Visual Note Taking

Are you a big notebook doodler?  Here’s a new note-taking trend that may help you put that creative spirit to a productive use.

Visual note taking is a new method of taking notes that encourages the writer to stray away from traditional text-heavy form.  With visual note taking, the note-taker uses sections, structures, images and organizers to make the words and concepts at the center of traditional note taking easier to understand.

By translating new concepts into their ‘own language,’ the visual note-taker can record information in a way that makes sense to their thought process.  Proponents of visual note taking claim that the process improves and enhances memory and understanding.  This video should give you an idea of what it all looks like:

Like any other note taking method, styles and types of visual note taking vary by user.  Let’s take a look at the most basic concepts that each visual note taker uses in common:

Text

Visual note taking isn’t all shapes and sketches.  Like regular old longhand, visual note taking revolves around words.

Usually, when someone is listening to someone say a bunch of words, it’s hard to pick the most important words out of the giant sea of supporting words.  With visual note taking, your page and your mind have room to understand the key concepts as your understanding of them takes on a more abstract form.

Visual Note Taking

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Connectors

When you jot down a key concept, supporting ideas, or a side-thought, you can connect it to another piece of text with a connector.  Just as it sounds, a connector could be an arrow, a chain, or just a line – anything that signifies to you the relationship between two concepts.

This really helps for your notes’ posterity – instead of looking over a bunch of words that have lost their meaning to you a week later, you can link concepts in the way that you visualize them.  By circling a word, putting a box around a phrase and connecting it to another concept in a way that makes sense to your abstract thought process, you can link your memory to the thought process rather than the information itself.

Visual Note Taking

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Images

Another essential component of visual note taking is the image.  The image is practically in the namesake, and it’s important to use sketches, doodles and icons to your own advantage.  Using a tangential object to represent your association with a concept’s meaning could trigger your understanding.  Sometimes, it’s easier to explain a concept to yourself with a drawing than it is with words.

Visual Note Taking

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Structure

Last but not least is the way in which you structure your notes.  Using clearly-defined sections and spaces to illustrate groups of concepts, ideas and arguments is a way to make yourself understand a week later what you were getting at when you took the notes.  You may not be able to get the lecturer’s intended structure down bit-by-bit on a live listen, but you can section off the key points in a way that augments your understanding of the material and will help you remember the logic behind the speaker’s points.

Visual Note Taking

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Though there aren’t any studies on the benefits of visual note taking, tons of people are adopting the process in lecture halls around the country.  The benefits are there, and the point is sound: take notes that illustrate the way that your brain processes concepts.  Why not try it out yourself and see if it works?

For more information, check out these pages.

Are you an avid note-taker, visual or longhand?  Shop our selection of notebooks.

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