Sketchnote about the expresso process, by Mike Rohde. Below, a sketchnote Rohde created at the SND workshop in Chicago in 2009.
“It turns out I’d inadvertently used design thinking to solve an everyday problem in my life.” — Mike Rohde capacity, getting into ideas I was hearing, and having fun doing it. My sketchnotes were posted online and immediately caught the attention of the conference attendees. When they were noticed by people who weren’t at the event, I knew I was onto something significant. I called these concise, visual notes, “sketchnotes,” because they felt like the conceptual sketches I created daily to solve design problems. It turns out I’d inadvertently used design thinking to solve an everyday problem in my life. This one experiment in visual note-taking on a chilly day in February 2007 led to more sketchnote experiments at events like SXSW Interactive.
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Soon, I was invited to become an official sketchnoter for events, first for free entry, later being commissioned with flights and travel included.
My two bestselling books, The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook came from this event, too, followed by talks and workshops on my visual note-taking concept, all around the world. A vibrant, welcoming community has grown up around this idea, and I’ve been honored to become a leader in it. If you told me in February 2007 how significant my choice to transition from crazy-detailed notes to sketchnotes would become, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. But here I am, 10 years later, and my life has changed. Mike Rohde, designer, author, illustrator and sketchnoter, lives in Milwaukee.