There are many ways to take good notes. Writing by hand instead of typing can help us recall material better. Mind maps help us to understand the relationship between different concepts.
For professional visual note-taker Chia Yee Hui and her illustration studio Idea Ink, graphic recording is their method of choice.
They use drawings and words to capture key takeaways from dense, sometimes complex content (in real-time) from large-scale events such as conferences and speeches. The end product is a visual summary that is both eye-catching and insightful.
Yee Hui explains how the combination of text and visuals in graphic recording makes for better understanding.
A visual note-taker is a professional graphic recorder. We turn high-stakes live discussions into synthesised visuals in real-time, often as a public broadcast.
Graphic recording is sometimes confused with sketch-noting. Sketch-noting is more focused on intimate, personal thoughts. Some examples included travel sketching, bullet journaling, and ideas scribbled in Moleskine journals. Graphic recording, on the other hand, summarises key points from content such as classes, presentations and speeches. Neither is better than the other. In fact, the best sketch-noters often make promising visual note-takers!
Elevating a sketch-note into a graphic recording requires three dimensions: succinct content, great composition and a logical flow between words, ideas and visuals. For most people, this requires prior training.