'The Art of Visual Notetaking: An Interactive Guide to Visual Communication and Sketchnoting' by Emily Mills is a book that will help you become better at taking visual notes for yourself and for groups of people.

Notes can be made more memorable by using some design in them. This book talks about planning things out, the types of lectures and how notes can vary, leaving space to finish things, and materials. There are lots of examples in the book. There are also lots of simplified icons, arrows, and basic designs that can be sketched out quickly.

This type of note taking is quite a step beyond just doodling in the margins of notes like I do. This is an intentional attempt to make notes that can be looked at later to remember the content of lectures and meetings.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Quarto Publishing Group - Walter Foster, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

Be prepared to practice drawing a LOT. This book gets into the fundamentals of visual note taking like type of pens, pencils, and paper to consider when selecting you'r tools. It's not about creating doodles next your notes. Your drawing skills need to be good enough to create visual notes in place of textual notes.

A great guide to visual notetaking - something that I think will become increasingly relevant in education. It would've been really great if it had been presented as a PDF to help 'see' the book flow more clearly.

I love all art books and I especially love the idea that notetaking can contain more than just words. I love to draw. I love to fill my calendar, notebooks and any other piece of paper with all sorts of doddles. The Art of Visual Notetaking really helped me to understand how to take what you hear and put it into a visual context. There are so many fun exercises that will help you document what you hear. Emily provides so many outlets on creative note taking and how to simply document life through the eyes of a creator! I LOVED THIS BOOK! Thank you for the opportunity to review.

Sketching your notes is a great idea, and I'm glad more resources are being published to help me learn and practice, while having a reference I can go back to.

This particular book has a great overview and lots of practical ways to develop your own style of visual note taking. I feel like I learned how to let my notes breathe, instead of cramming in so much information that I can't make sense of them afterwards. I also appreciate the many exercises that really helped me nail down each technique.

Overall, it's a concise guide for beginners, really well organized to guide you through developing each skill and encourages new ways to study.

A solid guide to the art of taking notes in graphic form. The author explains and illustrates her technique well and in the end the value will depend on the readers motivation to use it. There are many similar books on the market but there are enough innovative ideas here to make this useful

The Art of Visual Notetaking: An Interactive Guide to Visual Communication and Sketchnoting is a 128 pages workbook that teaches you how to take notes incorporating visually pleasing elements like simple drawings, fun lettering, symbols and even colors.

Probably many of us have done this to some extend, we hear certain words from a lecture and start doodling them all over the page. The difference here is, when you take visual notes, those doodles are sequentially organized like a road map and make sense!.

Now, why would you need a book when you already know how to doodle?. Well, it’s not the same to make a couple of doodles during a 1hr conference than to mindfully pick the most important points, doodle them and make them look good and understandable.

In this book, Emily explains all you need to know to start visual notetaking. To name a few, the importance of creating visual content, types of visual notes, tools, lettering styles, drawing basics, composition, listening cues, layouts, visual library, etc. There is plenty of space after each lesson so that you can practice right away.

Personally, I would have loved to see more examples in different styles and about more interesting subjects. The information provided is great for those without experience at all, but it lacks the eye-candy that entices you to try it. Which I would consider specially important to get beginners and casual readers (not those who already made their mind to learn this skill) excited about learning.

Would recommend this book to anyone interested about taking visually pleasing notes, but specially for those whose job requires to take notes and present them to others. Sketchnoting, as it is also called, can be a job by itself. So, I would also recommend it for artists, designers, assistants, journalists and those interested in broadening their professional skills.

This book shows an interesting way of taking notes. Not everyone takes notes the same way. Taking notes is a way of remembering important details and this book is a visual way of doing that whether for class, journaling, to-do lists, brainstorming or any other reason you are taking notes. It is a fun and interesting way of taking notes and keeping track of our thoughts by doing so visually. It is nice because each of us retain information differently. Therefore having options in notetaking is nice. What looks like scribbles to one person is effective note taking to another. She gives ideas and instructions to help with this visual notetaking artform. It is a way to stay focused as well as retaining the information being presented or needing remembered. It might seem students are the only people that will benefit from this book, but anyone that takes notes or even wants to remember things could benefit. It helps with the thought and planning process too. It doesn't even matter if you are an expert artist. If you know what it means then it works for you.

I requested this book because it looked like something I started with my fifth grade class this year. I love the idea of visual note taking and this book was a great resource.

This book was a motivation for me to try out taking visual notes --- it has been a long time since the last time I drew, and somehow I've always been reluctant (or too lazy lol) to pick up the drawing techniques again. This book was a good start. The illustrations and tips were pretty inspiring, and overall I was satisfied and was glad that I requested to read this. Thank you for the book, dear publisher, author and NetGalley!

An accessible introduction to the whys and hows of visual note-taking. I've always been terrible at drawing, so while visual notes are appealing to me, I've doubted that I could do them myself in any way that wouldn't be a dismal failure. I still don't think I'll ever be drawing beyond an elementary school level, but this book gives tips that can help smooth the waters if you're drawing challenged like me. You can still take visual notes even if your drawings aren't realistic.

I recommend this book for anyone who wants to get started with visual note-taking either to replace or supplement the usual type of word-heavy notes most of us take.

When I take notes, it's a wall of text; periodically, I'll see pictures shared of others who create this visually appealing record of a meeting, filled with images that complement the text. We have the same information, but mine is harder to navigate.

Enter the new book The Art of Visual Notetaking. In it, Emily Mills shares her insights in how to gain the ability to take visual notes. She stresses the purpose of visual notetaking is to present information in a way that encourages retention.

Mills sprinkles the text with regular illustrations to convey points. She recognizes most might feel intimidated by their lack of drawing ability, so she offers drawing advice and exercises. Every step of the process is covered, from possible layouts to selection of writing utensils to steps that can be done in advance and how and when to add color and depth. There are even suggestions for individuals who may want to take visual notes professionally, as she does.

In addition to giving exercises to practice the various techniques of visual note taking, Mills also offers practical suggestions for getting experience in a low-pressure environment, including taking written notes from a previous conference or talk and converting them to incorporate visuals, as well as watching a youtube video like a Ted talk to allow opportunities to create content as it's being delivered.

I went from thinking I could never be able to take visual notes to finding scenarios in which I want to attempt it, based on the guidance Mills offers. For instance, I imagine playing around with visual notes when it comes to my reading log - cataloging highlights of a book with a notable quote or two, author or genre information, and my impressions. For those who bullet journal, I imagine these concepts would translate well to travel or journal spreads.

This practical book is a useful resource to those who are inexperienced but motivated to learn the skill of visual notetaking.

(I received a digital ARC from Quarto Publishing Group via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.)

I really liked this book. One of my goals this year is to draw better "doodles" in my bullet journal and when taking notes because I'm more visual, and the tips and examples in here were fun and inspiring!

I think this is such an important skill for people to have. We think in pictures not in words. So to remember things longer and more clearly a picture really helps. However if you are like me, drawing is not a strong point. In fact I feel intimidated to start drawing. This book gives simple clear ideas for how to simplify ideas to an image that will help you learn better. A great concept!

Emily Mills showed me a new way of teaching people new skills in the workplace, while tapping into my artistic skills. She has shown me a very interesting way to keep people tuned in during meetings, and a very enjoyable way of creating my presentations.
This book also taught me skills as to how to remember things permanently, with the use of sketches. The great thing about this book, is the exercises, and the gentle reminders that you don't have to be an artist to enjoy using sketches to help you learn.

This was an interesting book that was shorter than I expected but packed quite a lot in. The book is split into five main sections: the Basics, Tools, Prep work, Hierarchy & composition and Improvements.

It comes with exercises that you can try yourself, along with blank pages to practice on. The book gives pointers on how to listen and see visual cues as to when something might be important enough to make a visual note on. It suggests the pens and paper that are useful. It also includes how to pad out the basic stick man or house, so its much more visual than its basic form.

I had requested this ARC as I'd hoped it would be geared towards note taking for educational purposes as my daughter is in her first year of high school. It's mainly aimed at taking visual notes at meetings or presentations, although online there is an additional download that includes information for students. However that is only one page, so a little disappointed. Having said that, I can see that the block and cursive lettering, picture ideas, flows and types of pens used are perfect for a student to get their ideas and notes onto paper.

I found the yellow highlighting of titles throughout the book a little jarring on the eye. I can see why it's done, but I didn't like it. Perhaps using the authors own ideas such as containers, bubble writing, etc would have made it easier on the eye and put the ideas into practice.

I received this book from netgalley in return for a honest review.

Saw this pop up on Netgalley and decided on a whim that I wanted to read it. I’m super glad I did, because it gave me a lot of insight into something I had little-to-no knowledge about. As a Uni student, lectures are a constant in my life, which means that note-taking is also a constant. Although this book is mostly relevant for visual notetaking as a profession, I definitely learnt a whole bunch of techniques to help with my own notes. My Music History notes won’t know what’s hit them!
The advice was clearly lain out (as expected of a profession note-taker!) and there was some solid advice there. It got a bit repetitive after a while, but the author did say that was the intention in her notes, so I can’t really be mad about that. It’s stuck in my head so I have to say it worked well.
I recommend that Uni students and primary school teachers should take a look at this. It makes some interesting suggestions that would be great to take on board!

I thought that this book gave me some great ideas as I continue on with my graduate program,. Thank you NetGalley.

Simple but effective!

I really enjoyed this book of visual notetaking told in great notetaking illustrations! Full of great tips and tricks, it actually makes me want to give it a try to my next meeting and see how well I will do. In pen only, of course.

Easy, straightforward and eminently practical. I don't know if I will use the method or not, but I certainly want to after reading this book. Emily Mills should be congratulated and I heartily recommend this book.