Visual Thinking & Digital Sketchnotes - Issue #6
Smart Sketchnotes #2
Hi to all of You,
With the last newsletter, it was issue #5, the list of subscribers was already raised to 15. Today we have a group of 23. Thank you for joining. Thank you for staying. It‘s a great pleasure seeing the community growing.
Some words about me: My name is Edmund and, as you probably have noticed, I’m not a native English speaker. This newsletter is also a way to improve my writing skills. In the past few years I have developed an interest for sketchnoting. With this newsletter I hope to make sketchnoting more accessible and enable myself to gain more knowledge.
But now let‘s start with the next chapter from our learning journey on how to create Smart Sketchnotes. To make a long story short: All the basic ideas used here stem from Niklas Luhmann, a German sociologist, philosopher of social science, and a prominent thinker in systems theory. And the best of all there is the amazing book from Sönke Ahrens on "How to take Smart Notes", which describes the Zettelkasten method from Luhmann in a readable manner. Readable also for all the numerous non scientists like me, who could benefit from this great concept and improve their own knowledge and way of thinking.
Now there is one single step to get the connection to sketchnoting by:
simply replacing "Smart Notes" with "Smart Sketchnotes"
Re-reading the book of Sönke Ahrens is no longer the same. It gives you an entry to a new world of sketchnoting.
But how to create Smart Sketchnotes?
For me Smart Sketchnotes are networked visuals. I use my notes from Zettelkasten and extend them with sketchnotes. As I learned from Niklas Luhmann it is best practice to write my notes down in my own words. But why not using sketchnotes for capturing ideas? Visual thinking always provides an additional perspective for my personal understanding of the idea in focus. Surprisingly while using this method I could see a gap between note and sketchnote in a first draft. So I established a small process to build up coherence:
Check your ideas
Sketch what you write
Write what you sketch
Check coherence
Re-work
The result is an even better note and also sketchnote. The dual view brings value to my slip-box with permanent notes.
What’s your strategy to improve your own writing and sketchnoting?
Stay curious, stay creative!
Edmund
p.s.
More about at: https://linktr.ee/groepl
—
Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking, 2022.