Ironhack Prework Exercise

Visual Note-taking

Similar to the approach found in The Back of the Napkin, the first video suggests to build up your visual notes on a few elemental shapes. Easy as pie!

The next one provides some basics about the hierarchy of information, the use of various sizes, styles and different shape boxes, arrows and connectors.

While I liked the idea of omitting the drawing in a first step, I still wanted to give it a try by copying one facial expression from the tutorial:

I took it as a smudge warning and decided to start right away with the exercise…

Without pausing the video, I found it pretty tough to keep up with the speed and wasn’t quite satisfied with the first result.

To get into practice, I watched the other Ted Talks that were suggested for the exercise. Attempting to sketch some of these, there always came a point where I got stuck concentrating too long on drawing the details.

How does it feel ?

pausing the video from time to time

Comparing the two versions, I was surprised to see that the first one already contained most of the important information I would also choose when having more time.

While I understand that it is not about creating an artwork, I still wanted it to look a bit nicer and this works the better the more you practice. It also is really helpful to have your own library of elements in mind which you can continue to use for further visual note taking and other sketching exercises. Of course, the visual note taking helps to engage differently with the content of the speech and to memorize its essence.

Thank you for the exercise: it was fun !

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