ImageThink Blog: Travel Sketchnotes

Today I'm honored to have a guest post on creating sketchnotes of travel experiences published on the ImageThink blog.

ImageThink is a graphic recording and graphic facilitation firm in New York City, run by Nora Herting and Heather Willems. They specialize in large-scale captures and interactive facilitation of meetings using drawing.

Thanks Nora and Heather for the opportunity!

The Power of Capturing Memories

I VISTED my old neighborhood on Tuesday.

Feeling the power of childhood memories flooding back has helped clarify why I'm currently so fascinated with capturing life experiences as sketchnotes.

The Fish Keg is an iconic place in my memory, a keystone of memories from my childhood days in the Rogers Park neighborhood on Chicago's North Side.

As I entered my old neighborhood, each city block, each bit of sidewalk, every old sign brought childhood memories sharply in focus. It was enlightening to see inanimate objects and places bring to mind many long-forgotten memories with such clarity.

This is why I sketchnote experiences and encourage others to do it too.

Feelings and thoughts fleeting past during an experience or an event can be captured visually, awaiting future moments to expand themselves and reawaken memories for my benefit or the benefit of others.

Consider my sketchnotes from a dinner at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California:

Time was invested in capturing my experience visually, but now I can look back and recall in vivid detail how the spaghetti tasted, what the environment felt like and the fun I had experiencing a dinner with my friends Kate and Kris.

In this image, those and other memories spring to life, offering a clearer recollection of that moment in time. To a degree, my experiences can communicate to complete strangers who may be curious about the Chez Panisse experience.

If there's anything that would encourage you to try sketchnoting an event or an experience, let this be the reason. Invest time in capturing what you're experiencing as multidimensional map of your thoughts and feelings so you can recall them with clarity and share those memories with others.

Book: Clients From Hell

A little while ago, I received an advance copy of the new Clients From Hell book from the curators of the Clients From Hell website I enjoy visiting from time to time.

If you've never heard of Clients From Hell (the website or the book) they're a curated compilation of anonymous quotes, quips and comments from real clients by their designers, shared with the world for the amusement of other designers.

Some examples:

"For some reason I am not able to attach the 3’x8’ signs to the email, to send it off to be printed. Is there any way that you can change it to be ‘KB’, instead of ‘MB’? The ‘KB’ ones always seem to work better for me."

CLIENT: “This isn’t a criticism, but I wanted to point it out.”
ME: “Okay… what’s the problem.”
CLIENT: “This business card you designed for me is upside down.”

"Whenever I have any extra cash, I buy Vitamins, Protein Powder and Graphic Design. In that order."

The book is great. It's a portable paper version of the website you can keep next to your computer for a chuckle, or as a reminder of how great your own clients are.

iPhone Photography

THE BEST CAMERA is the one you have with you. For me, that's my iPhone 3GS. I love having a decent camera with me at all times — and lately I've been especially enjoying Camera+ the $2 iPhone app.

Photos are captured in a lightbox, allowing me to shoot almost continuously. The app has convenient post-exposure controls and a variety of cool filters. I love posting images to Flickr, Twitter and Facebook immediately after they're shot.

Here are a few favorite photos captured with my iPhone:

Because my photos turn out so well, I find myself shooting and experimenting with levels and filters all the time. Here's a full set of images captured on the iPhone.

Pipeline RailsConf Illustration

LATE FRIDAY I received a message from David Heinemeier Hansson, requesting a slide illustration for his RailsConf 2011 keynote.

David is a partner at 37signals, co-author of REWORK (the book I illustrated) and creator of the Ruby on Rails development framework.

David provided his talk title The Asset Pipeline and our Post-Modern, Hybrid, Javascript Future, along with notes about pipelines and a Jetson-like spaceship he envisioned. Beyond that, I was free to have some fun with the illustration.

iPad Concepting

I grabbed my iPad for concepting, using Penultimate with my finger and Stylus Sock Pro to sketch several concepts. This is the final, approved sketch:

The iPad and Penultimate worked well for these rough concepts. I was able to get several ideas down quickly and email them directly to David from the iPad for review.

Inking and Production

With the concept and general direction set, I brought out my large Moleskine sketchbook, penciled in the rough imagery and began inking the pipeline, landscape, space ships and several bits of hand-drawn typography.

Here you can see the pages where I inked the illustration. Note how pieces are spread out on the page and not in any specific order — that's because I scan the pieces and assemble them in Photoshop. This approach provides control and lets me make changes quickly.

Once the pieces were scanned and assembled, the final slide looked like this:

I was very happy with the end result. Having just finished watching Mad Men Season 4 last week, I was definitely channeling 1965 into the final illustration.

David was very pleased with the results as well:

I'll be keynoting tomorrow morning on this topic at RailsConf: http://yfrog.com/hs1p4pp (illustration by the wonderful @rohdesign)less than a minute ago via Tweetie for Mac Favorite Retweet ReplyDHH
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Thanks David!

UPDATE - David mentioned this article on the 37signals blog, Signal vs. Noise.