.

I keep saying it because I want to remind myself. I am living my dream. How many people can say that?

Before I talk about the new project, first let’s get you updated on the project I last blogged about.

The How-To Book

The Sketchnote field guide book is coming along really well! The beta readers are liking the context and structure; they have great feedback and I’m feeling really encouraged about this project. I have to say, without Charlene McBride’s collaboration, this project wouldn’t be nearly as strong as it is. The survey people filled out for me back in August is what brought Charlene to me, and helped us focus the book.

I’m so excited to share it with people! It will definitely be on Lulu (they allow royalty splitting), and maybe on Amazon.com. We still need to figure that out. Keep your eyes peeled, though. We’re hoping to release it in January, just in time for conference season.

The Historical Fiction Book

Under my historical fiction pen name, I started a book four times before I felt like it was something worth writing. This fourth start has around 24k words, which is about 30% of the final word count. I’ve stopped writing because I realized I needed more research… ergo me dragging ten books home from the library about Ohio and the Civil War.

The Storybook

The new project I keep hinting at is a children’s storybook. I’ve loved the process of checking out thirty children’s books at a time, consuming them at a leisurely pace and asking 6yr old Binaebi what she liked about each one. I’ve loved reading the how-to-write for children books, learning the nuances between picture books and storybooks, the intentions of each, the intended age groups, and the parents that buy books for their children.

I’ve loved chatting about the project with my illustrator and collaborator,  who suggested we write about robots (because he loves them). I’ve felt inspired by his supportive enthusiasm when I insisted it be about a girl robot, and that it have something to do with dancing (because we both love dancing). The main character’s name is Beatrice, and that is about all I’m willing to share at this point. Maybe later I’ll leak some the sketches my collaborator has been sending me. They’re so adorable.

Anyway, at the risk of sounding like a broken record (does that idiom even apply anymore?), I just wanted to share that I’m living my dream. Why? I don’t know. I guess in the hopes that you might feel inspired to do something tonight or tomorrow that gets you one step closer to living your dream.

Fact. creativemornings: You should start projects because you feel like you are going to either expl

Genevieve Bell : I think we have a great deal more work to do, which is good because I like research. We have spent a lot of time focusing on the obvious and the obviously sexy stuff – mobility, gaming, social networks, and of course the individual and youth. We have, as a consequence, neglected the other stuff of daily life – religion, spirituality, love, child-care, anyone over 40, who does the dishes, who puts out the recycling, community, the nation-state, changing ideas of citizenship.

Preparation

Like other events I’ve attended where I planned to sketchnote, I arrived early to stake out a good spot. Because the event was outside, I had to bring my own chair. To make it easier to carry everything, I brought two black pens and no color markers. I grabbed a program at the entrance and sat my chair at the edge of the crowd.

Setting Up

After sitting, I looked over the program. Ten speakers, two musical guests. Excellent. I drew the Pecha Kucha logo in the corner with the date, and decided to do something I’ve never done before: draw a grid on my paper.

The thing is, with Pecha Kucha, speakers get 20 secs for each of their 20 slides which progress automatically. That gives them 6:40min to say whatever point they want to make… and sketchnoting that can get crazy difficult because you never know what will be super inspiring. I tend to run out of space for the last speakers, which is frustrating, to say the least.

Ergo the grid. By blocking off ten equal (roughly) areas on the page, I was guaranteed to have enough space to cover every speaker. I labeled each block at the top with the speaker’s name and affiliation while it was still light out to ensure I wouldn’t mess up in between speakers. The transition time is less than a minute between speakers anyway, and I’ve had trouble keeping up in the past.

The Talks

I underestimated the grid, completely. I’ve never enjoyed a Pecha Kucha event more! I didn’t have to worry about spacing, keeping up, or anything. It was almost like my page was split into ten mini-pages where I had to capture the one or two main points of the talk as I understood it. I brought my thicker marker (Micron 08) to make sure I didn’t focus on drawing super detailed. I knew I wouldn’t have the time.

Only drawing with black pen felt like going back to my roots. When I began sketchnoting in earnest, I refused to use any color. I wanted to explore the high contrast of black pen on white-ish paper; I wasn’t ready for color yet. I did go back and throw some colored pencil on top of my drawings, only because it seemed difficult to separate the talks even with (or because of) the grid.

Parting Thoughts

All in all, experimenting with an explicit grid and labeling the sections half an hour before the talks even began was worth it. The constraints were exactly what I needed to make the sketchnoting experience less stressful and more fun.

The final sketch, shown below, is also on Flickr.