The Sketchnote Handbook: Update 4: Digging In

THE SKETCHNOTE HANDBOOK project is now stretching out before me, with much left to do. I'm both excited and a little freaked out by this, with excitement winning at the end of the day. I've known this would be a tough, exciting project. I remind myself of this when I worry about what's to be done.

The Process, Chapter 1 Text & Sketches

Never having written a book, I've been adapting the process I use for my other design and illustration projects to the Sketchnote Handbook process — thinking, writing out ideas, pencil sketches and final art — all approached with an iterative mindset. This approach is working well because it's familiar to me.

For chapter 1, I've started with a table of contents (TOC in the biz), worked through with Nikki at Peachpit. From the TOC I have written chapter 1 in three drafts. Using the first chapter text, I sat down over the course of three evenings sketch out a rough map of the entire chapter's page structure in pencil.

Here is a sample rough sketch from the first spread of the chapter:

Sketching out ideas is helpful in my design process — in this book writing and illustrating project it has proven true again. The experience of turning words into drawings, type treatments and layouts has been helpful.

Having a sketch of the chapter to compliment my writing has been perfect in figuring out what works, what doesn't, where to expand and where stick with ideas. These rough sketches have also been ideal for sharing direction with the Peachpit team and my book advisory team.

Cover Designs

Something I'm learning as I experience a book writing process — many things are moving at the same time. I suppose in this case, with a book and video there are more threads than usual. One of the important threads to take care of very shortly are the cover designs for the book and DVD.

I have several ideas in my head for covers, which all feature hand-drawn sketchnote-style typography and images. I want the covers to be simple and memorable, and apparently they need to work at full size and as a thumbnail (for selling on websites). Nice challenge, eh?

Next Steps

The next step is a revised pencil sketch of chapter 1, to fix things, refine ideas and get the layout and imagery pretty well set for the inking stage to follow.

My goal is to completely finish chapter 1 all the way to final production with InDesign files and high resolution scans. Once we have the process settled, I believe it will help streamline the production of the 5 remaining chapters.

I'll be starting the video production with Brian Artka soon. Brian is working hard on the video test we did a month ago, which I'll post here when ready. In the mean time, you can check out the out-take video he's already created.

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Summit Series Basecamp Sketchnote Booklet

IN JANUARY, the Summit Series team commissioned me to attend and capture sketchnotes at Basecamp, a meeting of 650 invite-only guests in Lake Tahoe's Squaw Valley. I had a great time, met a variety of interesting people and enjoyed live-capturing my experience in sketchnotes during Basecamp weekend.

Typically, I post sketchnotes online, or create a PDF of the sketchnotes for attendees of events. I this case I felt strongly that a booklet, created from the sketchnotes would make a great after the fact artifact of the event for the all of the Summiters at the event in Squaw Valley. Audrey and the Summit Series team loved the idea so we began the process of designing a booklet from my sketchnotes.

Designing The Booklet

Using the multiple pages of sketchnotes I'd scanned, Audrey and I made typo fixes, adjustments and additions to the content, preparing it for printing. Laura, Lindsay and the Pinball Publishing team were my first choice, as they printed the popular Scout Book for our Visual Thinking 101 panel at SXSW 2010.

Here's a sketch of the booklet concept, where you can see me thinking through the booklet's cover design and interior structure:

When our direction was set, I combined sketchnote scans with newly created elements and laid out an InDesign document for Pinball's new Mega Booklet, a 5x7 Scout Book with more space than the popular 3x5 version:

Once the final art was approved, my production files went to Pinball Press for printing. Here are images of the booklet on press:

A Basecamp Sketchnote Booklet plate on press at Pinball Publishing.

Basecamp Sketchnote Booklet signature sheet, fresh off the press.

Cover and back cover signature press sheet.

Welcome Note and Packaging

Audrey also provided a welcome note for the final packet, which I hand-write and scanned for print production. The note was printed on a single sheet of duplex card stock (light stock glued to kraft stock for the back), which was then placed into a kraft envelope for shipping to each Summit attendee.

Here are a selection of the final Summit Basecamp Sketchnote Booklet photos, taken by the Pinball staff after printing, cutting and binding:

View: Virtual Summit Basecamp Sketchnote Booklet (flash required).
View: Summit Basecamp Sketchnote Booklet Photos (Flickr)

Final Impressions

The entire booklet turned out great! I'm excited to see how Summit Basecamp attendees like the final booklet — since our aim in capturing sketchnotes and producing a booklet from them is to remind them of their own great weekend experience in the mountains.

If you're a Summiter who has received one of these booklets. please leave a comment with your thoughts. I and the Summit Series team would love to hear your feedback on this fun way of making an artifact from sketchnotes.

Thank you Team Summit Series and Pinball Publishing for making it happen!

Photos: Pinball Publishing

The $100 Startup Illustrations

A BOOK ILLUSTRATION opportunity came along last September I could not pass up. Chris Guillebeau reached out to me after seeing and hearing about my REWORK illustrations for 37signals and Crown.

Chris was seeking my help in conveying the ideas in his second book, The $100 Startup, which just released this Tuesday. I accepted the project and had a great time working with Chris, bringing his writing to life with illustrations.

In celebration of the launch, I'm sharing a selection of illustrations from the book here. To see the entire set of illustration photos, visit The $100 Startup Flickr Set.

The best option? Buy your own copy of The $100 Startup — it's great book.

Thanks Chris!

Build Magazine: Sketchnote Illustrations

IN NOVEMBER 2011, I was hired by Build Network to create an illustration for their premier issue for an article on visual thinking for business called Want to Capture Ideas So They Stick? Draw Them. The article featured Dan Roam, Sunni Brown, Charlotte Hillenbrand, Jeannel King and myself sharing how visual thinking and doodling can help you think and solve problems better.

At the time I was completely focused on illustrating Chris Guillebeau's new book, The $100 Startup, so rather than decline the illustration, I brought the project through the company I work for — Gomoll Research & Design, so I could work on it during daylight hours.

Just a few weeks ago we received the printed issue of Build magazine and the final sketchnote style illustration turned out just great:

To read the article, check out a larger screenshot of the piece in my Build Magazine Illustrations Flickr set.

Thank you Ashely O'Broin for choosing me to help illustrate the premier issue!

The Sketchnote Handbook: Update 3: San Francisco

I'M BACK from San Francisco, and I'm working hard to get caught up with life and my book writing, after a brilliant, valuable week spent in The City by the Bay.

I was able to give 3 talks last week: at Salesforce.com Wednesday evening, at Peachpit Press in Berkeley on Thursday afternoon and at Duarte Design in Mountain View on Friday for lunch. Each talk was a fun and rewarding experience.

Salesforce.com

For Salesforce, I prepared a new talk focused on sketching as a visual thinking power tool, based on my A List Apart article of the same name. The Eventbrite RSVP page sold out — we estimated about 80 in the room, which was full enough to have some people standing and some sitting on the floor.

Refreshments were provided for all attendees, along with Salesforce-stamped, Moleskine Cahier booklets and pencils to make sketching easy during the sketch exercises at the end of my talk. The room was happy and ready to sketch by the time I was introduced.

Presenting with an iPad 2, I shared the idea of using sketching as a way to quickly explore ideas, then share them with others as an object which can be more easily discussed than an idea existing only in your head.

Next, I showed samples of my own work with commentary, shared two exercises I'd prepared for the attendees to sketch in their new notebooks. First, we drew items from the memory of our kitchens (like coffee pots and spatulas), then I had everyone pair up to sketch UI/UX concepts for the station screen and music playback screen for the Pandora iPhone app.

Many of the attendees were designers, so for them, sketching interfaces was a fun exercise. To show sketches to the group, I simply lifted the iPad 2 with camera above the table and whatever was below appeared on-screen. Win!

My favorite moment? Watching a room of 80 people as they sketched and discussed ideas for Pandora screens, then inviting several of those teams to presenting their ideas through the iPad camera to the group.

Presentation: Sketching Visual Thinking Power Tool (2.4 MB PDF)

Thank you Salesforce's Jill, Yuri and Marcus for the opportunity to speak to Salesforce and other interested people in the San Francisco area. I had a wonderful time and was pleased to share my passion.

Peachpit Press

On Thursday I caught a bus and a train out to Berkeley, to visit with the team at Peachpit who are helping me write and create The Sketchnote Handbook.

I had a fun adventure figuring out the route on Muni busses to the Bart entrance on 5th and Market downtown, then riding the train under the bay to North Berkeley. I was glad to have a Bart app and Google maps on my iPhone.

Amy from Peachpit picked me up at the station and brought me to Peachpit offices, housed in a converted industrial building. Once I had the iPad 2 ready, I gave a brief talk about sketchnotes to Peachpit staff, explaining the details of my book and taking questions from about a dozen staffers.

It was fun to share book details with the larger team, and hear their comments and questions they had about the book. I think everyone at Peachpit is excited about the Sketchnote Handbook, which makes me fired up to write it.

I was treated to lunch at a tasty and secret Mexican restaurant around the corner by Lupe and Amy, while we discussed the video portion of the project. Back at the Peachpit office, Amy shot video of me for an upcoming promo video.

Thanks Nancy, Amy, Lupe, Scott and Nikki for helping setup my visit to Peachpit. It was great to see almost everyone — missed you Glenn & Nikki!

Duarte Design

My final presentation for the week was on Friday, at Duarte Design in Mountain View. I reserved a Zipcar for the drive from our hotel down to Duarte offices. It was a great experience using a Zipcar for the first time, though we hadn't known or planned for San Francisco Giants' opening day — we were 30 minutes late.

Fortunately, we arrived in time for me to say hello and give Nancy Duarte a quick hug before she had to leave for the day.

In the presentation room, I hooked up my iPad and shared a variety of advanced sketchnoting techniques with the staff, while my wife and kids watched from the back of the room.

Part of the presentation included live sketchnoting of two videos: The Distiller and The Milwaukee Leatherworker. I did my own sketchnoting on the iPad with a stylus, which worked well, but had limited detail versus paper and pen.

Duarte's staff did a great job on the sketchnotes, making use of the advanced techniques I'd shared just minutes before. It was especially great to see non-artists creating wonderful sketchnotes and sharing them with the group.

After Q&A time, several Duarte staffers and I geeked out over my iPad styli collection and shared favorite sketch apps for the iPad. Everyone loved my Stylus Socks and I learned about Procreate for the iPad.

Presentation: Advanced Sketchnote Techniques (5.9 MB PDF)

Thank you Nancy, Katie and Emily for the opportunity and help in making our brown bag lunch session such a fun time for the staff and for me.

Book Writing & Illustrating

The first draft of chapter one was completed before I left for San Francisco, so the next challenge is to sketch out in detail how the text from the chapter will look when illustrated in sketchnote style.

The trip was well timed, because as I spoke about sketchnotes and sketchnoting, ideas began to form around how I could illustrate the chapter's ideas. This weekend I'll use templates to sketch out illustration concepts, so I can keep the book creation process rolling.

Font Update

One of the evenings last week was spent with the incredible Delve Withrington of Delve Fonts. We had a great time hanging out, talking shop and then Delve showed me progress on my handwritten sketchnote body font.

Let me just say the font is looking amazing. Delve was even able to add multiple characters to the font, allowing apps like InDesign to rotate alternate versions of letters into the typed text to make it look more natural.

I can't wait to see how the entire body font looks when he is done working his magic with vectors.

Travel Observations

Here are a few observations after last week's trip to San Francisco:

• My iPad is my new laptop. The hard drive on my MacBook went belly up the first day in SF (it's OK now, after disk repairs). I had to rely on the iPad 2 as my main computer and it worked great for email, surfing, RSS reader, presentations, as a document camera and keeping the kids busy on the flights there and back again. Unless I need to design, my MacBook is staying home from now on. Read more from Andy Ihnatko and Shawn Blanc on iPads as a laptop replacements.
• iPhones rock for travel. Having an iPhone along made all the difference for on-my-feet mapping, directions and finding things, and was my main camera, email and social media device for the week. Having a backup battery along was super handy too. Read Boston to Orlando with an iPhone by Dave Caolo for more on iPhones for travel.
• Walking, Busses & Zipcars are Great! Like our trips these days, we decided to walk and rely on public transportation for our visit to San Francisco. Having a CityPass worked great for the week, giving us unlimited access to Muni busses and streetcars, as well as cable cars ($6 per ride). When we needed to drive, Zipcar worked perfectly.
• Embracing Tourist Mode. When I wasn't meeting with people or giving talks, our family embraced our inner tourist. Staying on Fisherman's Wharf, exploring tourist attractions like Alcatraz and Chinatown, shopping for souvenirs and eating sourdough bread. We loved it all.

I'm fired up and can't wait to see the book start to take some real shape next week. Until the next update…

Photos: San Francisco 2012: Flickr Photo Set

Salesforce photo: Marcus Nelson