I have always enjoyed taking notes.  The act of writing things down not only helps my memory but it crystallizes information and ideas for me and helps me to make connections I would not otherwise see.  I naturally gravitate to note taking that takes advantage of the visual space on the paper and I am often drawing lines to connect thoughts and drawing boxes around things to highlight them.

So, inspired by the amazing work done by one of my blogging ‘heroes’, Sacha Chua, I have decided to start learning how to do sketchnotes as my new form of note taking.  I am fascinated by the possibilities of this combination of documentation and art – and I think I can become quite good at it.

My main elements of my motivation for doing this are:

• I think it will be a lot of fun
• I think it is a much more accessible way to communicate a lot of information, or a complex idea succinctly therefore it will make it easier for me to share ideas with others concisely
• I often feel like Hedley Lamarr in the clip below from ‘Blazing Saddles’

So here is the debut of my first sketchnote (not a general purpose one as its for a class I am taking on Database Concepts):