Emily was a guest speaker in our Report Redesign course. She walked us through the basics of sketchnoting, her career, why hand drawn images stop the scroll, the cool brain science behind sketchnoting, and then led us through some drawing exercises. We wanted to share Emily’s tips with you, too!

Watch Our Conversation

What is Sketchnoting?

Emily explained that sketchnoting is when you’re writing and drawing at the same time. “The whole purpose to remember information, and it’s just more engaging and interesting to look at,” she said. 

Sketchnoting is also called:

• Visual notetaking
• Graphic recording
• Visual facilitation
• Graphic facilitation

What is Sketchnote Academy?

Emily founded Sketchnote Academy in 2018. She offers online courses to help you learn how to sketchnote and then level up your skills. 

Emily’s Previous Career Experience 

Emily Mills’ background is in graphic design. She was an in-house designer in education, nonprofit, and a healthcare start-up.  “I just get bored doing the same thing year after year like an annual report… again. While the data, pictures and information might change, it was still the same project… year after year,” she said. 

How Emily Got Started with Sketchnotes

Emily fell into sketchnoting from a weekly cartoon that she would draw on a whiteboard outside her office. 

She said that a former co-worker remembered those cartoons. When he went to work at a video studio, he contacted her, saying “We just booked a video client for something called a whiteboard video. We don’t really know what it is, but we need somebody to draw for it. Will you come to Houston and draw for our video?” Emily agreed and created a whiteboard video with them. 

“I was really proud of it and I put it online. Someone found it through keywords and hashtags and they said, “This is so cool! Have you heard of sketchnoting?” I hadn’t but [realized] it was pretty much the same thing,” she said. After that, she attended a sketchnote-specific workshop, and then challenged herself to sketchnote every day for a month. 

Hand-Drawn Images Stop the Scroll

Emily once shared with Ann that hand-drawn art/graphics get more view time than stock photos or computer generated graphics. Ann asked her to tell us more as we’re all trying to create reports that people *actually* want to read. 

Emily explained how hand-drawn images can stop the scroll. 

If you think about your average Instagram feed, she explained, you’re probably seeing mostly pictures, some stock photos,, an inspirational photo with a quote on it. She said that we’re used to those images now, and our brains are automatically thinking, “I’ve seen this before; show me something new.” 

Emily said when you see something different like a hand-drawn cartoon or someone’s artwork, you really stop because of human curiosity. “We keep asking questions,” she said. “Hand-drawn images invoke a lot of our human curiosity and take longer to engage with because you’re asking those questions.”

The Cool Brain Science Behind Sketchnoting

“Drawing is what I call the human language,” Emily said. 

Drawing was around before written language. We’ve been communicating in pictures for thousands of years. 

Studies also show that pairing an image with words also allows for better brain retention than just images or words alone.

Drawing Data Can Help Simplify Data

She gave an example of being at a conference where the speaker has a PowerPoint slide with a huge pie chart with 10 different slides and lots of labels. 

If you’re trying to take visual notes, there’s no way you can capture that entire pie chart, all the data points, and what all the colors mean. 

“But there’s usually one story that you’re trying to communicate with your data,” she said. Focus on just that main point rather than try and capture every single detail. 

Drawing Can Help You Sketch Drafts Quickly

Emily said she was taught in design school that you don’t even touch the design software until you have 50 designs drawn on paper first. 

“The reason is, it’s tracking your progress. I’m forced to go slow because I’m limited by how fast I can draw,” she said. 

She suggested giving yourself 30 seconds to draw what you’re trying to communicate. Then give yourself 10 seconds and then 5 seconds. This will allow you to see what you’re naturally drawn to and what can get cut. 

“See what you’re cutting and what you’re keeping, and that’s your data story. That’s the main point,” she said. 

Sketchnoting with Emily

Materials needed: Pen and paper (preferred) but an iPad is fine too. 

Emily gave us an introduction to drawing that you can follow along with. She said that every single drawing can be condensed into three things:

1. A dot (a point)
2. A line (a dot that went on a trip)
3. A shape (a dot that went on a trip and came back home)

She then shared the seven building blocks of all drawings:

1. Dot
2. Straight line
3. Curvy line
4. Crooked line
5. Circle
6. Square/Rectangle
7. Triangle

Her final tip: Go for recognizable rather than realistic. 

Grab your pen and paper and join in! 

Connect with Emily Mills

Instagram: emily_a_mills

SketchnoteAcademy.com 

Free Course: Beginner Sketchnote Drawing

Your Turn

Comment with your favorite part of learning with Emily. 

The post Getting Started with Sketchnoting: A Conversation with Emily Mills appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

1. Commit to Easier-to-Read Layouts

The end of clustered bar charts is near. I’m on a personal mission to banish these cluttered, impossible-to-grasp-at-a-glance graphs from your deliverables.

This year, resolve to swap your clustered bar chart for a small multiples bar chart, slope graph, or dot plot.

2. Try a New Graph Type

Try a new format, just for fun, then hide it away for a few weeks and forget about its shiny new novelty before sharing it with viewers. Tree maps, social network maps, Sankey diagrams, and more! Shiny! New! Fun amazing toys! How pretty! Give each of these chart types an honest try during your lunch break. But please don’t use them just because they’re cool. Use them when they’re the clearest chart for your viewers.

3. Share Disaggregated Findings in Addition to Aggregated Findings

Small multiples layouts involve multiple small charts, like one chart per company, school, city, or department that you’re reporting on.

Repeat with me: “It doesn’t matter if it takes a little longer to produce a small multiples layout. This is the information my viewers want and need–the details about their specific program, not the means and medians from all the groups lumped together–so my extra effort will pay off tenfold.”

4. Stop Looking for the Perfect Data Visualization Book

Stop looking for the perfect visualization book that will answer all of my questions and transform me into a visualization guru overnight. The field is young. A good number of visualization professionals have written books, and dozens of partnerships for new books are in the works. In the meantime, turn your attention to blogs and tweets.

Here are my highly-recommended blogs for non-programmers who want to get more from common software tools like Excel:

• My blog
• Stephanie Evergreen’s blog
• Cole Nussbaumer’s blog
• Jon Schwabish’s blog

And here are my highly-recommended Twitter accounts:

• @NYTgraphics
• @PostGraphics
• @WSJgraphics

5. Stop Looking for the Perfect Data Visualization Software Program

One day soon, we’ll stop arguing about which software program is best, and we’ll agree that our brains are the best visualization tools of all time.

One day, in a galaxy far, far away, the software salespeople will also stop pretending that their tool is best. Until then, resolve to speak up when you hear their crazy claims.

6. Don’t Trust Your Software Program’s Default Settings

On a related note… As novices, the first few times we use a software program, we’re tempted to trust the program. We might think, “I don’t really understand how this 3D/bevel/shaded chart is effectively communicating my message, but the software company must be full of experts, so I’ll just go with it.” It’s no secret that you’ll need to adjust almost every one of Excel’s default settings to produce something clear and comprehensible. Keep questioning Tableau, R, SPSS, and others, too.

7. Take Your Data Analysis and Data Management Skills to the Next Level

First comes planning… then comes identifying, modifying, or creating data collection tools and instruments… then data collection… then data cleaning…. then analysis… and, finally, data visualization–all while weighing stakeholder information needs, and building a data culture, and anticipating the best communications mode(s) for sharing the completed visualizations.

Do yourself a favor by building your foundational data management and analysis skills this year. Check out my pivot table webinars and spreadsheet tips, or take a course from one of my trusted fellow Excel gurus.

8. Embrace Ranges, Guesses, and Uncertainty in Your Dataset

Only have access to the minimum and maximum values in a dataset? Try a span chart. Want to graph the standard deviation? Add light shading above and below your values. Are you predicting what might happen down the road? Display the estimated range of values with light shading.

9. Don’t Forget to Visualize Your Qualitative Data

Create a chart, diagram, illustration, photograph, or cartoon to display patterns in qualitative data.

Experiment with strategies for displaying data from documents, interview transcripts, and focus group conversations, and you’ll be the next visualization rockstar. This is one of the most underdeveloped areas in the entire field of visualization.

I recently shared ideas for displaying qualitative data.

What do you think of the Washington Post’s simple color-coding for eyewitness statements? I’m a fan.

Visualizing the eyewitness statements: Did Michael Brown charge? http://t.co/dXrtGOcdUr via @postgraphics pic.twitter.com/45R2etOH1L
— Post Graphics (@PostGraphics) November 30, 2014

10. Give Virtual High-Fives to Data Visualization Designers You Admire

Like what you see? Tell the designer. Write them an email, comment on their blog post, send them a tweet, borrow Hedwig the owl. Your kind messages inspire new blog posts, conference presentations, and more, which keeps the field healthy and thriving.

Don’t like what you see? Shhh. Best to keep your thoughts to yourself. It’s bad karma and nobody wants to be friends with Debbie Downer.

11. Use Something Besides the Computer to Display Data

Some of my most valuable breakthroughs with organizations have come from drawing graphs on whiteboards during meetings.

Perhaps you’ve seen Hans Rosling’s 52-second explanation of population trends using stones.

You’re probably familiar with my affinity for sketching graphs on paper.

12. Create an Animated GIF or Video

Of course you’ve watched Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes video.

But have you seen the remake GIFs from Dark Horse Analytics? My personal favorite is their Clear Off The Table remake:

How about these changes-over-time GIFs from the L.A. Times Graphics Team?!? Swoon. 

I’m also a big fan of this semi-animated, semi-interactive model of breast cancer causation. Well done, University of California researchers and designers. Here’s to hoping that we’ll see many more GIFs and videos in data visualization’s future.

Join the Conversation

Now it’s time to share your feedback: What are some other ways that you can improve your data visualization skills?

The post A Dozen Ways to Improve Your Data Visualization Skills appeared first on Depict Data Studio.