”I’d love to hear any sketchnoting sustainability tips for someone starting (or struggling) to keep a practice.”

Here's what I said:

1. Overlap sketchnoting with something you already love.

Are you a gardener? Visualize your planting setup. Sports fan? Capture your favorite team's games as a sketchnote. When you can tie sketchnotes to the things you already love and spend time on, it's a win.

2. Keep it small.

Instead of feeling like you have to fill a page or a giant sketchbook spread, sneak a sketchnote into a little corner of your regular notes, or carry a pocket notebook and pen. I love carrying a little notebook so I can spend time sketchnoting what I’m seeing, thinking, or feeling instead of doomscrolling.

3. It’s OK to be a little messy.

You may feel the pressure to make your sketchnotes beautiful, but messy ones do the job just as well. News flash: You don’t have to share your work with anyone. All a messy sketchnote needs to do is move you one step closer to finishing a project or understanding an idea more clearly. Messy gets the job done too!

Did you notice that none of this is about better drawing? It’s about tying sketchnoting to what you already love, keeping it small, and letting it be messy.

Now go experiment!

Thanks, Mudita, for the question!

— Mike Rohde, Chief Scientist, Sketchnote Lab

Sketchnote Lab is Mike Rohde’s space designed to bridge the gap between sketchnote theory and practice. You don’t need to be an artist to think visually. Join Mike and learn to use sketchnotes to clarify your thinking, solve problems, and move forward. Learn more about Sketchnote Lab.

Mike is the author of The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook, bestselling books that teach regular people how to start sketchnoting and build a regular sketchnoting practice.

He founded the Sketchnote Army and hosts the Sketchnote Podcast, where he interviews visual thinkers to understand what makes them tick.

Mike teaches recorded, live, and in-person workshops to help accelerate your sketchnoting practice and provides personalized coaching for your specific visual thinking challenges.

He is the illustrator of bestselling books like REWORK, REMOTE, The $100 Startup, Honest SEO, The Culture Playbook, and The Future Begins with Z.

Become a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner to support Mike’s work.

© Copyright 2026, Mike Rohde

I had a great time sharing my love for lettering in this month’s session and inviting Andy Fishburne on to show his lettering style in his gorgeous A4-sized bullet journal/sketchbook. I’ve included a 16-minute preview so you can have a look if you're not a subscribing Lab Partner.

What we covered

• Why lettering is foundational to sketchnoting

• 2-Line and 3-Line methods

• Condensed lettering

• Ligatures

• Faux Script

• Andy’s lettering style and approach

• A walk through Andy’s gorgeous large-format sketchbook

• Q&A with the audience

Preview from the Session

Here is a 16-minute preview from a portion of the session with Mike and then Andy:

Sketches from the session

Here are my sketches from the session:

And some photos of Andy’s gorgrous bullet journal/sketchbook:

Thanks again for a great session!

— Mike Rohde, Chief Scientist, Sketchnote Lab

Video Replay

The full video is free for Lab Partners. Want access to this video and all videos since December 2024? Become a Lab Partner!

Read more

Sketchnotes work partly because they condense complex information into images. But a sketchnote is more than an image that looks a certain way.

Sketchnoting is a personal practice where a person listens, understands, processes, and visualizes their thinking. Sketchnoters do this work to understand it first for themselves, and if others get value from it, bonus.

Professionals who sketchnote at conferences or in group meetings to help other people understand, do the thinking work themselves, too.

Here’s why AI-generated, sketchnote-style images are not sketchnotes:

When a transcript or a block of text is dropped into an AI with a prompt to make it look like a sketchnote, the work, thinking, and internal dot-connecting (the heart of a sketchnote) are lost to the machine. Even worse, your skills in these areas begin to atrophy from disuse.

You did not listen.
You did no processing.
You did no synthesis.
You did not connect the dots.
You did no sketching or noting.

You’ve created a simulation of a sketchnote.

When you delegate the hard part of a sketchnote to the AI, you’re bypassing the purpose of sketchnotes: the work of listening, processing, thinking, synthesizing, sketching, and noting the idea into a sketchnote.

A sketchnote may be rough or finely polished, but its purpose is the same: to build your understanding, to reveal your thinking, and to reward you with a visual artifact for reference or sharing. You’re building knowledge as you visualize ideas.

Call an AI-simulated image an infographic, an illustration, or a visual. Just don’t call it a sketchnote, because you didn’t do the work.

— Mike Rohde, Chief Scientist, Sketchnote Lab

Sketchnote Lab is Mike Rohde’s space designed to bridge the gap between sketchnote theory and practice. You don’t need to be an artist to think visually. Join Mike and learn to use sketchnotes to clarify your thinking, solve problems, and move forward. Learn more about Sketchnote Lab.

Mike is the author of The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook, bestselling books that teach regular people how to start sketchnoting and build a regular sketchnoting practice.

He founded the Sketchnote Army and hosts the Sketchnote Podcast, where he interviews visual thinkers to understand what makes them tick.

Mike teaches recorded, live, and in-person workshops to help accelerate your sketchnoting practice and provides personalized coaching for your specific visual thinking challenges.

He is the illustrator of bestselling books like REWORK, REMOTE, The $100 Startup, Honest SEO, The Culture Playbook, and The Future Begins with Z.

Become a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner to support Mike’s work.

© Copyright 2026, Mike Rohde

One of the most popular episodes is “All The Tips.” I think hearing tips from all the guests in one single episode with a little inspirational music is a great way to wrap up the season. It’s always one of my favorite episodes to put together because I know how well it’s received by all of you listening or watching.

Listen to the episode:

Danny Gregory

1. Embrace constraints and personal projects. Constraints challenge your mind and spark problem-solving. Limit yourself to drawing only food on your next trip, or use only two colored pencils. Create a daily list of ten ideas, such as dishes you could cook with radishes or dead people you’d like to have dinner with. Do this for a year, and you’ll have 3,650 ideas (maybe five of them are great). Combine constraints with personal projects to create a sense of obligation and purpose that keeps you motivated.

2. Break through plateaus with a beginner’s mind. After a year of drawing, you’ll hit a plateau where your improvement stalls. To overcome this, try new subjects, tools, or styles, breaking your routine. Danny’s weekly YouTube stream, Draw With Me, encourages this by drawing 40 different items in an hour, upside down, with your non-dominant hand, or watercolor.

3. Redefine practice: drawing exercises like eggs, grids, cubes, and shading charts are just tools, not fun activities. Think of practice as professionals do… something you simply do and apply. To improve at drawing noses, fill a sketchbook with varied portraits of interesting noses. Keep it engaging and relevant to what you care about.

Sarah Greer

1. Learn to navigate the shitties. The creative process is a roller coaster. Every project (whether it takes a day or a year) will have a low point. The shitties are real, but they’re also just part of the process. Go for a walk, step away, hang in there. It’s always darkest before the dawn. Knowing that the low is coming means you won’t be surprised when it arrives, and you’ll know it will pass.

2. Challenge yourself often. Growth comes from discomfort. Sarah’s example: picking up an iPad for the first time and going straight into a live client meeting with it a week later. Or diving into Mental Canvas with no experience. Whatever tool or skill you’re curious about, dive in. Don’t wait until you feel ready because you won’t. Just go.

3. Find inspiration outside your daily practice. Go to museums, plays, musicals, and shows. Get fresh eyes on the world. Even crawling around on the floor with a grandchild and seeing things from a different height can shift your perspective. Inspiration rarely comes from staring at the same thing every day.

Adrian Peryer

1. Set the environment up right. If you want to do more and do it better, create the conditions for flow. Figure out what space, setup, or ritual gets you and others into a productive, creative state. Don’t leave your environment to chance — design it intentionally.

2. Find your wise mind every day. Try to be balanced, level, and check your ego at the door. For Adrian, that path led to yoga (inspired by Sarah), and it’s been the single best way to start each day in the right mode. Your path may be different, but finding something that centers you before creative work matters.

3. Remember that emotions are a wave. It never goes according to plan. Under pressure, when things don’t go the way you expected, pause. Remember that emotions — frustration, disappointment, overwhelm — are a wave. They will pass. It will get better. Give it time before reacting.

David Armano

1. Use AI to get unstuck, but push it. AI is sycophantic by default and will tell you what you want to hear. But if you know yourself well enough, you can push it to give you genuinely useful counsel. David has found it a surprisingly good substitute for a human career coach when used selectively and with self-awareness. The key is knowing what you want from it before you ask.

2. Protect your ability to be intentional. Step away from screens regularly. Consider going analog: David switched from an iPad to a Remarkable tablet that feels like paper and found it helped him be more deliberate and focused. Our biggest nemesis these days is technology and distractions that erode our ability to be intentional with our time. Watch out for brain fry (the opposite of flow state) that comes from multitasking across too many AI tools at once.

3. Make yourself memorable in person. Find ways to be experiential, distinctive, and ownable. Remote work and podcasting are great, but when there’s an opportunity to show up in person, take it. Face-to-face connection is more valuable than ever. Find your thing — wear the unusual sport coat, bring personality, and do something that makes people remember the experience of being with you.

Andrew Tan

1. Draw directly with a pen. Skip the pencil rough and go straight to pen. A diary comic or a sketchnote is spontaneous. You don’t pre-plan a diary; you just let it flow. A pen prevents overthinking and over-editing. Whatever mistakes appear, cancel them or leave them. The imperfections look more charming and more honest, and drawing directly builds your confidence in ways that penciling first never will.

2. Add black to create contrast and focus. A common problem in illustration is too many mid-tones and not enough contrast. Find the most important area in what you’re drawing and make it darker, almost solid black. A hat, a pair of eyes, or a shadow area. When everything is outlined in gray, the viewer’s brain has to work harder to figure out where to look. A little black makes the focal point clear.

3. Give yourself permission to be imperfect. Beating yourself up over small mistakes slows everything down. Give yourself little permissions as you draw; if it’s a bit distorted or a bit off, just leave it. Andrew found that accepting imperfection helped him draw better over time. And sometimes the wonky line or the slightly off proportion is what makes a drawing look human, warm, and alive.

Tabitha Walker

1. There is no right or wrong way to do this work. Everyone processes information and puts it on the page in their own unique way. The way you sketchnote won’t look like anyone else’s, and that’s not a problem; it’s the point. Don’t get caught up in whether you’re doing it correctly. Just start.

2. Practice to find your unique style and let it evolve. Your style will change over time, and that’s okay. The way Tabitha’s work looks now is different from how it looked five or ten years ago. Sketchnoting and graphic recording are living practices. Keep doing the work, and trust that your voice will continue to develop.

3. Don’t try to look like someone else. It’s tempting to look at the best in the field and think your work has to match theirs. It doesn’t. Whether you work in black and white, full color, all caps, or cursive… that’s your style. Own it. When your work has its own identity, people will recognize it as yours. That recognition is one of the most valuable things you can build.

Atom Brum

1. Let go of the filter. Just get it out. When you’re sketchnoting a live talk or lecture, overthinking headers and lettering means you miss what’s being said. The purpose of a sketchnote is visual communication and recall, not a finished piece of art. Let it flow. Accept what comes out. The act of doing it is already the benefit.

2. Make it easy for yourself with the right materials. Are you prepared? Do you have paper on hand? Do you have pens that feel satisfying to write with? The materials matter more than people realize. Adam’s go-tos: the Marvy Le Pen for a uniquely satisfying writing feel, and Micron 01, 03, and 08. Keep your toolkit simple and portable, and make sure it’s always with you.

Georgina Dean

1. Struggle first, then ask AI. Don’t go to AI for the answer before you’ve genuinely tried to work it out yourself. The struggle is where learning and memory happen. Georgina spent three hours fighting with a printer before finally asking for help, and she’ll never forget that experience. Creative friction is valuable. Give yourself a real shot before turning to a tool for the answer.

2. Use AI to analyze, not just to answer. Once you’ve done the work, AI can be a useful coach, helping you understand what went wrong, what you could do differently, and how to improve the process next time. It doesn’t have to be just a shortcut to the answer. Used reflectively, it becomes more like a mentor than a search engine.

3. When stuck on a visual, ask AI for words, not images. If you can’t visualize a concept, request text suggestions, such as metaphors or descriptions, instead of images. Your imagination, based on words, yields personalized results. Also, upload a finished sketchnote for feedback, but note that files uploaded to non-enterprise OpenAI may be used for training, so protect your work.

Zsofi Lang

1. Follow your passion. Sophie posted science comics on Instagram out of love, which led to a deal with a publisher. The journey from personal hobby to career isn’t direct but begins with consistent effort and sharing. Try new things and pursue what excites you.

   ---

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Episode Transcript

Hey everyone, it’s Mike Rohde, and I’m here for another episode of all the tips — this one for season one of the Sketchnote Podcast. As some of you long-term listeners may know, this podcast used to be called the Sketchnote Army Podcast. But with my focus on Sketchnote Lab this year, I’ve made a shift. We put Sketchnote Army into archive mode, and you can go and check that out.

All the archives are still there for you at SketchnoteArmy.com, but my efforts and energy are all going toward Sketchnote Lab, which is where this podcast landed as well. And along with that move, I made a decision to rebrand it and simplify almost everything about the podcast, renaming it to just the Sketchnote Podcast, and inviting, of course, the same really high quality, interesting guests to the show.

One of the most popular things we’ve learned from the podcast over the last five years or so is that the all the tips episode is really popular with people. Getting to hear all the tips from all the guests, or most of the guests, in one single episode with a little inspirational music is just a great way to wrap up the season. It’s also a great episode to listen to if you’re ever bummed out and you just need a little pick-me-up to hear how people — regular people — use visual thinking in their everyday lives and where they’ve come from, so often not from the places you might expect. So it’s always one of my favorite episodes to create too, because I know it’s so well received by you who are listening or maybe watching this final episode of season one of the Sketchnote Podcast.

So one thing I want to mention before I go is if you like this podcast, definitely check out Sketchnote Lab. You can go to sketchnotelab.com and see all the work that I’m doing there. I typically do a monthly dispatch where I collect five really interesting links that I’ve seen in the last month, along with everything that’s happened or coming up at Sketchnote Lab. We do monthly workshops, live workshops on Zoom. So that’s always really great. If you want to join and do some active work with a small community and with me on a Zoom call, that’s really great. And of course, it’s recorded.

So if you’re a member, you get access to all those recordings and you can go back and see all of them. And then finally, I do additional posts on Sketchnote Lab for different things that I’m encountering, anything I’m discovering, if I’m working on a project and I want to share it. It’s a great place to see all the work that I’m up to over at Sketchnote Lab. You can become a paid partner of the lab starting at $10 a month, or you can go $80 for the entire year. If you want to be a founding member, you can do that for $200 a year. And that includes a once-a-year, one-hour coaching session with me, every year that you continue to be a founding member at the two hundred dollar level. We can work on projects together and focus on specific custom challenges that you need some guidance and coaching on.

So that is my pitch for you. I would love for you to join me. Sign up for free and see what we’re doing over there. And I would love to have you become a paid lab partner and be part of the fun and get access to all the benefits that lab partners get.

So with that, this wraps up another episode of the podcast. Here we go. Without further ado, here are our guests with their tips.

Danny Gregory

Well, I think the tips I was going to give are broader, but they could certainly be applied to this. So the first one, ironically, fits into exactly what you just said, which is to embrace constraints. I think we’re so used to, particularly if you’re a creative professional, having constraints on what your ideas are. You have a strategy, you have a brief, you have a client, you have this and that, so you work within that box. I think a lot of times when people come to me and say, what should I draw? I’d love to draw, but I don’t know what to draw — they think they’re supposed to be making some art. So like, what is that supposed to be about?

But I think if you try to find constraints, those constraints could be just draw a certain way. You could say, I’m only gonna go to Paris, but I’m only gonna draw things I eat, and I’m only gonna draw food. Or you could say, I’m only gonna take two colored pencils with me and everything I do is gonna be just using those two colored pencils. Or you could say, I’m only gonna use materials that I find in Paris along the way. So when you have a constraint, that stretches your mind to solve a problem. You’ve created your own problem. And then it’s much more interesting.

When you look at impressionism, for instance, or lots of great artworks made within constraints, I think that’s also aesthetically really appealing. Because when you think about lots of different ways to solve the same problem, it’s like the old design exercise we all got in high school — how do you drop an egg off a building and protect it? When you work within that and you try to think of lots of things, your imagination really gets exercised.

I really like this exercise of giving yourself a list of ten things. You start by saying, I’m gonna come up with ten lists of ten things, ten topics for ten lists. So the first topic might be ten ways to drop an egg off a building, and the next topic might be ten things I could cook with radishes, and the next thing is ten people I’d like to have dinner with who were dead. You just make a list of ten things. And then the next day — and this is literally something you can do every day — you take ten things, ten people I want to have dinner with, and you come up with ten things. And so doing those kinds of things, if you do that every day for a year, that means you’ll have come up with 3,650 ideas. And there might be five really good ideas in there. You could just spend five minutes doing that as you’re brushing your teeth or whatever. So to me, having constraints really stretches you.

I also like the idea of having personal projects. Like when I first got Procreate, I decided I wanted to get to know it and I didn’t want to do a lot of courses or whatever. I just gave myself an assignment. Every day on Instagram, for a hundred days, I’m gonna post a different drawing of a dog — a different kind of dog and a different way of drawing that dog. And I did that and I did all kinds of styles, cartooning and oil painting and all the great things you can do with Procreate. And I learned how to use Procreate really well during those hundred days. I learned how to draw dogs well. I learned how to come up with ideas, cause each one was a different idea. My thing was just like, I’m gonna spend fifteen minutes doing each one, twenty minutes, whatever it is. It’s quick, get it up on Instagram, move on. I’m just doing it. And the reason I included Instagram was because it was another constraint — I have an obligation to do it. Not that anybody cared or was paying attention, but for me it was like, don’t break my streak. So I did it for a hundred days, and that was really helpful.

But I think there’s just a lot of projects that are really valuable. I drew my same teacup with the same pen every single day for an entire sketchbook’s worth of thing while I was waiting for the kettle to boil. I had a tea sketchbook that I kept next to the tea kettle, and then I would put the kettle on, wait for the pour, wait for it to steep. The whole thing would take about six minutes. And I would draw my teacup each time — sometimes the same way, sometimes different. So having things like this are just fun. They have no particular purpose, but something might come out of it. Projects can turn into things, but that’s not why you’re doing it. It’s just a way of channeling what you’re doing. So that would be my first tip: constraints and projects.

My second thought is plateaus. I think that if you draw a lot, after a year, sometimes longer, you will hit a plateau where you’re just not getting any better. You had this incredible run when you first were learning, but now if you look at what you drew six months ago and you look at what you’re drawing now, it’s kind of the same. You’re kind of doing it the same way. And basically you’re getting better and better at the same thing, but your brain isn’t really growing because there’s no more challenge anymore. I think about it in terms of exercise — the same things happen if you’re lifting weights or running or whatever. You just kind of get to this point and then you’re just doing it. And I think the danger with that is you will fall off the plateau and your enthusiasm for doing it will change.

So I think that an important way of getting across that plateau, getting back to getting better, is beginner’s mind. Beginner’s mind is what allows you to really take off. What I suggest is try something that you are really uncomfortable with doing. It might be subject matter that you never like to draw. It may be a tool that you’ve never used before. It may be looking at some artists who are very different from you, really studying what they do, and maybe trying to draw in their style. But whatever you can do to snap that default way you have of doing things will help you grow into something different.

I do this thing called Draw With Me, which is a weekly live stream on YouTube. I’ve been doing it for six years now. And every week we draw something really different. Sometimes we draw one thing, and sometimes I’ve done as many as 40 things in an hour. Sometimes we draw people, animals, things from our imaginations, things from photo reference, we do lettering, all kinds of stuff. But my objective in doing all of this is to really stretch myself and to stretch the people who come, and to just say, here are things — because everybody will say, I never thought I could draw X and I can’t believe that I did it. And a lot of what I do is I really move fast. I’m going, and I’m not waiting for you. You’re gonna keep up with me. And if I have photo reference, if you haven’t taken a screenshot, you’re out of luck. And I’m amazed at how people can do it. People can just learn to draw really quickly and they can draw really weird things. We draw upside down sometimes, we draw with our non-dominant hand sometimes, we do watercolor, all kinds of things. And at the beginning of each show, we show all the things that people drew and posted from the week before. So if you’re just feeling like ugh, I’m just not getting any better, try something like this or come join me on YouTube. Just get over yourself, get off what you’re good at, and get bad at something. Get bad. And then you will shake it up. So that’s my second thought.

And then the third thought is I don’t like the word practice. I think a lot of times we’re like, well, I really gotta practice and I should practice. I think when it comes to drawing, practice is really bad — it’s like drawing an egg or putting in the light shading. Maybe it’s cause I didn’t go to art school, but every time I sat down to teach myself and I would open a book on how to draw, I just didn’t want to do it. So I like the idea of thinking of practice the way lawyers think of practice, or doctors think of practice, or yoga instructors think of practice. It’s just a thing that you do. And what you’re doing is you’re practicing the thing you do — not because you’re doing exercises, but because you’re applying it. That’s what practice really means. You’re practicing what you preach, you’re practicing what you’ve learned, you’re applying it.

So think about what can you do so that instead of trying to learn fundamentals in the abstract, you’re applying them in some way. So if you say, I wanna get better at drawing noses, well then fill a whole sketchbook with portraits of people with big noses. Make it something else, but don’t just draw grids and cubes and all that stuff. People who are first learning to draw, that’s where they start. It’s like learning chopsticks. Nobody wants to play chopsticks. You want to play songs. So go and do that. You’ll be bad at it, but keep going and then you’ll get good at it. It’s really like keeping it interesting, keeping it varied — those are the things that push you forward. So those are my three tips: constraints and projects is one; plateaus and beginner’s mind is two; and practice redefined is three. Find practice for yourself.

Sarah Greer and Adrian Peryer

For me, I would say the first one is being able to navigate the shitties. And this is a crazy little term we heard about. We did a Pixar course a while back and decided to make a movie about a talking piano. That was not an easy thing to do because it’s an inanimate object — how do you make it smile and talk and do all those things? But the shitties is something I love because I’ve noticed I’ve been doing creative things all my life and the creative process is like a little bit of a roller coaster. And when you hit that downside, it’s like just hang in there and go for a walk or do something because it’s always darkest before the dawn and you’re gonna get out of the shitties. Just know that that’s part of the process. And so that would be kind of my first one. And it doesn’t matter if the project is like a one-day thing or it takes a year, you’re gonna go through that loop.

The second one for me is challenge yourself often. Like for me it was getting an iPad. I’d always just done things live and on boards and I got the iPad, trial by fire. I think a week after having it, we were doing something here and then a couple weeks later I’m on vacation doing orals for a big tech company on my iPad, like live in the meeting. And I just forced myself. I threw myself into the deep end. And I just recently had been really curious about Mental Canvas and got working with that and just did that the other day. Mental Canvas, it’s great, but it’s really hard and it’s challenging. So challenge yourself.

And I think the last one for me is just don’t be afraid to go find inspiration outside of your daily practice. So go to museums, go to plays, go to musicals, go to shows, get the fresh eyes. Because you can come back to it and, I mean, for me it’s like crawling around on the floor playing with my grandson. I’m looking at the world at a different level. So those are my three.

My three — you inspired me for the first one, which is when you talked about grabbing that space, that room and creating it. I would say if anyone out there is wanting to do more, set the environment up right for yourself. Figure out what will work for you that will get you and others into flow state more often, create more productivity, and allow you to be more creative. That would be the first thing.

The second is personal. Sarah’s an artist by background, I started as a therapist, and so we combine. I would say try and embrace and find your wise mind every day. Try and be balanced, try and be level, and check your ego at the door. I don’t know what the journey towards that is. For years Sarah did yoga and I didn’t, and I was like, hmm. She talked about doing yoga and I now do yoga inspired by Sarah and it’s the single best thing for helping me start each day in that mode. But you’ll figure it out.

But the third is connected to that and it’s different. It’s like, it never goes according to plan. And particularly us as humans, we always sometimes feel strong emotions. And I always say to people, just remember emotions are a wave. It will pass. So figure out under pressure, when you’re feeling like it didn’t go at work, pause. And it will get better. It will pass.

David Armano

Well, ironically, I found myself in a little bit of a rut a couple of times. And I’m doing the thing that you’re probably reading articles about telling you not to do, which is don’t use your AI as your therapist or even your career coach. And here’s why they tell you that — because absolutely AI is sycophantic and will absolutely tell you what you want to hear as a default. But I will say this: I learned you can push it. It’s kind of the same thing of like, I get what I want. I have been using it, and it’s not the only thing — I mean, I talked to my wife and whatever. But I will say I have had pretty good luck with AI helping me get unstuck. And I can even compare it. There was at one point I worked with a career coach, real accomplished guy, and it was great. But I’m even comparing that experience to now getting stuck and now I don’t have access to a human career coach. And I find myself like yesterday I did something that I got some counsel on from my AI and I was like, okay, that was really good. I have to be really selective. So I would say if you feel confident that you know yourself well enough that you could get what you want out of it, that could be one thing.

The second is, I was just talking to Noa Hanley. She’s an author and we had just had a great conversation about intentionality. And I was talking about how I went from using my iPad to even just getting a scribe to just pair back. For me, I didn’t need the iPad because I have the developed process, but going to a scribe has been helping me. It feels like paper, like a Remarkable. It gives me the best of digital and analog and strips it down to where I feel like I could be more intentional with it versus an iPad. But I think anything that you can do — and that’s an example in visual thinking — but even just going for walks and giving yourself the breaks. I think our number one nemesis these days is all the technology and distractions that take away from our ability to be intentional with our time. Ironically, you’re hearing this from an engineer, but it’s not just engineers. When you’ll find in vibe coding or in working with AI, it moves so fast. It almost acts like another, like if you’re in Slack too long or you’re multitasking, you’re not in flow — and when you’re spending time multitasking with AIs and doing all these different things, it almost puts you in a state of brain fry, where your brain basically gets fried and you have to step away. So you have to be mindful about that. That’s now another thing we have to deal with, like this brain fry versus being in flow.

If I were just to distill it down to one or maybe two things: figure out ways where you can be intentional about all these new emerging tools, and then find ways to be memorable, experiential, distinct. Find ways that you can own it and really lean into it. Like it’s great that we’re doing a podcast as a remote. I think there are so many awesome things, but when there’s opportunity where we meet in person, that’s different. That’s more important than it’s ever been.

Andrew Tan

I think the first one I listed here is to practice drawing spontaneously, directly with a pen. I was also teaching a comic class on diary comics and I was encouraging my kids to just go directly with the pen. Because especially a diary comic or maybe a sketchnote, it feels like it’s more of a spontaneous diary. You don’t pre-plan your diary, you just let it flow out. So a pen prevents you from overthinking or over-editing. You’re just there, and whatever mistakes are there, you just cancel them or just leave them there. It looks more charming, it’s more honest, and I like that. And it trains my confidence, I must say, after using a pen directly.

Then the second one — this is more of a little, I don’t know whether it’s nitpicking, but sometimes when I see a lot of illustrations by other artists, they tend to forget the dark parts. They do a lot of mid-tones and outlines, and then it feels complete. But I find that adding the black parts to add more contrast, especially where the focus areas are, is quite essential to at least allow the reader to focus in on the important parts. So adding a bit of black area to the important parts. For example, if I’m drawing a person, like drawing you, your face, I’ll find something that’s black. Like for example, your hat’s black. So I’ll make the hat blacker, darker, almost solid black. Your eyes I’ll make darker. So at least something stands out. If everything is just outlines and greys, it’s very hard to focus on anything. I feel my brain works harder when I look at a whole page of words and outlines and mid-tones. It’s hard to focus on things.

And the last one is give yourself license to be distorted or imperfect. I learned that for myself because I didn’t go to art school so I had to tell myself things. It was like giving myself little permissions as I draw. If not, I’ll keep beating myself over small little mistakes and redoing a sketch. Especially maybe it came from my storyboarding days — it’s like if I make a small mistake I feel like erasing it or undoing it or something. And I find like if I keep erasing I’ll never get the job done. So I tell myself, okay, just give myself permission if it’s a bit distorted, if it’s a bit off, just leave it. And I found that actually it helped me to draw better. And sometimes it looks nice. The imperfections look nice. So give yourself license to do that. It makes it human.

Tabitha Walker

My top piece of advice: there is no right or wrong way to do this work. Everybody has their own unique way of processing information and transferring that to whether it’s a journal or a chart or an iPad or whatever it is, everybody has their own unique way of doing that. And there’s no, well you didn’t draw the stick guy like that so that means it’s wrong, no. We all have our own unique style and that’s what makes this work so special — you put a piece of yourself into it. So the way you sketchnote won’t look like the way I sketchnote, won’t look like the way somebody else does it. And they’re all valid and they’re all good pieces of work. And so I noticed this when I first started getting into graphic recording and I would go to classes and people were worried, did I do it right? Or I didn’t draw the little person the way the instructor said. Like it’s a stick figure, we know what it is, and you wrote something and we can read it. That’s right. That’s not wrong. So don’t be concerned with, am I doing it right? Just start. So that’s number one.

The second one is it’s important to practice to find your own unique style. And it’s okay if your style changes over time. The way my work looks now is not the same as it looked ten years ago or five years ago. It’s going to morph, it’s going to evolve, and that’s also okay.

And number three, kind of along the same lines, it’s okay if your work doesn’t look like other people’s work. It’s common to see people who are at the forefront in this field and think, my recording has to look like that. And it doesn’t. If you want to do only work in black and white, or grayscale, or only work in color, write in all caps, or write in cursive, or whatever, it’s your unique style. Don’t feel like you have to dim your light to try to fit in with how other people are doing it.

So those are my top three. There’s no right or wrong way. Practice, practice, practice. Find your own unique style. And it’s okay if your work does not look like other people’s. Good when it doesn’t, because then it becomes your work, which is important. And then people will know — especially if you want to make a name for yourself or go do this as either a side business or a main business or at your actual day job — when they see a piece of work that you do, they’ll know. That’s a Mike piece, or that’s a Tabitha piece. They’ll know.

Atom Brum

I think the first thing that comes to mind is just like the filtering that happens. It’s like just kinda let it go. Try not to have a filter. And I think it’s easier said than done, especially when I’m doing headers and kind of text-based stuff in sketchnotes — that’s kinda where I get the most pause. And it’s kinda like, all right, let’s remember that the intention of this is not a piece of art. This is visual communication. This is for a certain purpose to recall. And by the act of doing it, we’re already getting that. So this is a note for those listening as well as myself to just let it flow, just let it happen. And especially when I’m sketchnoting something during a lecture or like someone is speaking live, if you’re tripping over those little details, you’re gonna miss information. So get it out.

Another tip I might recommend is, kind of like the pencils versus pen, I’ve found that changing materials can be the difference. Do you have the things that make it easy for you? Do you have the right size notebook, so that you’re gonna have paper on you? Where it’s like I’ll buy the nice Moleskine ones and then I’ll forget them because they’re too big or whatever. So it’s like, are you prepared? Are you making it easier for yourself? Do you have the brand of pens that are satisfying to write with? And maybe that’s relatable or not, but those are my tips because I like the Marvy Le Pen. That’s like one of my go-tos. I can’t fully explain why, but there’s something really satisfying about those pens. I get big packs on Amazon and I’ll just give them to people when I see them. I usually have a bunch of them on me. There’s just something about those that are really satisfying. Micron 01, 03, and 08 are my go-tos. And then that’s pretty much it. Pretty simple toolkit.

Georgina Dean

It’s so true. And I’m so glad you said that. Just yesterday or the day before yesterday, I had to return something to Amazon. And normally nowadays, here in the UK, you can just show the QR code and they can scan it and return your parcel. But it was a different courier that had to pick it up and I had to print a label. Anyway, so we didn’t have a printer at home because we’re mostly digital. So we ordered this cheap printer to have at home and it took me like almost three hours to set up.

So turns out we had router issues, and the router was the reason it wasn’t picking up the software through the Wi-Fi connection when we connected it in the back end. Anyway, long story short, I struggled, I got frustrated, and I was tempted several times to open my GPT and ask for the instructions. I chose not to because I was determined that I had enough intelligence to do this by myself as a techie, right? So I spent all the time and finally after three hours, I knocked on my husband’s office door and I was like, I’m really stuck. I can’t figure this out. Anyway, he came over and he couldn’t figure it out either. Then I felt much better because he’s an actual engineer. Anyway, randomly after the fourth attempt, it did connect. I finally went to my GPT after we got it connected to understand what had gone wrong exactly.

And sometimes that’s what we call in education backwards by design, where we look at the end goal of a project, and then you design your planning backwards from the end goal you want to get to, and you match into each of those parts an experience that’s going to help them remember. Well, trust me, I can’t remember the last time I spent so much time trying to connect a printer in all my experiences, right? So I’ll always remember that. But it’s an interesting use case equally for AI, in that we don’t always have to go to it first. It’s important to have creative struggle sometimes. You don’t always have to just choose to get the answer first.

And the second interesting thing is that once you’ve done the struggle, you can ask it to help you understand what went wrong, what can I take away, or what can I do to improve that process so that I can do it faster next time. It doesn’t have to be just to give you the answer, but to help you analyze. Like it’s like having an on-demand tutor in a sense.

In the context, I would offer the same visually. When you’re stuck on trying to visualize an icon for something that you don’t know in visual thinking, for example, try. The creative struggle is important. So take a couple rounds, give yourself a five-minute timer, try to sketch a couple of things. When you can’t come up with it, you could use a GPT to ask for suggestions, but don’t ask it to give you the images. Ask it to give you the text so that it’s not inputting the images into your mind. You’re reading the words, and your imagination based on your learned context from your life experiences may help you visualize something.

And a little bit like text, the other half of that tip: perhaps you may have written a story or an essay and you’d like the GPT to help you with your grammar and structure. It may be the same as an image. Some visual thinkers, sketchnote artists may disagree with me, and that’s fine. But you may input your own sketchnote into a GPT and ask it to give you feedback a little bit like a coach or a mentor — a little bit like me sending a sketchnote to Mike and saying, could you give me some things that you’d like me to improve on? It’s the same with a sketchnote. You’re not asking the GPT to recreate your sketchnote, you’re asking it for feedback. Just a little note on that for those who want to take my advice: please remember your data. If you’re going to put your sketchnote into a GPT like OpenAI that is not a lockdown enterprise version or a school version, then that will go into the training models. So just make sure before you decide to upload your data, including your own illustrations, that it is locked down for yourself if that’s what you want.

Zsofi Lang

When I sent this to the publisher I didn’t think that this would happen, or I thought maybe they have a project and I could illustrate, but I was very surprised when they said yes. They didn’t say yes right away, but they did say that they are interested and we started working together. They were giving me feedback on how to reframe it so that it’s ready to be pitched. And then they pitched it to colleagues, and then the whole company decided that they wanna take it on.

And then from then on, the work is very similar to what I do for graphic recording, because the way that we do it is that for each book, for each subject — like human body, dinosaurs, the next one is going to be the solar system — there is an expert who is giving me a text, like a summary of each subject. I’m using the original comics from Instagram that I posted. So like vaccines, I did my research there and it’s a very basic, useful, good research. So there is no reason for the consultant to write again about vaccines because that is already covered. But there were a lot of subjects that were not covered. And then for dinosaurs, which I had absolutely no clue about, they would give me a lot of facts. And then the way my mind works, when I read something, my mind is making these images in sketchnotes already. So in a way the work is very easy because I just have it and I just need to draw it down. So in that respect it’s pretty similar to when I work for a client.

Now the difference here is that I have my personality, and I can put that personality into this work much more than with a client. With a client it’s serious business and oftentimes it’s public policy or advocacy or those kinds of things. They don’t need my personality in that. They just need a visual summary and that’s fine. But here I can be funny. I wanna be funny. And I’m really trying to be, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. But that’s wonderful. That’s such a thrill, you know? Because in a way I am this seven year old person who is just making silly jokes. And I remember when I was in school, the best day was when I made a joke and the class was laughing. That was when I was the happiest.

So that’s how the process is working. And I think this is not the only way to make this kind of work. For me this door was opened and there are many other doors. I think the key is to try to give a bit more time to your passion, and then you don’t know where it takes you. Who knows where it takes you, but just try new things and follow that.

Well, I hope that you really enjoyed this collection of tips from this season. I look forward to seeing you in the next season of the Sketchnote Podcast, where we’ll interview more interesting people, get to hear their perspectives, and learn from them. Until next time, this is Mike Rohde. Talk to you soon.

— Mike Rohde, Chief Scientist, Sketchnote Lab

Sketchnote Lab is Mike Rohde’s space designed to bridge the gap between sketchnote theory and practice. You don’t need to be an artist to think visually. Join Mike and learn to use sketchnotes to clarify your thinking, solve problems, and move forward. Learn more about Sketchnote Lab.

Mike is the author of The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook, bestselling books that teach regular people how to start sketchnoting and build a regular sketchnoting practice.

He founded the Sketchnote Army and hosts the Sketchnote Podcast, where he interviews visual thinkers to understand what makes them tick.

Mike teaches recorded, live, and in-person workshops to help accelerate your sketchnoting practice and provides personalized coaching for your specific visual thinking challenges.

He is the illustrator of bestselling books like REWORK, REMOTE, The $100 Startup, Honest SEO, The Culture Playbook, and The Future Begins with Z.

Become a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner to support Mike’s work.

Some links in Sketchnote Lab posts are affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools and resources I use and believe in.

© Copyright 2026, Mike Rohde

This week I used markers and tracing paper to create wireframes for a user interface project. The tactile experience of markers on paper was so luxurious, and it changed how I thought about handling the interface and its features.

Remember: the tools you use matter.

What’s in this issue

• 5 Cool Things to share with you

• This month’s thought — Analog sketching

• From the Community: Kostas Georgoudis’ sketchnote

• Lab Live Replay: June 2026 — Steven Lin’s PROGRESS framework

• Coming up: Sketchnote Lab Live July - Lettering Foundations

• Sketchnote Podcast — Hear the latest episode from Zsofi Lang

• 2026 Schedule — what’s ahead for the remainder of 2026

• Last Month’s Sketchnote Lab Posts — in case you missed a post

Five Cool Things

Here are five cool things I thought you’d enjoy:

❥ 1. The Surprisingly Powerful Influence of Drawing on Memory — A fantastic academic paper shared with me by Kate Rutter. Evidence, FTW!

❥ 2. The 4 Levels of Thinking on Paper — My friend Ryder Carroll shares 4 ways he thinks on paper to cultivate his best thinking. Sketchnoting gets a mention!

❥ 3. One Notebook, Every Idea: My Daily Visual Thinking Practice — Teacher Doug Neil shares how he uses one large notebook to power his visual thinking.

❥ 4. My basic pen ink combo for drawing on the go — Illustrator Andrew Tan shares tools he uses to make travel drawings. I love the refillable brush pen!

❥ 5. A Journey in 100 Drawings — Artist spent 100 days making a drawing each day, and this is his video reflection on that experience. Go Samgar!

This month’s thought

There is something special about analog sketching, with pencil, pen, or marker on real paper. The feel and the reaction of the materials do change how you think compared with digital tools. How can you explore analog this month?

From the Community: Kostas Georgoudis

Here’s a great sketchnote from Lab Member , offering sketchnoted guidance for anyone using LLMs for coding, encouraging Spec Driven Development for better output from the Hallucination Machines!

Want to be featured? Reply to this email with a sketchnote you’ve made, and I may share it in a future Dispatch.

Lab Live Recording: June 2026 —Steven Lin’s PROGRESS framework

What we covered

• The bottleneck — Steven talked about bottlenecks we face when solving problems and how he uses his simple framework to identify them.

• Why drawing the problem matters — a quick bridge on how visual thinking makes complex problems clearer and easier to act on

• The PROGRESS Framework, drawn live — Steven walked through all 8 pillars while I sketchnoted on them in real time

• You draw your own PROGRESS Map — a guided exercise where I filled in the first 4 pillars on the canvas

• Share and debrief — a few attendees shared and asked questions [1-2 sentences highlighting the most interesting or surprising moment from the session].

Watch the full replay

Coming up: Sketchnote Lab Live July

Lettering is a foundational skill for sketchnoting. In this session, I’ll provide a deep dive into his approach to lettering in sketchnotes, including two-line, three-line, condensed, and faux-script styles. Special guest Andy Fishburne will also teach his unique lettering style.

What you’ll walk away with
An approach to creating simple lettering in your sketchnotes that lets you work faster and with more impact.

Sign up for this free session

Sketchnote Podcast

The Sketchnote Podcast season 1 is coming to a close next week with the All The Tips episode. There have been some great episodes you’ll want to hear, including last week’s discussion about winning book projects with :

Other recent episodes:

Subscribe on SimpleCast or wherever you listen to podcasts!

2026 Schedule

Here’s what’s coming up at Sketchnote Lab for the rest of 2026:

• July: Sketchnote Foundations - Lettering w/ Andy Fishburne

• August: How to Sketch Your Story as You Tell It — w/ David Hutchens of Storytelling Leader

• September: Sketchnote Foundations — Real-World Layouts w/ Zsofi Lang

• October: Using Sketchnotes to Visually — Think Through the Use of Senses To Understand Uncertainty w/ James Burke

• November: Sketchnote Foundations - Listening Skills w/ Sarah Greer and Adrian Peryer

• December: Problem-Solving — w/ Georgina Dean

Check out the full 2026 schedule.

Last Month’s Sketchnote Lab Posts

Here’s what happened at Sketchnote Lab last month:

Paid Lab Partners get access to all Lab Live video replays, the Partner Vault, and a 1:1 Zoom session with me each year on annual plans.

Join as a Lab Partner

The Sketchnote Handbook

You don't need to be an artist to sketchnote. You need five basic shapes, simple lettering, a way to draw a person, and a few visual elements to connect your ideas together. My two books teach you exactly that, starting today.

The Sketchnote Handbook

This fully illustrated book teaches complete beginners the whole foundational toolkit for sketchnoting: shapes, lettering, drawing people, and the connectors that tie your ideas together on the page. You'll learn how to capture your thinking visually, remember key information more clearly, and share what you've learned with others. Have fun taking notes again!

Learn more about The Sketchnote Handbook

The Sketchnote Workbook

This fully illustrated book and 2-hour video are the sequel to The Sketchnote Handbook. Once you've got the foundations down, this shows you how to put it to work: brainstorming ideas, planning projects, documenting processes, recording travels, and solving problems. Learn how sketchnotes help you think better!

Learn more about The Sketchnote Workbook

Thanks for being part of Sketchnote Lab. See you next month.

— Mike Rohde, Chief Scientist, Sketchnote Lab

Sketchnote Lab is Mike Rohde’s space designed to bridge the gap between sketchnote theory and practice. You don’t need to be an artist to think visually. Join Mike and learn to use sketchnotes to clarify your thinking, solve problems, and move forward. Learn more about Sketchnote Lab.

Mike is the author of The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook, bestselling books that teach regular people how to start sketchnoting and build a regular sketchnoting practice.

He founded the Sketchnote Army and hosts the Sketchnote Podcast, where he interviews visual thinkers to understand what makes them tick.

Mike teaches recorded, live, and in-person workshops to help accelerate your sketchnoting practice and provides personalized coaching for your specific visual thinking challenges.

He is the illustrator of bestselling books like REWORK, REMOTE, The $100 Startup, Honest SEO, The Culture Playbook, and The Future Begins with Z.

Become a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner to support Mike’s work.

Some links in Sketchnote Lab posts are affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools and resources I use and believe in.

©2026 Mike Rohde, Sketchnote Lab

Lettering is a foundational skill for sketchnoting, so in this session, I’ll will provide a deep dive into his approach toward lettering in sketchnotes, including two-line, three-line, condensed, and faux-script.

Special guest Andy Fishburne will teach his unique lettering style, too:

What you’ll walk away with

An approach to creating simple lettering in your sketchnotes that lets you work faster and with more impact.

Sign up for this free session.

The session is free to all subscribers, with the recorded replay video available exclusively to Supporting and Founding Lab Partners (which includes all video replays since December 2024).

— Mike Rohde, Chief Scientist, Sketchnote Lab

Sketchnote Lab is Mike Rohde’s space designed to bridge the gap between sketchnote theory and practice. You don’t need to be an artist to think visually. Join Mike and learn to use sketchnotes to clarify your thinking, solve problems, and move forward. Learn more about Sketchnote Lab.

Mike is the author of The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook, bestselling books that teach regular people how to start sketchnoting and build a regular sketchnoting practice.

He founded the Sketchnote Army and hosts the Sketchnote Podcast, where he interviews visual thinkers to understand what makes them tick.

Mike teaches recorded, live, and in-person workshops to help accelerate your sketchnoting practice and provides personalized coaching for your specific visual thinking challenges.

He is the illustrator of bestselling books like REWORK, REMOTE, The $100 Startup, Honest SEO, The Culture Playbook, and The Future Begins with Z.

Become a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner to support Mike’s work.

© Copyright 2026, Mike Rohde

We dig into what made her sketchnote-influenced style attractive to a publisher, why self-disqualification holds so many visual thinkers back, and how following your curiosity can open doors you didn’t know existed.

Listen to the episode:

Running Order

• Introduction to Zsofi Lang and her return to the podcast

• What Zsofi does: live illustration, graphic recording, and a new shift into children’s books

• The origin of her science comics series on Instagram during COVID

• Discovering publisher Flying Eye Books through Adam Ming’s Substack

• How reaching out to a publisher led to a six-part book deal

• The reframing: from “How to Explain Science to a Five Year Old” to “How to Explain Anything to Grown-ups”

• Writing and illustrating for seven to ten year olds

• Why a sketchnote style was exactly what the publisher wanted

• The danger of self-disqualification and discounting your own work

• Passion as the key ingredient: doing 20 comics before ever pitching

• Kevin Kelly’s quote on becoming the most improbable person you can be

• AI, authenticity, and leaning into your unique perspective

• Privilege, accessibility, and finding ways to express creative passions

• The practical process: working with subject consultants, visualizing facts, and adding personality

• Experimenting with personal projects and reviving buried work

• The Milwaukee party at South by Southwest: a story about doing things without permission

• Collaborative murals: team building through paint-by-numbers style projects

• Where to find Zsofi

Resources & Links

• Zsofi Lang on Substack

• How to Explain Book

• ZL Drawings (graphic recording and illustration)

• Flying Eye Books

• Adam Ming on Substack

• Kevin Kelly

Sponsored by The Reflective Travel Workshop

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In the Reflective Travel Workshop, I’ll guide you through my process for creating travel sketchnotes and then help you reflect on your own photos and memories so that you can make travel sketchnotes of your own trips, too!

This 2-hour recorded video includes a set of downloadable, printable sketching templates and a process to kickstart your own travel sketchnoting practice.

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Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Everybody, it’s Mike Rohde and I’m here with my friend Zsofi Lang. Zsofi, it’s so good to have you. Now, Zsofi, Zsofi, Zsofi, Zsofi was on the show when it used to be called the Sketch Note Army podcast back in 2022, season 11, episode four. But we had been chatting, we’re both using Substack as a platform. And she reached out to me and said, hey, Mike, I’ve got an interesting story that might be useful for other visual thinkers. And I thought, yes, let’s have Zsofi back on.

Zsofi Lang: Hi. Hi, Mike.

MR: So Zsofi, first tell us what you do and then we’ll get into the discussion that we want to talk about today.

ZL: Okay, awesome. So Mike, good to be back. Thanks for having me again. I am an illustrator and I’m a huge, huge sketchnote fan. And most of the stuff that I do is live illustration. So graphic recording at conferences. I’m based in Brussels and there are a lot of events happening here. So that’s pretty good.

and I do some illustration for publications and things like that. And something exciting has been happening in my career that there is this shift that’s going on and I’m in the middle of it. So I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. I’m hoping for the best, but we’ll see. And which is that I got into books. I got into children’s books and that’s really exciting.

MR: This is great.

ZL: It’s a whole new avenue for me. I haven’t done this before. so yeah, that’s that’s that’s the news

MR: Wow, that’s really great. And let’s get into it. I think, so we both follow a fellow friend, Adam Ming, who teaches on Substack platform as well. Really great guy, super generous. And he’s teaching people how to do this kind of, this kind of work, right? That’s sort of his specialty. He does specifically children’s books. So although I think he probably does more and then he’s teaching other people how to do this, which I really like his attitude because, it’s this idea of bringing other voices.

You think about the voice of how something looks, but also a perspective, right, into the space. So kids have really interesting mix of options to see different things, right, than just the stuff you always saw before, which is great. So, which leads into your story. So why don’t you tell me, like, how did this all happen? What was the, lay it out for me.

ZL: Yeah, so Adam has a big role in this story, but I want to go back a little bit. So I’m a mom, I have two daughters, and when the other one was still small, around two years old, I had this itch to start drawing for myself and for her these little comics I was drawing for Instagram that was about explaining science topic to kids and the...

MR: Mm-hmm.

ZL: The name was How to Explain Science to a Five Year Old. And then I would think about like, my God, one day she’s going to ask me about gravity or like whatever, like how do airplanes work? And I’m like, OK, I know the basics, but I need to get like the meat of it. Like, OK, how do they work? So I would look these subjects up and try to be like scientifically accurate about it and draw it in a funny way that...

that she would like, hopefully, and I was posting these on Instagram. And that was really just for me. And I really enjoyed it. And that was fun. And there was COVID in the middle. And it was just, you know, like something that that energized me in the middle of all of that, you know? And then I didn’t do anything with it for a long time. And then I saw fast forward to two years ago, 2024, I was new on Substack and I was looking at

other people, illustrators, and Adam’s profile came up and I was reading his stuff and I just really enjoyed and he’s, yeah, like you said, he’s such a generous soul. Was very nice. And he was talking to a woman or he was sharing the story of a woman who reached out to a UK publisher called Flying Eye Books about her own project.

And I was like, okay, Flying Eye Books, let’s check them out. Who are they? What do they do? And I saw that they were encouraging illustrators in the nonfiction space, if they have anything that they could get in touch. So I thought, hey, I have this series. Why don’t I show it to them thinking maybe my style could be good for something that they are already working on.

So I reached out to them and they responded and they liked the stuff. And we started talking and they were helping me rework it. And then eventually that led to a book deal. And it’s going to be a series of children’s books. So initially a six part series. And it’s for kids aged seven and 10-ish. So it’s a book that you as a child can read alone if you want.

but you can also read it with the parent together. And the framing of it, so the title is How to Explain Anything to Grown-ups. So, Flying Eye was changing it up because we thought that maybe when you’re seven, something for five-year-olds is not your thing, but when you switch it around and you say, this is going to help you explain stuff to grown-ups who never listen.

MR: Hahaha

ZL: but then now you have the knowledge and you have the key to stuff that’s important, that’s an exciting framing. And that’s the book that I’m working on, or that’s the book series that I’m working on now. And the first two books in the series about the human body and dinosaurs, they will come out in March, 2027. So I’m finalizing those books right now.

MR: Well, so you’re literally in the middle of it, right? You’re two books in, prepping. And I love the framing where you empower the kids to be the expert. Obviously, you worked with the publisher to figure that out. If you go back to the Instagram or whatever posts you were making, that sort of is what it was, right? It was you were explaining to the kid, but it gave the kid the power to then explain to other adults like,

No, that’s not how gravity works. It works like this and you or other kids. Yeah.

ZL: The idea, when I showed it to my friends, you know, who are also parents, I remember specifically one friend who told me, oh, this is useful for me. Like, I forget this stuff. So this is useful. So, I don’t... That was fun. Although I just looked up my emails with Flying Eye and I have to say that the flip to say how to explain anything to grownups.

MR: Yeah.

ZL: It’s coming from them. I’m giving credit. Credit is due to them. Yes. Yes.

MR: That was a... Okay. Set the record straight, right? So what’s funny about this is like, okay, it’s aimed at seven to 10 year olds. And it’s this idea that these kids who are kind of tweens, right? They’re not teens, but they’re not kids. They’re sort of in in-between state. I have kids too, so I remember those years. That they are speaking to their adult friends.

But I think there’s a sneaky little thing that might be another angle, which is parents or adults who want to know this stuff but don’t want to admit it. So they buy a kid’s book, right? To say, I’m buying it for my kid, but it’s for me. Like, I want this series because it’s cool and I’m learning something, but no one, yeah, that’s for my kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can sort of pass it off.

ZL: Well, I am definitely this person. I am definitely, definitely this person. Yeah, yeah, it could be. It could be. Yeah.

MR: Yeah, me too.

MR: Yeah, that might be a small, you know, small portion of the audience, who knows? I mean, I don’t really care what people think about the books that I buy, so I would buy it and proudly proclaim, this is for me, you know, kids are too old for this, this is for me.

ZL: You know, Mike, for example, like dinosaurs. I was never a dinosaur geek. I know that a lot of people are, especially a lot of kids. It was just not my thing. I knew nothing about dinosaurs except for the basics. And yeah, they are fascinating. And then I learned about them for the book and I’m like, I had no idea. This is great. And then...

MR: Mm.

ZL: Yeah, I think a lot about dinosaurs actually and how it’s incredible that they were here. Where we are now, they were here. That’s crazy. So yeah, it’s like that.

MR: Yeah.

Well, that’s really cool. So I think the lesson here that I’m taking away is if you’re a visual thinker or sketchnoter or something and you think, you know, my stuff isn’t, you know, I can’t make a book because you have to be a fancy artist and you have to have an author and blah, blah, blah, blah, that maybe there’s more opportunity than you are thinking about. So let’s break down the principles of what happened here. What do you think?

Now that you’ve been through this and you’re in the middle of it, what do you think was the most attractive thing for the publisher? Now, obviously every publisher is different. They’re looking for different things. Was there something that you think that caught their attention? Obviously you’d done like, from my perspective, you just kind of did the work for them, right? You had laid out this approach. They identified it, maybe they named it and they thought, okay, what if we flip this thing? We have Zsofi draw it and maybe she can even write it too, but

Like what do you think was so attractive to them? Is that something you can determine?

ZL: I have two things to say to that. The number one thing is passion. This for me was a thing that I did for myself because it made me happy. Years later, I submitted it to them. It was 20 comics. It’s not like one, two or three when I’m like, hey, I can do this. Are you interested?

It was 20 comics, it was a whole book. And I think that that is attractive in itself because it shows that I’m really, that this is coming from inside. I don’t know how to say that. Yeah, that it matters to me and I’m not doing it for...

MR: Yeah, you’re committed. Yeah, motivated.

ZL: I’m not just doing it to do a book, it’s me a little bit. And I think there is something attractive in that. And the other thing that I know that they liked about it, which was surprising to me, and you alluded to this, Mike, is that...

Let’s talk a little bit about sketchnoting because it ties together. And I know that you’re familiar with sketchnotes. Yeah, just a joke. So I just a little bit, man. So I thought that my style as a sketchnoter is not a good style for children’s books. You know, I had this, this preconception and, and that’s why.

MR: A little bit.

ZL: When I was looking at the kids books that my kids have, those are all beautifully illustrated and very, very detail oriented and literally just gorgeous, gorgeous pieces, many of them. So I thought this is not my field. When I put this all aside and then I went to this publisher and then they said, yes. And afterwards they said that what they like about the work is that it’s not too detailed. It’s quick.

and I can work fast and I can do several books a year. And this is what they were looking for because many of the authors that they work with, they produce these beautiful children’s books and to make one, it takes a year because it’s really, really high quality and really, really like a lot of work goes into that. It’s almost like fine art. So they were interested in having somebody who can work fast and who’s a little bit more,

MR: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Takes time.

ZL: You know, like ideas, not art, what you’re saying that this book is about the ideas, the basic ideas that relating to science or relating to dinosaurs or the human body. Yeah. And, and I was surprised that for them, this was attractive. So, so, so yeah, I think this matters. And I think, I think it’s important for, for the people who, who are into sketchnoting, but who maybe think that,

that this kind of style doesn’t have a place in that kind of world to rethink that. Because I think that it does. So yeah, that’s,

MR: Two thoughts that come from what you said there is you sort of disqualified yourself before you even had a chance, right? In some way, right? For a long time, you thought, like, know, my stuff is sketchnoting. Like, nobody wants that. And eventually, you thought, finally someone said, we’re looking for nonfiction. That I, it felt like the key for you, right? And then you submitted these comics that you did, which were in sort of your...

ZL: Yeah.

MR: Amazing sketchnote style and submitted it so you had all that time you had self disqualified that it wasn’t good enough because you had this like again I take this back to even like what I thought about sketchnoting when I wrote my book was so many people are hung up on making perfect art and beautiful art and it’s the same problem, right? That I disqualify myself because I can’t make a beautiful painting or a beautiful drawing or you know, whatever, so you just don’t do anything.

It’s sort of the same problem and sort of was a reminder that actually this is really attractive because the second thought was it’s approachable. So that is what I think I see in this is it’s approachable for kids. But like I said, like it’s aimed at seven to 10 year olds, but it’s approachable to adults too, right? Which is why, you know, adults still buy comic books and still like stuff like that as well. Right. And it sort of comes at it from a little bit different angle and little...

Like I think even like when I look at your work, like just looking at it makes me smile. It’s sort of like a little bit fun, right? Even just the look of it, like before I even read what you’re writing, if you have quotes, when I see you post your spreads from your daily diaries stuff, right? Like it just, makes me think of Zsofi and happy and obviously even the stuff you’re writing about sometimes is sad, like something bad happened, but.

There’s a level of like, sort of puts me in a frame of mind, which I think there’s something about the way you draw that communicates that way. And I think everybody has a different thing that they offer. So we’re taking the long roundabout way to say, hey, if you’re a sketchnoter or someone like that, who is disqualifying yourself, don’t do that. That there might be opportunities for you to communicate in your way. And I think the other component you identified was that you had a passion for it. You made it because you wanted to make it.

I mean, a lot of the stuff that I do is I do this podcast and I’ve done it for so long because I’m, I find people fascinating and in our space, the people that do this work are really fascinating and have really interesting stories and all that kind of stuff. Right. So it, it’s me really like expressing my interest in our community and finding out these are really interesting people, but like, nobody knows about them. Let’s get them on to talk about their story because they have a really interesting, interesting story. Right. So.

If you have passions about things, that’s kind of the place where it is. Like that’s where to be, right? Because it’s unique. And especially, you know, in this season, we’ve talked a bit about AI here and there. It’s sort of inevitable for the last couple of years. So like in a landscape where AI exists, like the way forward is what you’re doing. It’s leaning into yourself because

AI tends to toward the median, it tends toward the boring and the average and the most acceptable. It even will like, you know, frost it to look like it’s legit, even though it doesn’t know what it’s talking about. Because again, it’s trying to tell you the most likely next thing. So by kind of like making a left turn and doing the work that we do and it’s personal, that seems like the path forward for people who have a style or have a perspective.

ZL: I think we all have a perspective and just leaning into that is... Yeah, that you feel that. You feel when somebody is passionate about something and that feeling, that’s a nice feeling to witness or to have. I don’t know.

MR: I’m bringing up something that I saw the other day. It’s from Kevin Kelly. He’s an author and he had this quote. Your life’s goal should be to become the most improbable person you can be. Your path, your character, your life should be the most unlikely, the most unexpected, the least predictable version you can make. Improbable lives have fewer competitors, more unique rewards and are harder to replace with AIs since AIs run on the predictable. This is true whether you favor

traditional humanist directions or work on a frontier. I thought that was really insightful and it sort of ties into our discussion.

ZL: I saw this quote, Mike, and I was thinking about my life with this lens. And I thought, there is some truth to that. I think my life, especially my work, is more unpredictable than the regular nine to five. But at the same time, you know...

MR: Mm-hmm.

ZL: I’m this mom who takes the kids, like who picks up the kids and who goes to the grocery store. So, I don’t know, in many ways, my life is very, very predictable. Also, there is...

MR: Yeah, sure.

ZL: There is a lot of privilege in doing this kind of thing, especially like doing art for a living. Not everyone can do that, and that sucks. Yeah, so it’s good to acknowledge that I personally am a very lucky, I have a very lucky situation and...

MR: Yeah. Yeah.

ZL: And if it weren’t for this, I’m not sure if I could do my work and then maybe my life would be more unpredictable. But yeah.

MR: Yeah. Or maybe, you know, maybe you’d have to sneak it in a little bit differently. Like I think about all these great, there was some story that I remember reading. There was a guy that called a plumber once. And, I can’t think of who the, was a famous composer, a famous composer showed up to do his plumbing or something. It’s like, what are you doing being a plumber? And he’s like, I love plumbing. You know, it’s how I pay the bills. And then I do this other stuff on the side. Right. So like people are really

curious and interesting and find ways to do like if it’s passion, it’s if it’s a passion, it’s worth finding a way to kind of express it. And maybe it comes out in different ways than you might expect. Even even those now maybe that doesn’t qualify for like say a taxi driver who drives seven days a week and works long hours like what is their what is their art or their passion? Maybe maybe it’s making people feel welcome in their cab. I don’t know. So

ZL: I think those people probably have passions they don’t have time for, which sucks. Maybe they love playing chess or bridge or painting or singing or whatever, but just their economic situation doesn’t let them to for now.

MR: Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

MR: Yeah, exactly. I was curious now, you know, I always have to have some practical aspect to these just because that’s the way that I’m built. Like you’re okay. So you’re in the middle of this thing. Talk to us about like, what was the experience like? How can you provide some insight to someone who’s now like thinking, I have this thing and maybe I can approach a publisher or I can make a video or I can do a thing. Like what, how did the process work and how did you...

Because you normally do graphic recording, right? For companies or you do illustration projects for contracts or it’s usually working for someone else. They’re providing you the content. And I think to some degree, maybe this publisher is too, but you certainly have your say in it and you pick the topics probably or negotiate them. Like how did, how did you make this fit into your life? Because this is unusual for you. You don’t normally do this. What kind of things did you do to help you to produce this work?

that might help someone else who’s thinking about taking a passion thing and using it in this way.

ZL: It feels to me that you’re asking several things all jumbled into one. So I will try to respond and if I don’t do it well enough, you let me know. When I sent this to the publisher, I didn’t think that this would happen. Or I thought maybe they have a project and I could illustrate.

MR: Yes, I am. I definitely am.

ZL: But I was very surprised when they said yes. They didn’t say yes right away, but they did say that they are interested and we started working together and they were giving me...

MR: Sure.

ZL: giving me feedback on how to reframe it so that it’s ready to be pitched. And then they pitched it to colleagues and then the whole company decided that they wanna take it on. And then from then on, the work is very similar to what I do for graphic recording because the way that we do it is that for each book, for each subject like...

MR: I see.

ZL: So human body, dinosaurs, the next one is going to be the solar system. There is an expert who is giving me a text, you know, like a summary of each subject. I’m using the original comics from Instagram that I posted. Like vaccines, I did my research there and it’s a very basic useful...

MR: Mm-hmm.

ZL: good research, so there is no reason for the consultant to write again about vaccines because that is already covered. But there were a lot of subjects that were not covered. And then for dinosaurs, which I had absolutely no clue about, they would give me a lot of facts. And then the way my mind works, maybe it’s the same for you, maybe it’s different, but when I read something, my mind is making these images in sketchnotes already.

MR: Mm-hmm.

ZL: So it’s, in a way the work is very easy because I just have it and I just need to, I just need to draw it down. So in that respect, it’s pretty similar than when I work for a client. Now the difference here is that I can, I have my personality, which is like this, and I can put that personality into this work.

MR: Okay.

ZL: much more than with a client. With a client, it’s serious business and oftentimes it’s public policy or advocacy or those kinds of stuff. They don’t need my personality in that. They just need a visual summary and that’s fine. But here I can be funny. I wanna be funny and I’m really trying to be. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

MR: Yeah.

ZL: But that’s wonderful. That’s such a thrill, you know, because in a way I am this seven year old person who is just making silly jokes. And I remember when I was in school, the best day was when I made the joke and the class was laughing. I made, yeah, that was when I was the happiest. So...

MR: Yeah, of course.

ZL: So that’s how the process is working. And I think this is not the only way to make this kind of work. And I’m not saying that sketchnoting is, I’m saying that for me, this door was opened or got opened and that there are many other doors. I think the key is to...

is to try to give a bit more time to your passion and then you don’t know where it takes you, you know, Mike? So who knows where it takes you, but just try new things and yeah, just follow that. I think that’s what I want to say.

MR: Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. And I think what I take away from that too is that often we discount, like we talked about before, discounting what you’re doing as being, oh, it’s not important. Nobody cares, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Like maybe to do more experimentation and trying things that you’re curious about and doing, you know, not just one thing, but maybe five different things, you know, little experiments and see which one really lights me up.

ZL: Yes. Yeah.

MR: that I’m excited about. And then if you like it, you keep on doing it, that that might be the place where it goes. And I think the other thing too, to maybe consider is you don’t need, in your case, you got, I don’t know, approval from a publisher, right? The publisher was asking for stuff you submitted, not thinking, they don’t care about me. And they came back and said, we like your stuff. And then they helped you pitch it. And now you got this deal. Like that’s one path.

You don’t have to get approval from somebody else. You could just make it, right? That’s the thing that I’ve learned in my life, I remember. So I used to go to South by Southwest Interactive because I’m a trained designer, right? I would go to these. I was curious about the interactive world back in 2009, 2012 in that window. And I went for a couple of years and I started noticing, hey, there’s people that are having these parties with, and they just invite people like,

We should do a party. My friend and I were in the airport saying, you know, we love Milwaukee. The city we come from is a really unique place. We have unique culture. Why don’t we do like a Milwaukee party? We were talking about this in the airport. So in the intervening year, I think that was 2010 to 2011, we said, let’s do it. So we just started asking around our city. We asked the people that made bratwurst, hey, would you donate some bratwurst to ship to Austin, Texas? And they said, yes. Like, okay.

We talked to some beer pub producers, but they couldn’t because of laws in the state. So what we did is we approached a distributor in Texas and said, hey, can we get these Milwaukee beers? Can you ship them to this bar that we’re thinking about? And then we called the bar and said, hey, we want to do this Milwaukee party. How much would it cost? And they gave us a price. And then we went to the city and said, hey, can you guys donate? And we just started asking all of our friends.

Would you donate some money to this party thing? We’re going to promote Milwaukee and we got enough people to cobble together. I don’t think we did. Our intention was not to make profit on it. Like we broke even probably, but we had a friend that lived in Austin and we said, okay, if you have bratwurst, you have to have good buns. Like that’s an expectation in Milwaukee. So we said, hey, can you find some buns in Austin? He found a bakery in the city that would produce really similar buns to what we needed. Like we

just used our creativity and we like cobbled this thing together. And this is in South by Southwest before like the big Meta and all these companies would come in and like dominate, like they would buy every bar in a 50 mile radius. So you couldn’t do this kind of stuff, but this is before that. So we liked this bar and we went there because we liked this place. Right. And so we just cooked all this stuff. Brian and I cooked it all up and we did the Milwaukee beer and bratwurst and we just

basically started inviting people in this place and we had Milwaukee bratwurst. They cooked them right. We brought all our mustards and stuff and we had Milwaukee beers going around on trays and people had a blast. I remember like, so this most unlikely thing was there were these people coming up to me and saying like, Mike, it’s been so long since I’ve had a bratwurst. This is so good. Like this one guy said, I used to, when I was a kid,

My dad would drop me off at the Oakland A’s stadium with a $20 bill and I would watch baseball games and eat bratwurst and drink sodas. And it was like the best. And this is like bringing back that memory. And someone from Michigan came and said, like, it’s been a decade since I’ve had a good bratwurst. And we used to have these all the time. And it like evoked all these really good feelings for people enough that we said like, well, we should do this again. So we did a second one. We did it two years in a row and we, the same place, same, we got

all the same stuff, probably different sponsors. So we, in this most improbable way, we made this weird Milwaukee party in this bar with bratwurst and beers and other snacks. That was very much our passion. And it was really popular for two years. And then it was like the year after that was when like we called the bar back and they’re like, yeah, it’s going to be like $10,000. I was like, what? So that was the end of that. Right. So because all the brands realized, hey, we could do parties and like, you know, promote our stuff.

ZL: Meh.

MR: So we were a little bit ahead of the curve, but we didn’t do it because we were trying to be cool. We were doing it because we loved our city and we thought this city is really cool and people don’t realize how cool it is. How can we just because we love it, how can we promote it? That always reminds me like you could just do stuff. Like you don’t have to ask. We didn’t have permission of the Milwaukee city government. We asked for donations.

ZL: Yeah.

MR: We had the idea, we coordinated it all, but we asked nobody’s permission. We figured out how to get the money and paid for the place and ran the thing. And it was a lot of work, but you know, it just reminds me there’s so many times you can just do stuff and so many people are afraid to do anything because well, nobody gave any authority. It’s like, who cares? You know, if it’s good and it’s reasonable, just try it and do it in small little

tidbits and see, you know, does the experiment work? And if it does, then you keep on revving the experiment, trying it in different ways, add some detail, maybe it gets bigger. So yeah, this reminds me a lot of that is what you did was you did something because you love to do it. You did it so you could get away from the pandemic for a while. Your kids probably got a kick out of it. People probably liked it on Instagram. And then, you know, years later, you know, suddenly it’s turned into something else. So there’s probably

stuff you know you can think that way.

ZL: Yeah. Yeah.

ZL: And without the something else, without the book, it was already a good story for me. It was, yeah, yeah, yeah. To me, definitely, it was the best project. And there were a few other projects before that I also did out of, yeah, just because I wanted it. It’s a very good practice for any kind of creative person to go after what they are into, yeah.

MR: I mean that may...

MR: kind of look back, it might be worthwhile if you’re listening or watching is look back at the work you’ve done. What thing did you enjoy the most? And is there like, if you are, if you think about that as an idea and the resources you have available to you, is there a way that you can take that thing and make it into something new or expanded or kind of like what Zsofi’s doing? Maybe the permission is like, I did this comic book back in these days and I really enjoyed it. I’m going to make a zine out of it and just give it away to people.

That’s a success. People read your comic that didn’t see it before. It got buried in Instagram or somewhere else. You cannot bring it back to life. Because we live in this algorithmic stream, this river, this raging river, that there’s so much stuff piling on us every day. Sometimes you need to look back in the past and revive things because nobody ever saw it. And it would be really interesting. Or maybe the time has come for it.

And now there’s this opportunity in this right moment where you have the time and the mind space and the audience that it could be interesting. So that’s, these are all the inspirational quotes, I guess, about how to take things, you know? Yeah. So there’s definitely an opportunity. So how can people follow you and like, where will the books appear? I guess they would go to the publisher’s website eventually, but

What are some good places to connect with you? Because it’s been four years since you’re on a different show. So people may not know you other than when I mentioned all your articles in my Sketchnote Lab dispatch. Because you write great stuff, but like where’s good places to go see your things now that they’ve heard you talk.

ZL: Thank you, Mike.

Yeah.

So the number one place is Substack. I like writing there these days and I enjoy writing about, especially about creativity and drawing and how other people can get into it too or how they can improve their style if they are interested in that.

MR: Okay.

ZL: So there my handle is zsofilang at substack.com and that’s Z-S-O-F-I-L-A-N-G. And I write a lot about illustrated journaling, which we didn’t get into today, but if nonfiction...

MR: Yeah, you’re definitely into that.

ZL: for children is a passion, then illustrated journaling is my love language for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I really like that. I am there. And then I set up a domain for the book to be easily found. And this is howtoexplainbook.com.

MR: Well, it’s very much a close cousin, right?

ZL: And I’m going to share stuff about the book there and you’ll be able to pre-order once the time comes. So those are the two places where people can find me if they want.

MR: Well, and if someone wants to hire you to do your illustration work, that I’m looking up is zldrawings.com, where you talk about your graphic recording. Collaborative murals look really interesting. Can you touch on those for a minute while I’m looking at that?

ZL: Yes, that’s correct. Yes.

ZL: Yes, collaborative murals, I love painting murals, but they are very big and to paint them alone is a lot of time. I thought, so this is where creativity meets laziness is the tagline of this part. So this is for teams, for companies who are interested in looking a little bit inward and thinking about

MR: Ha ha ha.

ZL: what the values are, what the mission is, their history, and we are looking at all of those together. And then I come up with a design and then usually we paint it in their office or we go to an offsite and we paint it there and then we put it up in the office. So this is something that they can do actually and it’s artistic and it’s nice and it’s really a team building. So it’s a team cohesion

thing. Yeah, that is fun.

MR: And if you’re designing it with a team in mind, you’re providing them the structure so they just come in and paint inside the lines, right? So it’s not... Yeah, that’s cool.

ZL: Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. So the design is ready and for them they are doing the painting. You can imagine it like a coloring, like a paint by numbers. That’s the story. Yeah.

MR: Yeah, that’s what I thought. So do you, so curiosity, do you draw all the black lines, like assuming you have black line edges, do you do the black lines for them? And then you bring them in to do the color or do they also do the black lines?

ZL: So first there is the pencil sketch and then they do the colors with acrylic paint and then we have either a Posca, these days it’s a Posca or a Molotov marker and then we make at the end, we make the black outlines together and you know as a control freak this is also always difficult for me but I have to

MR: Okay, paint marker.

ZL: I have to let this go. So I know that this is their art and actually people, I may want to think that I’m the only one who can draw a straight line, but first of all, I make mistakes and other people can also draw a straight line. So maybe I shouldn’t be that precious about it. So we do the whole thing together. Yeah.

MR: That’s great. And I think, you know, I look, I’m looking at the website now, like you don’t draw that many straight lines. They’re all hand drawn straightish lines. Right. So like.

ZL: Straight-ish, straight-ish I would say. But I do make mistakes, Mike, all the time and so I’m always reminded like, yeah.

MR: I think it’s probably better that other people all do the work, right? And it becomes their mural. You are just a facilitator, right? So when they walk by like, I drew that little garbage can or that whatever, that was me. I drew that. They can be proud of that. That’s pretty cool. So.

ZL: Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Yes. 100 percent.

MR: Cool, I love that idea, that’s really cool.

ZL: Well, you can steal it because I’m not traveling to the US for murals. So if you feel like doing it, you’re allowed, Mike.

MR: Yeah. And I’ve got some Posca markers that I bought just to experiment with. My daughter stole them the other day to make posters. So they’re definitely pretty fun. So maybe I need to propose that for our own company as a test and let us do it and see what it does. If we do that, I’ll send you a picture. So well, thanks so much, Zsofi, for coming on the show and telling us...

ZL: Please, yeah.

MR: I love that you’re in the middle of it. I think this is like the most fun part when it’s fresh and you’re thinking about all this stuff. And I hopefully it’s been encouraging to people who’ve been watching or listening to go dig around in their history and find things that they love to do. And maybe there’s a project hiding in there for you that would be. If anything would be satisfying for you, but maybe it becomes, you know, a line of work or an opportunity you hadn’t thought about.

So thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate your work. I love your attitude. Keep doing what you do. The world needs your work. And maybe we’ll see you again soon on the show when you’re, you know, like a super famous illustrator and we can, whatever, we can show the work. So.

ZL: Awesome.

ZL: Thanks a lot, Mike. This was really, really nice. I had fun.

MR: Good, good, that’s my goal. And for anyone listening or watching, this is another episode. Until the next one, talk to you soon.

Sketchnote Lab is Mike Rohde’s space designed to bridge the gap between sketchnote theory and practice. You don’t need to be an artist to think visually. Join Mike and learn to use sketchnotes to clarify your thinking, solve problems, and move forward. Learn more about Sketchnote Lab.

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Mike teaches recorded, live, and in-person workshops to help accelerate your sketchnoting practice and provides personalized coaching for your specific visual thinking challenges.

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Georgina’s insights highlight the importance of tactile exploration, the balance between analog and digital, and the power of visual tools to enhance memory and engagement, especially in a rapidly evolving tech landscape.

Listen to the episode:

Running Order

• Welcome and Georgina’s background in education and sketchnoting

• How COVID-19 triggered Georgina’s journey into visual thinking

• The science of memory, metacognition, and multimodal learning strategies

• Pedagogy explained: How we learn and teach across ages

• The impact of drawing and annotation on information retention and recall

• Balancing digital tools with analog experiences for children’s development

• The return to tactile activities and the influence on human connection

• The importance of balance between technology and humanity in a digital age

• The cultural shift from analog to digital and back to equilibrium

• How companies and parents can support responsible tech use and understanding

• The era of creativity and innovation — exploring new learning playgrounds

• The role of visual thinking in teacher training and classroom engagement

• Real-world applications: sketchnoting in classrooms during lockdown and beyond

• The importance of in-person teacher workshops and community building

• Creative projects with students: from anime to storytelling and visual summaries

• Project-based learning as a tool for real-world skills and critical thinking

• Scaffolding and differentiation through project work and digital tools

• Learning from struggle: the importance of perseverance and exploration

• Using AI tools for feedback, brainstorming, and visualizing ideas

• Integrating reading, writing, drawing, and tech in a cohesive practice

• The power of community events like Sketchnote Camp to inspire and connect

• Final thoughts: transforming education with visual thinking and purpose-driven technology

Resources & Links

• Wonder with Georgina — Substack

• Georgina’s Website

• Georgina on Instagram

• Georgina on LinkedIn

• Adobe Fresco

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Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it’s Mike Rohde and I’m here again for another episode and I’m with my friend Georgina Dean. Georgina, welcome to the show.

Georgina Dean: Thanks for having me. I’m really excited to be here. It’s been like a milestone for me. And I was just like so honored when you invited me on. So thank you.

MR: Yeah, of course. You’ve sort of made your mark in the community for sure. I think I look back, it was probably about two years ago, maybe a little more, when we sort of crossed paths and you were really fascinated by the space. And I know that you came, I think you came to San Antonio. Is that right? Do I remember you came to San Antonio? That is kind of where we really kind of crossed paths and had a chance to chat and get to know each other. And of course you were involved in the Birmingham event last year.

GD: Yes, that was my first one.

MR: And you’ve just really accelerated and been really active in making, I think you just found the community suited you and you just sort of stepped right in, which I’ve really was really impressed with. And I think you had a really unique voice and perspective and wanted to have you on the show. I’m always looking for interesting people. If I can find someone who’s kind of at the edges of where things are at, that’s really interesting because, you know, that’s likely a chance we’re gonna go there. So welcome. And you know, with

every episode, let’s start with who you are and what you do.

GD: The big question, right? So yeah, I am Canadian and I’m currently living and working in the UK. And I have been traveling around the world for the last plus 20 years. So left Canada just over 20 years ago, and Egypt, Cairo, Egypt was my first stop. And I got the travel bug. I was an educator. Once an educator, always an educator. So we can still say still a teacher kind of thing.

but been traveling around the world for plus 20 years, different countries around North America, Africa, the Middle East, and COVID hit, and that’s really been a huge turning point as it’s been for a lot of people, both in terms of bringing me here now to the UK, but also in terms of sketchnoting, live scribing.

Graphic recording, all of those fun terms. So yeah, I’ve been working as an educator, teaching primary, elementary school, as well as high school. I’ve had the privilege and honor of working across the Canadian, the American, and the British curriculum. And then about plus 10 years ago, when Apple introduced the iPads, this was a really big game changer in K-12 education because it really helped us to personalize

learning for students and I joined an American school in Monterey, Mexico, and they had just got the first sets of iPads. And so there was a whole exploration and experimentation of how we could set up group work across the classroom.

helping students take on leadership roles and really moving learning through experiences rather than this rote approach to traditional industrialized education as we know it from decades ago. So that’s really what got me into the tech side, I guess we could say. And then I took that back to Africa to help schools with their digital transformation. So the last plus 10 years or so I’ve been working as an administrator, senior leader, working with teachers to learn how to

MR: Hm. Mm-hmm.

GD: integrate technology in a meaningfully pedagogical way with their students. That means not giving the iPad to say, go watch Netflix if you finish your worksheet early. No. It’s about what tools could we pick up on the iPad to help you engage with content through your curiosities and through the questions you have. How can you demonstrate your knowledge and skills

MR: Hmm. Mm-hmm.

GD: for what you’re learning through an app or through recording your voice or creating a video. And so it’s really experimenting with multimodal cross-media platforms to engage all learners because we all learn in different ways and at different speeds and rates. So technology really provided this accessibility, which is really important to myself, both as an educator, a human, and now a business owner. And so

MR: Hm.

GD: that’s really what got everything going. And then COVID hit. We were in Jordan in the Middle East at that time. And I was really busy, as you can imagine, being the digital transformation leader at the school, helping everybody get online, the parents, the teachers, the students, etc. But during the downtime, since we were in lockdown and in Jordan, you couldn’t leave the house for several months. So we really were like locked in the house for quite a while.

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: I found an educational conference that was online through X, formerly known as Twitter. And I joined, and there was a graphic recorder slash sketchnote artist, you probably heard of her, maybe, maybe not, Jen Giffen from Canada. Virtual Gif, yeah. And she was sketchnoting the sessions from this online conference, and I was so taken aback.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Yes, I know Jen, yep.

GD: By the visuals, and I just thought this is amazing. This is like a one-stop shop, but with visual notes. And I’m really into colors. And at that point in time, I would recall how I learned when I was in school as a teenager, you know, with highlighters and trying to get all my notes to study for an exam on one piece of lined paper, A4, and getting the colors out right. And then here she presented this beautiful.

MR: Hmm.

GD: canvas, single page with no lines, but I found my eyes and my mind just naturally navigating through the containers and the arrows and the connectors that she had. And I found myself having the synopsis of this conference webinar. And I was like, my goodness, I want to try this. This is so cool. So I fell in love with sketchnoting. And I guess I’m getting in a little bit into my origin story now. So maybe do you want me to just continue with?

MR: Yeah, just transition right in. Mm-hmm. Yep.

GD: Where I’m going, transition. Okay. So I wanted to, being an educator, sorry, let me just backtrack for one second. Being an educator, part of pedagogy is understanding metacognition as well. And it talks about how we learn, right? Not just learning something, but how is that process of learning? And so

retrieval practice is how we’re able to go from our short-term memory into our long-term memory to access information over a period of time. And our five senses can help us to do that. So often you may find yourself, you too, Mike, like you came across a smell and you had a flood of memories from when you were a kid, or you tasted a piece of food that your mom or your dad used to cook for you when you were little, or you listened to a piece of music and it reminded you of

X experience, right? And so talking about our senses and textures and everything help us also to recall information that is retained really quickly and flood your memory with all of the things around that experience. So visual is another one of those things, right? And so there’s a lot of evidence. I don’t have all the percentages at hand to say, but I’m sure we can all imagine together that it’s an increased percentage of people that can retrieve

information by both annotating it, right? Images and text on paper, as well as then using images to recall that information. What I found really interesting across my time, I really want this to be a conversation though. I feel like I should pause and let you hop in on something. So I think I’m just gonna pause there.

MR: Well, it’s fascinating. One thing that popped into my mind is for those who are not educators, and I’ve worked in the education space and I’m still not sure. What is pedagogy? How would you, what’s the definition for that?

GD: Really great question. Yeah. Thanks for slowing that down. So pedagogy is basically there’s pedagogy and that’s for younger students and then like teens, etc., and below. And then andragogy is what we call learning for adults. So pedagogy is the study of learning. So when I went to university to become a teacher in Canada, for example, at the University of Ottawa, it was a

MR: Mm.

MR: Okay.

GD: concurrent program at the time. I don’t think they offer it now, but basically, the program of study that I took, which was second language French teaching, I’m bilingual, was also my educational degree. And so when I finally took my Bachelor of Education, it ended up being the master’s for my program. It’s what we call a concurrent system, but basically you have a set of pedagogy, which is learning.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Mm.

GD: and teaching, how to teach children and then how children learn. And then based on your subject, you have all the subject material. So since mine was language learning, I had syntax and phonics and all sorts of literacy, all sorts of things. You also have a bit of psychology because we need to learn also the developmental stages for children if we’re going to be teaching young people as well. So there’s a lot of different things, but the pedagogy is really looking at

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Right.

GD: how we learn and how we teach and that circle.

MR: Interesting. Okay, that’s helpful. The other thing that was interesting in what you talked about there was this idea that the retention percentage when you do drawing and annotation, which I’ve long believed. I think I’ve seen some studies. I suspect there’s probably more now. But I kind of instinctively knew that by doing it, that this was helping me remember. So I’ve kind of made the stretch jump that that’s likely helping other people too.

if they’re able to do this. And especially when I realized, well, if students are also benefiting from this, it seems natural that I should go as much as I can to education. Which, you know, honestly, it’s funny when I wrote the Sketchnote Handbook, we really did not have educators as a target market or a space that we thought about. We really focused on design professionals. Because I was a design professional, it made sense that other designers

are likely the ones that are gonna buy the book. And so that was, we had to pick something, and that’s all we really knew at the time. But what was interesting after a couple of years, the handbook and sketchnoting in general seem to really have this takeoff moment in the education space. I saw it mostly in the US because that’s where I’m located. But it seems like it’s gone worldwide really and has had a really positive impact. So we suddenly saw this second wind of educators buying the book and realizing, like, hey.

If my kids can retain more and they have fun drawing at the same time, like this is a double win. Teachers are always looking for ways that help their students learn and help them remember. So it was a natural fit. And I think from ever since it’s been definitely involved in the education space to different degrees based on where. But I always found that as like one of my proudest moments, like, okay, this is being used to help kids learn better and to think better and remember better. That’s pretty cool.

GD: Mm.

MR: And that I was really proud of that, even though like I said, we didn’t plan on it. It was really an accidental thing or a just a happenstance, but was really happy that that happened. So

GD: Such a great feeling to know you’re giving back, right? To like a huge community and like the future of the world. It’s great. Really congratulations to you. Yeah. It’s a huge win.

MR: Yeah, exactly.

MR: Yeah. So that’s exciting to hear that there are studies that are proving that to be true and that it’s helpful. So anyway, now that we’ve taken our little, go ahead.

GD: And I would even say, just to add a little point onto that as well, I would even say that there are newer studies now. If I can locate them, I’ll send them to you to add in the podcast episode if you want at the show notes. But there’s some new research being done and a couple that have been done on the difference between annotating on paper and that very, like the texture, the holding the pencil.

MR: Mm-hmm. Okay.

MR: Mm.

MR: Yeah, yeah.

GD: on paper and holding an Apple Pencil on an iPad. And there’s that little added percentage of it even goes deeper if it’s an actual pencil and an actual piece of paper. So then we have other companies like PaperLike, for example, that came out with screen covers that actually feel like paper. I personally use it and that helps a lot as well. I’m not sure that research has been done and if anybody knows, feel free to comment on this episode, but

MR: Mm.

Right.

MR: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

GD: if there’s research been done on adults and after we’ve gone through schooling, you know, in our generation of learning with paper and pencil, is there an actual difference going to the iPad now, or have we already, you know, integrated and ingrained those skills? But I think for children, there is a lot, like young children, I’m talking like below the age of 10, below puberty, there’s a huge amount of research around them being able

MR: Mm.

GD: to use the pencil even just for fine motor skills. That’s also part of the development, you know, through Piaget and the developmental stages. It’s important even for fine motor skills to get that as well. I think the other thing is there’s just such an important thing of balance. And I know we were chatting a little bit about our AI experiences together a little bit before, but it’s that idea of balancing tech, balancing

MR: Mm.

GD: art and it’s also between the analog and the digital, right? And so I think there’s an importance of we need to find a balance that allows children to be able to continue being curious, continue imagining. That’s going to require reading and having experiences in life that they’re wondering about, right? So

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: curiosity, imagination, and having experiences where they can create with so many different things. You know, there’s a reason in pre-elementary classrooms. I think that’s called kindergarten in North America, if I remember correctly, and potentially pre-nursery school, maybe I think it’s called over there, where they have sandboxes and water tubs that they can play in.

MR: Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah.

MR: Hmm. Yes.

GD: And it’s interesting how that term translates. I was gonna write a Substack post about this actually in June. Sandbox translates from that age, you know, three to five years of age, into tech product lines, right? And so they call it in the tech industry in terms of product the sandbox. And it’s where you have, I’m sure you know that as a techie too, Mike, that area where

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: it’s a part of the app, but it’s a safe space where you can play and make mistakes because it’s not going to impact your actual product or your data or anything like that. So I find it interesting this idea of play and how that translates through time and through different subjects and through different workspaces. I forgot where I was saying all of that, but mostly just the importance of balancing.

MR: Yes.

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: between play, analog, digital, and just not overdoing it on any part of life or work, you know, just having a bit of everything. It’s kind of like a mashup of all sorts of important ingredients. A bit like the food pyramid, right? You want to have a little bit of everything and not overdo any single one. What do you think?

MR: Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah, I agree. I think it’s interesting. I’ve had this theory about younger generations. My son is twenty-three and he’s really fascinated by vinyl records. Now I’ve had a record player for a while, so he bought himself a turntable and he’s really fascinated by Def Leppard of all bands. So he plays his Def Leppard records on his vinyl record player and really enjoys that experience. He’s very much into cars.

GD: Wow.

MR: But he’s not interested in new cars. He’s interested in old eighties cars. So he has two nineteen eighty-four cars, and the reason he likes them is that they’re simple enough that he can work on them. And he tunes them and updates them and fixes them when they break. But he can do it, right? Like he really resisted becoming a mechanic of chips and computer systems because he felt like you’re just sort of hunting in the dark, that’s not what he wanted. But so he’s now become,

as of this recording, he’s an apprentice mechanic at a company that focuses on older, you know, German cars. So he’s getting to do what he loves and it’s a very physical job, which is oddly enough, and I’m exposing a lot about my son, but he used to hate barbecue ribs because his hands got messy. He would actually eat barbecue ribs with napkins because he didn’t like the feeling of being messy. And now here he is, years later,

getting all greasy and fixing cars and loving it. So but I, you know, that’s all to say, like there is an aspect of everyone, I guess to different degrees, that we as people, we’re physical beings, right? We touch things and we need that tactile experience. And I think sometimes when you veer away from that a lot, it can have an impact on your reaction to things. And the other reason I talk about this theory that young people are coming back to analog things is

their default is digital. You know, you think Gen Z to Gen Alpha and whatever is after that. Like everything by default is digital. And so they have to seek out analog. For me, you know, I’m older, so I grew up pre digital, right? So for me the exciting thing was all the digital stuff. And it’s almost like the pendulum is flipped the other way where the sort of the edgy stuff is the analog stuff. Like

GD: Mm.

MR: Polaroid cameras. I have a nephew who loves Polaroid cameras and my son likes vinyl records and old cars. And, you know, my other son, he likes drawing with a pencil and making comic books with me. So, you know, it’s interesting to see how humans, I guess the tactile part of things is important. And, you know, even the fact that PaperLike produces a screen protector, which I also use because I like it,

GD: Yeah.

MR: sort of says something about the slickness and the smoothness of that iPad screen being problematic. I mean there are some people that don’t use that, surely. But there is something about trying to get back to, you know, that feel, like the Remarkable tablet. I know some friends use those, right? Because it has a very paperlike feel. The feedback of the tip running on that surface is a lot like pencil on paper, right? You get a little bit of texture and it

GD: Mm.

GD: Yeah.

MR: reinforces the realness of what you’re doing, right? So I don’t know where that whole thing went, but I just have this perception that young people, and maybe this is a human thing, people in general, humans in general, need that tactile feedback. We’re physical beings. Not everything can be in your head or on a screen or in your eyes. We need touch and feel. That’s an aspect of being human that’s important. And I think maybe technical

GD: Mm.

MR: people doing software maybe don’t really appreciate that as much as maybe could be, right? I don’t know where that is all going, but that’s just my running theory as of late.

GD: It’s interesting you said that, Mike, because my, we’ve been, I work remotely from home now, so I’m not in the classroom anymore just to finish that loop. I went out on my own a couple years ago and I sort of do a little bit of consulting for schools or corporations and help them with their tech stacks and their digital transformation. But equally

I’m building out my visual thinking practice, right? And so that leaves me here. But on the last thing you said, so my husband and I both work remotely from home, and he has been working remotely for a decade. And during our next move, which will be back to North America in the coming couple of years, he’s looking forward to actually going back to the office. It won’t be five days a week, but he’ll be able to go in a couple days and then work from home a couple days. And just the other day he was saying to me,

MR: Mm. Mm-hmm.

GD: I’ve been sitting at my desk five days a week for 10 years. I can’t wait to just be back. And so I think it’s not just, I do believe that it’s not just a return to analog. I believe it’s a return to humanity. And one thing, however, that being said, that I would like to

reiterate because like you said it’s a pendulum and as a human society I’ve observed at least in my short lifespan that we tend to go from one extreme to another on that pendulum right and what I believe is going to be really important again is the balance. If we go solely back to analog are we really setting children up for the success they need without the skills they will need to thrive in an AI-fronted, tech-fronted world so

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: I’m not saying I have the answer, and I don’t believe anybody does yet. We’re all in exploratory mode right now. And I do believe these are just important questions that we want to think about. How can we help children, for example, have the childhood learning experiences we had, which were jumping in puddles in our Wellington boots, building snow igloos and forts in the Canadian backyards in the winter?

MR: Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

GD: video games until 3 a.m. at Christmas, but then spending all day on the sled hills or skiing the next day, you know, having that balance and still helping them to understand, hey, how can we solve really big problems in the world using technology and global collaborations, right? Like climate or getting to Mars or building whatever it is, right? Sustainability. So

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: I do believe balance will be important and it won’t be because we’ve decided to shut down the tech because it’s doing harm. And it won’t be because we’ve decided to stop having those childhood experiences. I do believe we need balance there.

MR: Right.

MR: Yeah, and equilibrium makes sense to me. And I think I was just thinking as you were chatting, like think back to the seventies when I was a little kid, like everything was analog, even up into the eighties and into the early nineties. There was a lot still analog. If you watch old movies from the nineties, you can see like When Harry Met Sally, you know, Tom Hanks is on this phone with a long cord so he can walk around his apartment, right? It was even pre wireless phones that were in your home, right? Not even wireless phones in your pocket.

GD: Right.

MR: And so like think about the impact that digital had on the culture and the culture is sort of adapted to it and maybe it’s springing back and it’s trying to find its equilibrium where, you know, like you said, these things can coexist, right? The going on the sledding hill in the morning and then coming in the afternoon and playing video games with hot chocolate or something, right? Like I agree with you, this sort of a moderate in between where you

appreciate all those things in their context and in their right time and not overwhelm one or the other by going all analog like living in a cabin, which I guess you could do. I mean that’s one perspective, or going all digital where you never leave your house and you just Door Dash everything. Like that’s not maybe so healthy. Probably the downside of going into the log cabin is like you lose the social connection of people.

Right. So like finding that balance and where those things fit seems to make sense for most people. And then, you know, that maybe the impact of digital stuff has been so strong that the swing back will come back to analog and then eventually it’s gonna settle in somewhere in the middle, maybe. I don’t know. We’re all just speculating.

GD: Mm.

GD: Mm.

GD: I think also it’s, no, absolutely, and it’s a fascinating conversation. I’m really enjoying chatting to you about it. But the, and I should say not but, and I do believe another aspect is also how are we supporting, how are these big tech companies supporting adults and families as they are integrating these new tech tools in. So for example,

just off the top of my head, let’s say X Company launches this application. Well, what videos and what documentation are they giving to parents to help them with a step-by-step of this is how you set up parental controls with this application? This is how your data is being used with this application. And I don’t mean a 50-page terms of service. I mean how are tech companies creating digestible content for parents and schools and teachers

MR: Hmm.

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: to be able to set up and help them manage in that balanced way, right? In the family ecosystem. And I wonder, again, I don’t have the answers, I’m not the expert, but in my observation, helping families and schools around the world the last decade, is what could be done better to help those people. Because I do believe that’s where a great divide has occurred, where parents have had to fend for themselves, not knowing how to

MR: Yes.

GD: set up the tech and this really came out in the COVID times in my observation, that they didn’t know how to set up password systems on their routers, how do we turn off cameras, how do we protect and safeguard children, safeguard themselves, understand where their data is going,

all of those things, which this podcast is not about, but it basically just talks to like it’s the same with our digital sketchnoting tools to bring us back to visual thinking, right? Like when everybody downloads things, like I know you’re a fan of Concepts, for example, me Adobe Fresco, there’s a lot of other ones out there. When we have those apps, how do we know what of our data is being used or not? How do we know how to use it? Are there in-app tutorials that help us?

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: What about if the children want to have an account on it? So it’s not just about AI, it’s not just about Netflix. It’s about any technical tool or service that’s being fronted, you know? I believe that’s a cultural thing. And I believe we all have as digital citizens and citizens of the world that we have a responsibility to make sure A that we understand before we use something. It’s like,

You know, you wouldn’t give your child a kettle without telling them about the safety issues. You know, you could get burnt, you could burn yourself, exactly. Same with a swimming pool. I often use that in keynote speeches when I’m speaking around the world about the pool. You wouldn’t leave your five-year-old to go swim in a pool if there was no lifeguard there or without the floaties. We wouldn’t do the same with tech. You can’t just give your six or seven-year-old child a device and say, off you go. We need to understand and we need to help people.

MR: Hm. Yeah. Could burn yourself, yeah. Yeah.

GD: to learn how to manage those things. What are your thoughts on that, being a parent yourself?

MR: Yeah, yeah, it’s a real challenge. I think you’ve touched on something and you know, if you have a busy life, it’s often you deal with the problems when they come up and often don’t have the bandwidth at the outset to kind of set things up as much as I try to, you know. There’s just some things you can’t envision. You try to guide as much as possible and then you just deal with things as they occur. So I think that’s, and a little bit of it’s incumbent on the software and hardware makers to

provide that. But I mean, you know, ultimately the tool makers could make all kinds of stuff and parents might choose not to use it, right? So then there’s responsibility on the parent side. And so yeah, it’s probably a much deeper topic than we have time to go into, but it’s certainly an aspect. And you know, there’s definitely benefits like you keyed in on in our space. It’s using the iPad like,

you know, if I do things personally for myself, I use paper and pen. And I use the iPad, but I think usually for client work I’ll use the iPad because it allows editability because the client is typically, you spelled something wrong or you need to move this over here, or you need to change that. If I do it with pen on paper, I can do that, but then I’m in Photoshop making modifications or redrawing things and integrating. That was the old way.

So having the ability to edit that makes sense in a digital tool for a customer situation. So I don’t know that I’ve resolved that question, but it is, I think basically what we’re touching on is culturally there’s a lot going on that’s maybe under the surface and maybe it pops up occasionally, but our lives are a lot more complex. They’re better with the digital tools in some ways and also more complex at the same time.

And in ways that you think about data breaches and people who, you know, reuse their passwords and get hacked because of it, like just a lack of knowledge and education because of lack of time or just unawareness. So it’s a challenge. I don’t have an answer for it, other than to be as vigilant as you can, but

GD: Mm.

GD: I think the great thing about the time period that we’re living in now, Mike, for all generations, is that I don’t believe we’re in the era of information anymore. I believe we’re in the era of creativity, of innovation. That’s what’s exciting for me. And to think about, we no longer have to try and learn all the things because information is at our fingertips now.

And I feel that now I can actually go and explore and experiment and take risks and I almost therefore believe it’s cycling back to childhood, right? Back to those childhood experiences that we were talking about. Because now we’re saying, well, now we can sandbox again. Now we can try this because I can just go get those instructions or those steps from, you know, a GPT, whichever one I’m using, and use it that way. So

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: I do believe it’s an exciting time to be alive because we can just, it’s almost like the world is our playground. We just have to make sure that we have the safeguards in place and that we understand all of the risks and can make those decisions together. I think traditionally for the education system, it’s difficult for educators who are in our generation because we grew up traditionally, right? That

this is an exam, you study for it, you get an A or a B, you’re correct or wrong, check marks, X’s, etc. And we’re now trying to think about how do we rethink and reimagine that system, right? So it’s exciting. But visual thinking is one way that I do believe we’re going to be able to do that. And anytime I interact with educators, I’ve had the privilege,

just last year again of being out in South Africa to teach sketchnoting to educators out in Cape Town. One year I went to Johannesburg and also at ISTE San Antonio. I was there for ISC and another conference. I’m going out to Florida again, to Orlando.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: in a couple of weeks actually. So lots of opportunities to teach sketchnoting, which is really exciting. And the great thing is that teachers love it initially. What I’ve observed so far is because it is something that they can go back to pen and paper. And so for those people who are in our generation, for example, who are a bit anti-tech still.

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: it’s one skill that they can bring into the classroom where they have that option, right? Of using digital or analog. So that’s really beautiful. And I know you said you were interested to go into schools and work with teachers. Have you had that opportunity yet? Or do you have spaces or places you’re looking to work in, specifically elementary or university or high school?

MR: I’ve had opportunities because of my book to work in all those spaces. So I’ve worked at Drexel University. I was able to work with the design department and work through there. And then also primary education and even middle school and high school education. I’ve been to school districts in the past. It’s all pre pandemic. They would fly me in and typically I would teach at a kind of a gathering, either at the beginning of the season or the end of the season of teaching.

GD: Right.

MR: And teach the sketchnote concept. During the pandemic, it switched to online teaching. So I worked with a school district for quite a while in Maryland. We did all kinds of really innovative stuff in teaching there for the teachers. And ultimately the goal was to teach the teachers how it works, the benefits, and then give them tools and ideas for integration. So there’s been a variety of situations. That has changed a little bit, and I have a sense that maybe

there’s more resources for teachers and that they’re maybe using it directly. But I also know that teachers are often just trying to keep up with normal life. So it could be that, you know, the complexities of life mean that that’s just an aspect of the teaching. I’m sure it is. But, you know, there has definitely been an interest and that could be something that I pursue more. These days, you know, it’s

it would be probably online teaching with those groups. But I’m still open to doing in person. I really enjoyed in-person teaching. There’s some dynamic about it that’s a little different and I enjoy the interaction. And I think the impact can often be more when you’re physically there and you run through a curriculum across a couple of hours or a whole day. It really has an impact on those teachers to then see like, okay, this is how I could integrate. You’re there to kind of answer questions and

GD: Mm.

MR: give ideas and it’s all in context to their situation, which I think is always important. Like general platitudes and ideas are great, but then it puts the burden on the teacher in this case to find ways to apply it in their work lives. Right. So the burden is all on them. When I’m able to come in and work with them, I’m asking lots of questions like what kinds of things do you teach?

Let’s find out ways that we can integrate it. What if we tried this? What if we tried that? And they start seeing, right? So that’s a lot of the reason I like doing the in-person was for that interaction. I just don’t know. I mean the other challenge with school districts, they’re always struggling for funding. So hiring a guy to come in and teach is always challenging. So there’s a lot of different dynamics in it, but you know, my goal is still to be there and available for educators because I think that’s

GD: Mm.

GD: Mm.

MR: I’ve always loved school and I really like the idea of passing on this skill to the next generation. So that is part of it. I think there are teachers that subscribe to Sketchnote Lab and get benefit from it there. So that brings me to the idea that maybe Sketchnote Lab could touch on more educational topics in the future. Maybe having you on and we could tag team something that could be fun to do. Yeah, yeah. So because that is my heart, to, you know, I have kids and

GD: I’d love that. That could be so fun. Yeah.

MR: I just really like, I loved school and if there’s a way I can make school more fun for more kids, like that’s a win. And ultimately, like, you know, I think about the other reason I think that way is when I would teach sketchnoting to adults, they would always come in a little hesitant to draw. So the first thing I had to solve was how do I convince them they can draw simply. So I would do that with the five basic shapes. And typically once they would get past that step and realize it’s just

GD: Mm.

MR: capturing ideas with these simple objects. By the end of the session, they were really excited and they wanted to use it. And I’ve always thought, like, wow, if I could catch students before they gave up on drawing and teach them this basic way, like maybe they would hold on to some aspect of visualization, even if it’s a simple one, into their adulthood and make it part of the practice in whatever they’re doing. And then that also dovetails into this desire for analog things, like, could this touch on

an interest for analog and drawing as a problem solving tool, like all those things in my mind sort of blend together. Like, could we catch them before they abandon drawing because they weren’t as good as John or Mary, right? I think often that’s the case. Someone’s really good and everybody else is like, well if I can’t be as good as them, I’m gonna quit. Or the drive I think in a lot of education is toward writing and text. So that’s another thing that’s

GD: Mm.

MR: kind of leaning away from visualization. So in some sense there needs to be some intentionality. So my thought was if I approach education this way, maybe there’s an opportunity to instill that in a way that maybe it survives a little bit longer. Like I feel, and it comes back to my own story, I feel fortunate I was good enough at drawing and I was, I guess, stubborn enough to keep doing it when I was told not to. Or I

ingratiated myself to the teachers so they liked that I drew. And so I drew throughout my whole school career into college and into work. And it just never left. Like it was just part of the way I operated. But I think a little bit it was the opportunities were there and I was stubborn enough to keep doing it anyway. But not everybody’s like that or not everybody has those opportunities. So how can we provide more kids that opportunity to have that experience? Maybe not everybody can, but if we can increase that,

GD: Mm.

MR: you know, that offers them an opportunity to have another thinking tool. That’s sort of my thought on education, and I really enjoy it. It’s just I haven’t really pursued it heavily as project work more than anything. It’s just the opportunities haven’t come directly. And it could be a byproduct of just the way the education system is currently, maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t really pursued it to see like why have I not got as many educational opportunities as in the past?

GD: Mm.

MR: I’m sure there’s some dynamics going on that I’m probably not aware of. But it could also be that I’m not pursuing them too.

GD: Just gonna say it might just be that you reach out to a certain amount in your area and then just build from there. Or events or things like that. So yeah, it’s just something to consider, I think. But yeah.

MR: Yeah.

Yeah, sure.

MR: Yeah, for sure.

And you know, I love teaching. I’ve found that I really enjoy teaching. It’s fun for me. Now I focus on one area. So in that sense, like I feel for what teachers go through and the challenge of coming up with even a short curriculum and preparing it and making it engaging and making sure that there’s an outcome that’s positive and all that stuff. So I kind of appreciate the hard work that they go through because I do it myself. So in that, that’s another aspect too, is just feeling like part of the crew.

GD: Mm.

GD: It’s really, yeah, it really is difficult for educators right now, especially, as I’m sure you’ve heard in the grapevine, we call this the TikTok era where the attention spans are really low and it’s really difficult for teachers to maintain the attention and engagement, like authentic, real genuine engagement of children. And the curriculum that’s currently existing doesn’t necessarily always help, right? And there are some

MR: Mm, yeah. Yeah.

GD: experimental curriculums out there and that’s going well, but it’s not for the average, you know, public school that’s out there. And so it’s hard. So I appreciate you saying that. And kudos to any educators listening to this episode and thank you for all you do for sure. I thought it would be a great opportunity to share one way that I use sketchnoting in the classroom during lockdown if you’re interested. Yeah, might be of interest to other educators just to spark other ideas even for them. So

MR: Yeah. That’d be great, yeah, I’d love that.

GD: We were all at home in lockdown and I said, I’m gonna try this with my Year 9. So I think that’s like a Grade 8 in North America, I believe. And I was teaching one class that year for BTEC Media. So it’s like a creative media course. I don’t know what the equivalent would be over there, but it’s like learning media and the creative tools that go with it. So they had to learn Adobe InDesign for this particular one.

MR: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

GD: or Adobe Illustrator. So I usually give them a choice of tools. Choice of tools and voice is really important. And we met online through Google Meet, and everybody either had their Chromebook device with them or their Apple iPad. I worked in the international school, so the students had devices with them, or they could use pen and paper. So

in order to get them going, I said, right, we’re gonna do something fun today. We need to learn how to use the tool. So the objective is like, can you learn to create something in Illustrator or InDesign, etc., or Fresco? But we want to do this in a cross curricular way where we’re picking up another objective or outcome as you call it. So

what is the topic that we want to do? So we took the free wheel picker and I’ll send you the link to put in the show notes if anybody wants to use this in business or in a classroom. So it’s a wheel and you click spin on your computer and it spins. So I think you saw me use it at ISC for the free prize giveaway that one year. So it’s that and I use that and the students were putting in the Google Meet comments

MR: Yes. Yeah.

GD: their ideas. So we put in all the ideas of the topics they wanted to do. And there was one topic that went into the wheel. And as the facilitator of that learning experience, I was like, gosh, if this ends up on this topic, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. So guess what topic we landed on, right? So the topic was anime. It was not a bad topic and nothing wrong with it. Just one that I have no

MR: Of course. Of course.

MR: It’s just out of your purview, yeah.

GD: experience in. I mean, I just knew, and forgive my ignorance, I still haven’t learned that much about it. But anime for me at that moment was just like a cartoon, right? Like I didn’t know anything about it. So the kids went berserk on the Google Meet, and I was like, okay. The work that came out of that class just wowed educators at my school.

MR: Mm.

GD: It was incredible. So the goal was: can you draw this on analog? And then can you replicate it using a digital tool? So the lesson was a project with the main outcome of can you produce something using this tool for creative media, right? But we learned all these other skills. We learned we balanced analog and we balanced digital. Then we had a gallery walk using a Google Slideshow. So each student had

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: a Google slide and they could celebrate. Then there was peer feedback in the comment section of the slide. So it was a whole pedagogically sound learning activity, but we had so many modalities, even though we were online at home, right? And when I do sometimes keynotes, I include pieces of that work, obviously with permission granted years ago, to help educators, etc. And

MR: Sure, sure.

GD: they would post the pictures and the illustration work coming out of these Grade 8s, Year 9s, was absolutely astounding. And what’s even better than what came out of Adobe Illustrator, and I had to leave it open because some students weren’t able to use the Adobe tools on their Chromebooks at home who didn’t have iPads. So they were using things like Google Draw. Oh my goodness, an image that came through on Google Draw completely blew my mind.

MR: yeah. Yep.

GD: completely blew my mind. And it just goes back to show you don’t have to have the most expensive tool out there to be creative. And you don’t have to have the most expensive tool to have high quality work. In my humble opinion. Yes, there’s quality in print and resolution and I get that. But what this lesson taught me as a facilitator and educator of many years and

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: taught other teachers and students in our school was that wow, you just never know until you try, right? Like to take that first step. So it ended up being this really beautiful project. Their artwork was displayed, some of them, for their portfolio to go to universities at the end. And so they included that project. But you know the fact that we were in a Google Meet with a wheel spinner and different tools. Some people used the Google

AI tool where you draw the shape and then AI can tell you what the shape is. I’ll try and get you the links for all the stuff once we get the transcript so that people can have access to these online freebies, but yeah, the sky’s the limit. It was a beautiful lesson, one I’ll never forget.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Hm. Wow, that’s really fun. And it’s funny that the thing you thought, like, I hope they don’t pick this one. You knew that was gonna get picked, right? You just had that feeling. And then the second thing that I find really interesting is how the kids got excited. So like I think if you can, I’ve always said like when I’m teaching people they want to learn how to sketch and I was like, find a hobby that you really enjoy and then integrate it with it. Like do them together. Because it’s more likely if you love gardening and you

GD: Right.

MR: plan your garden with a sketchnote, you’re likely gonna do both because one helps the other, right? You wanna learn sketchnoting, you’re already a gardener. Like, wow, I didn’t think about, you know, I could sketch out three different ways and move stuff around and envision it before I plant anything, right? Like this overlap of passion with activity is always really important because that’s the fuel that keeps you going, right?

GD: I’m really sorry to interrupt you. You sparked me, Mike, and you reminded me about that. You’re correct about matching things. And there are other parts of lessons from those units too that you’re helping me to recall right now. So, for example, icon boarding, and so creating a story or a sentence

MR: Go ahead. Mm-hmm.

GD: with just four icons and when you add them together, like what does that story reveal? Also developing our own icons and then how can you use those icons to tell a story? Comic strip. So if students were creating videos, part of their first one was, what’s that called? The strip of the video. There’s a word for it.

MR: I know what you’re talking about. Storyboard. Is that it? Yeah.

GD: Storyboard, thank you. Yes, thank you. So there, what’s interesting is that there are digital applications that we gave to our students to use after vetting, obviously, for like storyboard literally dot org or something like that. But equally we had them do it on paper and using sketchnotes to support that, right? And comics and all the rest. So there are so many different projects

MR: Mm. Mm-hmm.

MR: Yeah.

GD: you can do with students, like logo work on what does that mean about capitalism and you know, you can tie it into history and math and English and it’s such a beautiful thing and it really does help the memory retention and recall. So yeah, highly recommend it.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Hmm. That’s really interesting. The other thing that comes to mind now that we’ve been talking about this, I did some work with a company that did project based learning. They needed, my intersection with that was they needed an illustration to communicate. So the challenge they faced was their salespeople primarily would go out to school districts and try to explain what is project based learning and they kind of knew what it was, but like how do we support you as a company?

And they were having trouble because it was such a holistic process that what we ended up doing was, well, why don’t we just draw a map of what the process looks like in a typical cycle? Like what do you get and who did it impact? So I could probably find it, I think I have it on Flickr. But basically there are these different groups, there’s administrators, there’s teachers, and then there was another party and we showed like how

the company integrated. Anyway, it brought to mind when I learned about project-based learning as part of that project that I just love that idea of project-based learning because I realized that is how I learn best. Me. I don’t know if everybody’s that way. But usually I have a goal. I want to try and do this thing. And I will bang my head against the wall to figure out software or solve the problem to achieve a goal. Like just learning for learning is not

that helpful for me, right? Because it’s just like, well, and I think the other thing too is the way I learn, and again this just might be me, is I like to read a little bit about the concept and like, okay, I think I understand it. And then apply it, like physically apply it or do something and see, okay, that’s how that’s working. Then I go back to the text and like, okay, now I understand that. Let’s go to the next thing. And I start building it by going back and forth between, you know, the theory and the practical.

Like I’ve always, in everything I do, I try to have theory and practical, right? In both. So I’m kind of curious, can you touch on a little bit project based learning? Is that a big movement in education? I have a sense that it was to some degree, but I think it’s, you know, that’s probably the counter to a traditional industrial type education, I would think, right?

GD: Absolutely. And project based learning, I would say, really heightened, especially as I mentioned when the iPads came out, because they had the ability then to do group work and students could do a lot more with it. You don’t have to have digital devices to do project based learning. So I just want to be clear with that. But it facilitated ease of that and where students could access things.

MR: Okay.

MR: Mm-hmm. Sure. Yeah.

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: online and then facilitate small groups, right? And so it facilitated the ease, productivity and efficiency and collaboration, mostly creative collaboration. But I will say, and what sparked with that, with what you were saying, was this idea of creative friction and struggle in creative problem solving, right? Critical thinking and problem solving is this idea

MR: I see.

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: at least today we’re seeing that right now in education in classrooms, yes, we’re trying to move away from industrialized approaches of rote learning and rows into project-based learning. But like you said, with an intentional purpose of how that ties into the real world. Because what we don’t want, and I do believe we cannot afford anymore, is students graduating from school

and as you said, they are not able to apply what they’ve learned in the classroom to help them to thrive as a citizen in their community. We don’t have the luxury of not helping that to come to fruition anymore. So project-based learning will actually help that. So if you have a specific interest in X

MR: Yeah. It’s all theory.

GD: then we can tailor that. And I know a lot of schools are trying different alternative methods. There’s like the Montessori schools. I don’t know if you’ve heard of those before. It’s not really based on your age, it’s based on your interest and your skills and you’re grouped with kids of different ages. There are independent schools, private schools, public schools. There’s a whole slew of them. And hopefully the goal, I do hope, is that everybody’s just trying to help kids get to the best of it. But the more you can

MR: Mm-hmm. Yep.

GD: allow students to work in groups, you’re helping them to learn how to collaborate so that we don’t lose the art of communication in this age of tech and AI. You’re helping them to learn how to coexist in uncomfortable situations when you disagree with people in your group, and how do you work through that? So, to build the strategies of being able to communicate and collaborate.

MR: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

GD: You are building the ability to recognize and create what we call, I like to call, be brave spaces. Some people call them safe spaces, but being culturally responsive, I prefer to call them be brave spaces, where we include others and we respect everybody. So an inclusive space.

MR: I like that.

GD: Project-based learning is that if you scaffold, scaffold is being able to set up the learning goal success criteria in levels. So for somebody who is maybe a little bit more advanced, you can offer this entry level to the project. Somebody who knows very little with very little skill can start at the

MR: Okay.

MR: Okay.

GD: beginning of that scaffolding, and someone who’s got a lot of background experience, maybe just moved from another country or a little bit older, whatever the case is, they can enter at a higher level. So you’ve got tiers of learning, right? That’s what we call scaffolding in pedagogy. And the idea in the project based learning is that the teacher could easily set a Google Drive folder with that, you know, beginning, medium, advanced, obviously with more

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: interesting terms than those, but just to give you the basic idea of the setup into a Google Classroom or into a Teams classroom. And then students could go in and pick, now that I’ve discussed this problem, now that we’ve sketchnoted and mapped out some possible scenarios, now that we’ve circled where the problem points are, now I’m ready to go in and do the independent part

MR: Mm, mm-hmm.

GD: at that project-based learning and they can go and grab the activity that matches their skill level, right? And so each child has agency and ownership of their learning. Did that make sense or did I go a little bit far on that?

MR: Yeah. No, I think that’s great. I think you put it in layman’s terms as well. I’m sure educators will know all these terms and be following right with you. But I think it’s always helpful to know not everyone who listens or watches is an educator, but I think you’ve explained it, I could relate to it pretty clearly. And as I look back, the times when I’ve really made advances in my learning have been project based. I had to do something, figure it out. And I’m trying to instill that with my son,

GD: Yes.

MR: who’s still thirteen, and talking with him about this, having during the summer a drawing hour and coding hour and doing stuff where it’s not just fooling around to mess around, but to have a purpose. Because I think, you know, you end up with a result. And you can see like, okay, I did all this learning to do a comic book. Or I did all this learning and we built a website, you know, having an endpoint and a

maybe not a physical thing, but an object or something that was built as a result of the learning. So the learning becomes your way to that thing. Because that’s reality, right? Like in my day job, I have to do something and I might not know a software tool very well. So I have to figure it out. Like I usually am doing it in context with a project that I have to get done. And so, you know, it challenges me to go

GD: Yeah.

MR: watch YouTube videos or read manuals and then experiment until I can, okay, I get what’s going on, now let’s use it. So that’s probably closest to reality, right? In life we have projects and we learn as a process toward getting the project completed.

GD: It’s so true. And I’m so glad you said that. Just yesterday or the day before yesterday, I had to return something to Amazon. And normally nowadays, I don’t know how it is in North America, but here in the UK, you can just show the QR code and they can scan it and return your parcel. But it was a different courier that had to pick it up and I had to print a label. Anyway, so we didn’t have a printer at home because we’re mostly digital. So we ordered this cheap printer to have at home.

MR: Mm.

MR: Mm.

GD: And it took me like almost three hours to set up. And anybody listening to this who’s like, what, she’s a digital transformationist and she can’t set up her printer in three hours, it does sound funny, but hear me out. So turns out we had router issues. It was so, not to bore everybody with that, but I know that probably resonates with you, Mike, as a techie. But like the router was the reason it wasn’t picking up the software through

the Wi-Fi connection when we connected it in the back end. Anyway, long story short, I struggled, I got frustrated, and I was tempted several times to open my GPT and ask for the instructions. Now, this is a really interesting example. I chose not to because I was determined that I had enough intelligence to do this by myself as a techie, right?

MR: Mm.

MR: Yeah. Yeah.

GD: So I spent all the time and finally after three hours, I knocked on my husband’s office door and I was like, I’m really stuck. I can’t figure this out. Anyway, he came over and he couldn’t figure it out either. Then I felt much better because he’s an actual engineer. And he was like, the little thing is ticking and it should be connecting, and it just wasn’t. Anyway, randomly after the fourth attempt, it did. Well, I finally went to my GPT after we got it connected to understand

MR: Yeah.

GD: what had gone wrong exactly. And sometimes that’s what we call in education backwards by design, where we look at the end goal of a project, or perhaps it’s unfortunately a goal on an exam they need to get to or something. And then you design your monthly planning, your unit planning, your weekly planning, your daily planning backwards from the end goal you want to get to, and you want to match into each of those parts

MR: Mm. What was happening? Yeah.

MR: Mm. Mm-hmm.

GD: an experience that’s going to help them remember. Well, trust me, I can’t remember the last time I spent so much time trying to connect a printer ever in all my experiences, right? So I’ll always remember that. But it’s an interesting use case equally for AI, right? In that we don’t always have to go to it first. It’s important to have creative struggle sometimes. You don’t always have to just choose to get the answer first.

MR: Hm, yeah.

GD: And the second interesting thing from the example, and this was the first time I’d ever done it just a couple days ago, but to share with everybody who’s listening is that once you’ve done the struggle and you can ask it to help you understand what went wrong or what can I take away or what can I do to improve that process so that I can do it faster next time. It doesn’t have to be just to give you the answer, but to help you analyze, you know?

MR: Yeah, like having an on-demand tutor in a sense. So if you were, those almost feel like tips. So I always do tips. And I think you’ve already given us two tips here, right? One is choose to work on, you know, solve a problem and then ask GPT or search online after when you’ve done the cracking of the problem, right? And the second one that you just offered, I don’t know how to put that into words.

GD: Yeah.

MR: Would you happen to have a third tip that you might offer in that context?

GD: In the context, I would offer the same visually. And some people listening to your podcast episode may disagree with me. And I think that’s healthy and that is okay, but I’d like to offer it as something that I believe is valuable for my own practice and may help others. Is when you’re stuck on

trying to visualize an icon for something that you don’t know in visual thinking, for example, try. The creative struggle is important. So take a couple rounds, you know, give yourself a five-minute timer, try to sketch a couple of things like crazy eights in product design. When you can’t come up with it, you could use a GPT to ask for suggestions, but don’t ask it to give you the images of it. You could ask it to give you the text so that it’s not

MR: Hmm, interesting.

GD: putting the images into your mind, you’re reading the words and your imagination based on your learned context from your life experiences may help you visualize something. Did that make sense or should I try to re-explain? Okay.

MR: Hm. Yeah, that’s perfectly clear. I totally understand that, that rather than give me ten icons, it’s like give me words for other metaphors that I could use for this concept. Okay, I didn’t think about that concept. What would that look like? And then you draw it and now it becomes more of a partnership, right? It’s basically breaking through your lack of depth of knowledge around a metaphor and bringing others to mind that maybe you haven’t thought of before, maybe ever.

But then you still do the work of actually visualizing the thing, right? Yeah.

GD: Exactly. And a little bit like text, the other half of that tip is a little bit like text. So perhaps you may have written a story or an essay and you’d like the GPT to help you with your grammar and structure. It may be the same as an image, and this is where some visual thinkers, sketchnote artists, may disagree with me, and that’s fine, feel free. But you may input your own sketchnote into a GPT.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: and ask it to give you feedback a little bit like a coach or a mentor. So a little bit like me sending a sketchnote to Mike and saying, Mike, could you give me some things that you’d like me to improve on? It’s the same with a sketchnote. You’re not asking the GPT to recreate your sketchnote, you’re asking it for feedback, right? And so

MR: Yeah.

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: that could be an alternative way too. Just a little note on that for those who want to take my advice. Please remember your data. If you’re going to put your sketchnote into a GPT like OpenAI, that is not a lockdown enterprise version or a school version, then that will go into the training model. So just make sure before you decide to upload your data, including your own illustrations, that it is locked down for yourself if that’s what you want.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Yeah. Good, that’s a good point. That’s a good point. Well, this has been a lot of fun. I just really hadn’t planned on talking so much about education and having so much fun, but it’s been a blast. And it’s gotten me excited about wanting to reach back out to teachers and school districts and seeing maybe now that things have, you know, settled down a little bit from the pandemic that there’s an opportunity to do some more traveling. Because I really enjoyed traveling. I love to travel and then being able to teach too is like a double win, right? So

GD: Mm.

MR: makes me think maybe I should be pursuing some school districts again and doing some teaching and maybe offering some things. So thanks for that inspiration.

GD: Thank you for having me. I really, it’s not always, and back at you, Mike. I don’t always find people that have the tech background and passion for techie stuff like me who are also visual thinkers. That’s one of the biggest reasons. Like I love listening to your podcast and it’s been great having chats with you when we connected at ISC every year because it’s nice to be able to just go through all the things and know that you get

MR: Mm.

GD: what I’m talking about. So yeah, thank you for this lovely conversation for sure.

MR: Yeah, for sure. And so Georgina, where is the best place or the best places for people to find you?

GD: Yeah, thank you. So I’m on Substack. I’m on there a lot right now. It seems to be a beautiful creative hub for us. And I know you’re on there too, Mike. So I’m at Wonder with Georgina. And I’ll share the links for those with you. On Substack and Instagram is Wonder with Georgina. I’m not really on X anymore, but I’m at Redefine It if you’re there. And Bluesky

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: We’ll put links in. Yeah.

GD: as well, Redefine Ed. LinkedIn, I’m there for corporate. So if you’re interested in doing some work together for your business or digital transformation or bringing me in to visually sketchnote or do conferences or meetings, etc., then you can find me on LinkedIn with my name. And the most exciting thing I guess, if I may just throw that out there for anybody who might be interested, I finally found a little membership space for myself that I’m really excited about. So I’ve always been a huge

MR: Sure.

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: fan of reading ever since I was a little girl, Sherlock Holmes books, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, all the things. And then visual thinking, how can I combine those? So I’ve created the Visual Chapter Book Club and I’m really excited. It’s a bring your own book book club, a little bit like bring your own device from school. Excuse me. So everybody brings their own book and what we’re doing is we’re sketchnoting

MR:

GD: the books out together and we meet once a month to share. And it’s a way to inspire other people to rekindle their love of reading and share the books that we’re reading together, but it’s equally a deeper creative practice that we can share in a community space. So there’s three tracks to get started. If somebody is new to visual thinking, they can take the Quote Collector where they just want to sort of sketch out a quote from a chapter and do that monthly.

MR: Mm, that’s smart. Yeah.

GD: There’s also the Character Catcher, so you’re focusing on just a character’s development, if it’s a fiction book, for example, and map out the character’s journey, or there’s the Chapter Mapper, and so you could do a chapter a month, or you could do a whole book. Like it’s really whatever you want it to be. Read five books in a month if you want and sketchnote them. But I’ve got these three tracks to help people get started if they don’t know where to start. And we are in beta right now. We’re just finishing up the first month at the end of this week, actually, and it’s on fire.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Mm-hmm.

GD: You know, you can relate to this, Mike, because you are on Substack now as well. Some chat spaces are really hard to get going, whether it’s Slack or, you know, Substack or whatever it is.

But my chat is going like every week, people talking about the stationery they want to use, the tools, what they’re reading, the character. So it’s really lovely practice to see the community coming together. So if anybody is interested, we’re doing the full launch in September and the doors open at the end of July. So you’re welcome to subscribe to the newsletter to get all the updates on that. But if you love reading or would like to get back into it and love visual things, then this is definitely a space for you.

MR: Hm. And is there a URL that someone should go to to see the details of that?

GD: Absolutely. And I sent it to you in the show notes. It’s experience dot Georgina Dean dot com slash VCBC for Visual Chapter Book Club. So it’s a bit of a mouthful, but I sent the link. Yep.

MR: Okay. We’ll put a link in the show notes, yeah for sure. We always do that as a follow up to this, so that’s great.

GD: And we must absolutely, Mike, since you are or started this with other people, shout out to Verona next month. Are you excited?

MR: Yes. Yep. I’m very excited. We’re coming in pretty quickly and all my plans are set up and I’m excited to see what that’s gonna be like. I’m sure Verona’s gonna be a beautiful city. If you’re listening to this and you are kind of curious what this is, it’s the International Sketchnote Camp, started in 2017, almost ten years ago, by four women that just felt like we should have a physical gathering. And it just has continued because the community is so vibrant.

Each at the end of every event, someone stands up and says, we’re bringing it to this city. And it’s happened again and again to the point where I just now expect someone’s gonna stand up and take it. Like it’s funny, the first few times my assumption was, well, that was really fun. It’s probably the last one. You know, like the Dread Pirate Roberts, you know. He’ll probably kill you in the morning. But he never does, right? And so it’s always continued through many cities. It’s survived through the pandemic.

GD:

MR: Which is a huge indicator of community strength. And this year it’s in Verona. Very reasonably priced, I think, for what’s offered. It’s a weekend, so it’s not a super commitment. If you’re in Europe, very accessible. If you’re outside of Europe, it’s a little bit more of a commitment, but doable. Yeah. Go to Sketchnote Lab and you can find links to it. I think I’ve posted on SketchnoteArmy.substack.com as well.

but then you can also just do a search for International Sketchnote Camp Verona and you’ll find the information for that. So for sure. I think the very first episode released in this season of the podcast is also with Claudio and Federica who are two of the organizers, right? So you can hear a little bit more of their passion and what their plans are for it if you go back to that podcast episode, which is a good reminder.

GD: Federica.

MR: Since we’re talking about show notes, to make sure that I link to that in the show notes so you can go back and jump back. So yes, I’m excited. I can’t wait to see everybody, including you, and be with my community again. So exciting stuff. Thanks for the reminder.

GD: It’s very yeah, it’s very addictive. If you’re listening to this podcast episode and you’ve never been to one, like my first one was in San Antonio, Texas, a couple of years ago. And I will I hope to never miss a year ever. Like the people are just unlike any other community. It’s super unique. Everybody has something to offer. There’s no

MR: Unique.

GD: limit on skill level, beginners to pros. We all learn from each other. It’s incredible. Honestly. It’s a trip of a lifetime every year and don’t miss it guys if you’re listening. Join us.

MR: Yeah.

MR: Yeah, that’s for sure. Find it. Well, Georgina, thanks for being on the show. Thanks everyone who’s listening or watching. It’s another episode of the podcast. Coming up on two hundred of these. So until the next time, this is Mike Rohde and Georgina signing off for another episode. Talk to you soon.

GD: Thanks for having me, Mike.

MR: You’re welcome.

Sketchnote Lab is Mike Rohde’s space designed to bridge the gap between sketchnote theory and practice. You don’t need to be an artist to think visually. Join Mike and learn to use sketchnotes to clarify your thinking, solve problems, and move forward. Learn more about Sketchnote Lab.

Mike is the author of The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook, bestselling books that teach regular people how to start sketchnoting and build a regular sketchnoting practice.

He founded the Sketchnote Army and hosts the Sketchnote Podcast, where he interviews visual thinkers to understand what makes them tick.

Mike teaches recorded, live, and in-person workshops to help accelerate your sketchnoting practice and provides personalized coaching for your specific visual thinking challenges.

He is the illustrator of bestselling books like REWORK, REMOTE, The $100 Startup, Honest SEO, The Culture Playbook, and The Future Begins with Z.

Become a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner to support Mike’s work.

Some links in Sketchnote Lab posts are affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools and resources I use and believe in.

©2026 Mike Rohde, Sketchnote Lab

He stands, picks up an air saw, and begins slicing the front fender of the high-end sports car without hesitation. He’s focused, relaxed, and completely at ease with what he’s about to do to a rare car.

Akira founded Rauh-Welt Begriff (RWB). He’s created some of the coolest custom Porsches in the world. Watch Akira build RWB “Shingen” to see his process, or look at the RWB registry of cars he’s created.

When I discovered Nakai-San, I was captivated by his passion for transforming Porsches into one-of-a-kind works of art. The more I delved into his story, the more I saw inspiration for sketching ideas.

What can a guy who transforms machines into art teach us about creation?
Here are the three lessons I learned from his work:

1. He puts in the reps

Akira’s confidence slicing up Porsches didn’t happen overnight. He spent years cutting up his own cars: slicing metal, strapping fender pieces together with zip ties, screws, and caulk, then driving his makeshift creations to validate his ideas.

He earned his reputation by doing the work for years in the Japanese drifting community, long before he could command high prices to express his vision.

Lesson: You won’t get better at sketching by wishing, scrolling, or hoping. You will get better by putting your pen on paper, even if you’re creating ugly sketches only a mother could love. Those ugly sketches are valuable because they’re quick, require minimal commitment, and get your mind and body moving.

Once you’re moving, you’re building the experience and muscle that leads to sketching fluency. Get your reps in. Sketch when you aren’t sure of a thought and need to see your thinking visible on the page. Ugly sketches work!

2. He studies first

There are two tidbits in Akira’s story that caught my attention: he spends time with the Porsche owner to understand them as a person, and then spends a few hours looking at the vehicle before spinning a saw blade. He’s investing time in doing his homework before the actual work.

His approach reminds me of Michelangelo, who said, “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”

Lesson: My job is to see what’s inside the problem that wants to emerge. How can I reveal the solution with rough pen strokes on a page?

Focus on exploration and clarity to create a useful sketch that solves the problem, rather than making a perfectly drawn sketch that fails the challenge.

3. He does things his own way

Akira’s builds are polarizing. Porsche purists call RWB sacrilege, but the people on his waiting lists who pay $100k for his cars? They don’t care. He does what he believes and lets the work stand on its own.

Lesson: You have a unique way of looking at the world, and with sketching, you can deliver clarity with visual fluency. Sketch what you know and see with the skills you already have. Don’t wait for permission or worry about imperfect drawing skills.

Every time you do this work, your skills improve, and you have new resources to draw on for the next challenge. You might be surprised how well your ugly sketches communicate ideas to people.

— Mike Rohde, Chief Scientist, Sketchnote Lab

Sketchnote Lab is Mike Rohde’s space designed to bridge the gap between sketchnote theory and practice. You don’t need to be an artist to think visually. Join Mike and learn to use sketchnotes to clarify your thinking, solve problems, and move forward. Learn more about Sketchnote Lab.

Mike is the author of The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook, bestselling books that teach regular people how to start sketchnoting and build a regular sketchnoting practice.

He founded the Sketchnote Army and hosts the Sketchnote Podcast, where he interviews visual thinkers to understand what makes them tick.

Mike teaches recorded, live, and in-person workshops to help accelerate your sketchnoting practice and provides personalized coaching for your specific visual thinking challenges.

He is the illustrator of bestselling books like REWORK, REMOTE, The $100 Startup, Honest SEO, The Culture Playbook, and The Future Begins with Z.

Become a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner to support Mike’s work.

© Copyright 2026, Mike Rohde

We dig into his origin story, his workflow, why story always comes first, and what it means to stay a creative person through a period of real upheaval.

Listen to the episode:

Running Order

• Introduction to Atom Brum and his unique artistic approach

• How AI amplifies Atom’s visual storytelling and character design

• The multifaceted nature of AI: helpful tool vs. distracting fad

• The importance of capturing emotion over technical perfection

• Stories that defy Hollywood conventions, rooted in authenticity

• Atom’s visual and narrative style — simple moments, deep messages

• Finding inspiration through everyday observation and mindfulness

• The origin of the “green nose” signature and playful branding

• Atom’s creative background and how it influences his process

• The importance of organic, unfiltered creation and embracing imperfections

• Practical tools: drawing on paper, digital platforms, and AI workflows

• Using AI platforms like Nano Banana for character stylization and scene building

• The challenges and opportunities of AI in creating complex scenes with many characters

• The limitations of current tools and the importance of human oversight

• Moving from digital characters to physical needle felt creations

• The impact and ethics of AI — control, control, control, and environmental considerations

• Tips for creatives: letting go of filters, preparing materials, and trusting the process

• The significance of humor, playfulness, and authenticity in artistic expression

• Atom’s playful “green nose” as a symbol of fun and spontaneity

• Building resilience and a positive mindset amid rapid technological change

• Final thoughts and encouragement for fellow creatives

Resources & Links

• Studio Heartfelt

• Atom on Substack

• Procreate

• Concepts App

• Flora AI Platform

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In the Reflective Travel Workshop, I’ll guide you through my process for creating travel sketchnotes and then help you reflect on your own photos and memories so that you can make travel sketchnotes of your own trips, too!

This 2-hour recorded video includes a set of downloadable, printable sketching templates and a process to kickstart your own travel sketchnoting practice.

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Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everybody, it’s Mike Rohde here again with another episode of the podcast. I’m here with my friend Atom Brum. Atom, it’s so good to have you here.

Atom Brum: Hey hey, Mike, thanks for having me.

MR: Atom is someone I stumbled onto doing Sketchnote Lab, who also writes on the Substack platform. What he produces is something really unique and interesting. He’s with a company he started called Studio Heartfelt, and he produces these really lovely, upbeat, friendly, happy, soft and fuzzy videos using a variety of tools — some that we’ll know and some we won’t. I wanted to hear his process, how he arrived at it, and what his origin story was. So with that, Atom — what is it that you do? How would you describe the work you do with Studio Heartfelt?

AB: Yeah, totally. To back up a little bit — I just passed my first year on Substack. The foundation of my work is stories and poems. What started with illustrated poems has evolved as AI has evolved. I’ve been amplifying my original artwork to adapt it into a felt look, then using those felt digital characters to create visual stories and vignette stills — a lot of six-panel visual stories, and some short films as well. I want to call out that AI has kind of become a dirty word within the space, and I’ve felt this need to pull back the curtain and show how everything starts with stories first, then illustrated characters as the foundation, and AI comes in later once the vision is set. What’s also exciting is taking my 2D illustrations, having Nano Banana adapt them into a physical-looking digital felt character, and then — after months of falling in love with the aesthetic — actually getting into physically making needle-felted characters in the real world.

MR: Yeah, and I think what you’re putting your finger on is that AI is like everything and nothing — there’s a huge range, from a tool that helps you not screw up your grammar, all the way up to doing everything for you. And then there’s the story of people who want to make money off it and couldn’t care less about creativity. It’s a fuzzy, confusing time. What I see in you is that it’s preserving your vision while producing something you couldn’t do before.

AB: Yeah, totally. Something I want to call out for folks listening through audio — the aesthetic I’m going for is a physical needle-felted, photographed look. It’s really important to me that I’m capturing that photographed quality. If it comes out looking digital, I’d have already been doing this in Blender. What I’m doing as a one-man band would not be possible without an understanding of photography, lighting, all of that. And I want to acknowledge that animation and stop motion are crafts and specializations in their own right — I respect that.

MR: I would describe what you’re doing as capturing a feeling. You’re not coming at it with technical perfection as the end result — it’s capturing a spirit, a feeling, an experience. And I think Nano Banana will only get better over time. But the encouraging thing is that you’re focusing on the heart of it first, and the technical stuff is secondary.

AB: Yeah. And I’m starting to see the term “native AI” getting thrown around — I wouldn’t say that applies to what I’m doing, because everything starts with story. The six-panel vignettes might just be a pleasant day at the farmer’s market with friends. The message is showcasing these beautiful little moments of life. The short film — Every Night I Leave My Body — was based on a poem first. At the highest level, the takeaway is that we’re spirits who come to earth for a human experience, and each trial has been designed for the spirit to advance. It all comes from a really natural, organic place. I don’t sit down and think, “what’s the message?” It just comes.

MR: It feels like an exploration. And those little moments in time — I’ve learned this is common in Japanese culture, where there are shows about daily life, just working at a sushi shop, who comes in. In some ways that’s what Cheers was. It’s a way to step out of your life and into someone else’s and empathize with that experience.

AB: Yeah, it’s been incredibly healing for me. How I found Substack was through layoffs — finding a private place where I could express myself. I’ve been slowing down and being more observant. I do a lot of nature walks on the trail these days. I’ll see a ladybug on a leaf and think, that could be something. It’s kind of at odds to use AI this way — trying to create slow, relaxing moments — but it’s really coming from a place of, I need to create this.

MR: Let’s hear your origin story, and about the green nose — people watching can see it, and it’s definitely in your artwork. Then let’s get into your process and tools.

AB: Yeah, like a lot of creatives, I’ve been drawing since I was a kid. I grew up in a household of creatives — my mom is a painter. I really consider visual communication my first language. Whether it was claymation stop-motion films on VHS or making music, I’m just a creative person. My work doesn’t use a lot of perspective or light logic — it’s flat and simple. After three-plus decades of creating, my style has gotten more simple, not less.

When I was graduating high school, I wasn’t jazzed on going to college, so I took what I’d call a gap decade. I worked as a contract illustrator and photographer, primarily food photography in Los Angeles. I was also a screen printer professionally at one point. When I finally did go to college, I studied interaction design at CCA — which is actually what introduced me to your work. Sketchnoting was super helpful for me as someone with a bit of dyslexia. As for the career shift — AI and layoffs really rocked the tech workforce, and that’s shaped where I am now as a lifelong creative pursuing visual storytelling.

MR: And what about tools — where does the process begin?

AB: These days I’m primarily on the iPad. When I draw on paper I prefer pen — I gave up pencils in like second grade. My style is very much let it happen, work with the mistakes. I don’t like looking at photo reference, so sometimes things come out wonky, and that’s the fun of it. For paper I prefer lined Mead notebooks — it takes away the preciousness. For line work on the iPad I use Concepts because it’s vector. The flexibility of stretching, squashing, and moving things is really valuable. Then I’ll export to Procreate for color, because the organic brushes there are really nice.

MR: I’m a big Concepts user too — the vector adjustability is great. So once you’ve colored the character, where does it go next?

AB: From there I’ll bring it into Flora, a creative canvas that aggregates a bunch of AI models. That’s where I’ll select Nano Banana — specifically Nano Banana Pro now, because you can get 4K resolution. I’ll use a prompt like, “use my character and adapt them into a three-dimensional needle-felted look.” Then I make character sheets with multiple angles, and it’s all node-based — you’re constantly pulling reference into various nodes. From there you start feeding characters into different nodes. You can be extremely specific: “the Yeti is on the left side of the frame playing a guitar, sitting...” — the more you articulate the blocking, the more pride you’ll have in the result. The more characters you add to a scene, the more the stability gets rocky. One still — for my Year of the Fire Horse scene with five or six characters — took over 400 tries. On average a still takes 20 to 30 tries.

MR: You’re really using Nano Banana as a production facility with your heavy direction. There has to be a lot of readjustment.

AB: Yeah, it’s a slot machine. When something comes out weird, you look at your blocking and ask: do I need to revise something? Do I need to be more articulate? There are certain things you can recover from in Photoshop and certain things you can’t — like if a character’s head has swapped completely. What I want to say is: AI is absolutely a shortcut to a lot of things. As creators we really need to have the eagle eye and recognize when a shot isn’t good enough, even when you’ve got something that’s 90 to 95% incredible. I want to see people hold a higher standard.

MR: And the limitation of the tool is just that — the tool’s limitation, not yours.

AB: Yeah. I’ve even started drawing characters with their usage in mind. I’ve got a Marionette character held by little birds with strings — the physics are just so far off right now. There’s another character with really twisty arms and legs. I’ve put them on the shelf for a couple of months. Rolling with the limitations.

MR: And now you’re bringing some of these characters into the physical world with needle felting?

AB: Yeah. Looking at these characters for months just pushed me to want them in the real world. My style with a lot of things is: get the supplies and figure it out by jumping in. My journey with needle felting started about six weeks ago and I’m hooked. I’ve made I don’t even know how many characters physically. And honestly, I’m not even sure I’m doing needle felting correctly — I just last week looked into whether I was using the safety bead washers right. I really love sharing my process because art and creativity energize my soul so much that I want people to feel the same thing. I’m getting back in touch with my inner child, and I feel incredibly excited that I’ve found a way to do crafting, drawing, and AI all at once.

MR: You’re clearly using these tools to achieve your ends — not for speed, but for control and expression.

AB: Right. I see so much of the conversation focused on “I made this commercial in five minutes” — and it’s like, whose benefit is that for? It’s just a weird time. And there are ethical and environmental considerations with AI too — water consumption, all of it. I don’t want to be ignorant of that, especially since so much of my work is inspired by the natural world.

MR: Let’s get practical. What would be three tips for someone who’s listening, maybe stuck in a rut, who wants some encouragement?

AB: First — let go of the filter. Just let it flow. Especially in sketchnoting during a live talk: if you’re tripping over details, you’re going to miss information. Get it out. Second — prepare your materials. Do you have the right size notebook? Do you have pens that are satisfying to write with? For me it’s the Marvy Le Pen — I can’t fully explain it, but there’s something really satisfying about those pens. I also use Micron 01, 03, and 08. Third — I’d say just embrace imperfection. Work with the mistakes. When things turn out wonky, that’s all the better.

MR: The Marvy Le Pen! I don’t think anyone has ever mentioned those in 10 years of this podcast. I need to dig those up. The tips tend to get mushy fast since they’re felt-tip, so you need a few in different states.

AB: Oh yeah, I’ve ruined some 01s on the first go. Definitely heavy-handed over here.

MR: Tell me about the green nose as we wrap up.

AB: Yeah, it’s obviously becoming a frequently asked question. It’s my way of just keeping things playful. The work I’m doing is super lighthearted, and how seriously can you take it when you’re drawing a cloud with a face or yesterday’s octopuses? A lot of my characters have a green nose. It came from boredom when my wife was on a trip — I got out the sandpaper, sanded my nose down, and slapped some green paint on it. It’s just become a little signature.

MR: I love those little unique signatures. Well, Atom, thanks so much for being on the show — for sharing your process, your inner motivations, and how you took something negative like a layoff and turned it into something positive and encouraging. Hopefully this discussion will inspire some people who hadn’t thought about it to play around with these tools, and maybe something new comes out of it for them. That’s kind of why we do this.

AB: Thank you so much for having me. I do have a pretty deep dive on the process that walks through all of this with the short film, so folks can get a better understanding of the intentionality and what I’m bringing to each phase. I’ll make sure to send over all the links.

MR: Perfect. Show notes are a big part of the podcast, so we’ll get everything in there. For everyone watching or listening — it’s another episode. Until the next one, this is Mike and Atom. Talk to you soon.

Sketchnote Lab is Mike Rohde’s space designed to bridge the gap between sketchnote theory and practice. You don’t need to be an artist to think visually. Join Mike and learn to use sketchnotes to clarify your thinking, solve problems, and move forward. Learn more about Sketchnote Lab.

Mike is the author of The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook, bestselling books that teach regular people how to start sketchnoting and build a regular sketchnoting practice.

He founded the Sketchnote Army and hosts the Sketchnote Podcast, where he interviews visual thinkers to understand what makes them tick.

Mike teaches recorded, live, and in-person workshops to help accelerate your sketchnoting practice and provides personalized coaching for your specific visual thinking challenges.

He is the illustrator of bestselling books like REWORK, REMOTE, The $100 Startup, Honest SEO, The Culture Playbook, and The Future Begins with Z.

Become a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner to support Mike’s work.

Some links in Sketchnote Lab posts are affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools and resources I use and believe in.

©2026 Mike Rohde, Sketchnote Lab

I had a great time sharing the PROGRESS canvas with Steven and a group of students who traveled along as I presented the problem I’ve chosen: reaching 100 paid Lab Partner subscribers from Sketchnote Lab by the end of the year.

We’re making this session replay free—see below.

What we covered

• The bottleneck — Steven talked about bottlenecks we face when solving problems and how he uses his simple framework to identify them.

• Why drawing the problem matters — a quick bridge on how visual thinking makes complex problems clearer and easier to act on

• The PROGRESS Framework, drawn live — Steven walked through all 8 pillars while I sketchnoted on them in real time

• You draw your own PROGRESS Map — a guided exercise where I filled in the first 4 pillars on the canvas

• Share and debrief — a few attendees shared and ask questions

Here’s some feedback from attendees:

I enjoyed the weaving together of the two expertises. It was a double learning. — Deb F.

Video Replay

The full video is free for everyone this month:

If you find it useful, consider becoming a Lab Partner for 20% off through June 30th to access every replay dating back to December 2024.

Past replays

Lab Partners have access to the full Partner Vault, with every session recorded since December 2024. Browse the Lab Partner Vault

PROGRESS Template Downloads

We shared the template I used on camera if you’d like to give it a try, and Steven has created a web-based tool that lets you create the map digitally.

• Letter-sized PDF — download and print

• A4-sized PDF — download and print

• Steven Lin’s Digital PROGRESS framework canvas — build online

Sketches from the session

Here are my sketches from the session:

Thanks again for a great session!

— Mike Rohde, Chief Scientist, Sketchnote Lab

Sketchnote Lab is Mike Rohde’s space designed to bridge the gap between sketchnote theory and practice. You don’t need to be an artist to think visually. Join Mike and learn to use sketchnotes to clarify your thinking, solve problems, and move forward. Learn more about Sketchnote Lab.

Mike is the author of The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook, bestselling books that teach regular people how to start sketchnoting and build a regular sketchnoting practice.

He founded the Sketchnote Army and hosts the Sketchnote Podcast, where he interviews visual thinkers to understand what makes them tick.

Mike teaches recorded, live, and in-person workshops to help accelerate your sketchnoting practice and provides personalized coaching for your specific visual thinking challenges.

He is the illustrator of bestselling books like REWORK, REMOTE, The $100 Startup, Honest SEO, The Culture Playbook, and The Future Begins with Z.

Become a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner to support Mike’s work.

Some links in Sketchnote Lab posts are affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools and resources I use and believe in.

©2026 Mike Rohde, Sketchnote Lab

This session is a little different from my usual Lab Live sessions.

I’m joining forces with business coach for a hands-on session where Steven walks through his PROGRESS Framework, I draw it as he speaks, and then you draw your own version.

By the end of the hour, you’ll have something on paper that maps your own situation and points to the next move.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re the bottleneck in your own work (stuck firefighting instead of building), this session is worth showing up for.

What we’ll cover

• The bottleneck — Steven will talk about bottlenecks we face when solving problems and how he uses his simple framework to identify them.

• Why drawing the problem matters — a quick bridge on how visual thinking makes complex problems clearer and easier to act on

• The PROGRESS Framework, drawn live — Steven walks through all 8 pillars while I sketchnote them in real time

• You draw your own PROGRESS Map — a guided exercise where you fill in your own answers to each pillar, making it personal to your situation

• Share and debrief — a few attendees share their maps, Steven reacts to what he sees, Q&A to close

What to bring

Paper and a pen. That’s it. Digital apps work too: Procreate, Notability, GoodNotes. Just come ready to draw.

About Steven Lin

Steven Lin is a business coach and creator of the PROGRESS Framework, a structured approach to helping founders stop being the bottleneck in their own business. He publishes The School of PROGRESS on Substack.

Steven’s framework is exactly the kind of structured thinking that sketchnoting was made for. I’m looking forward to drawing it live while he explains it.

Join us

Register for free to spend an hour with Steven and me solving your problems:

Register for the session

Saturday, June 13, 2026 — 12:00–1:00 pm CDT (10:00 am PDT / 1:00 pm EDT)

The live session is free for all subscribers. The video replay is for paid Lab Partners.

Not able to make it live? Become a Lab Partner to watch the replay — plus get access to every session recorded since December 2024.

And if you do join us live, I have a 20% off summer discount on Supporting and Founding Lab Partnerships as a thank-you for attending.

sketchnotelab.com/summer20

— Mike Rohde, Chief Scientist, Sketchnote Lab

Sketchnote Lab is Mike Rohde’s space designed to bridge the gap between sketchnote theory and practice. You don’t need to be an artist to think visually. Join Mike and learn to use sketchnotes to clarify your thinking, solve problems, and move forward. Learn more about Sketchnote Lab.

Mike is the author of The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook, bestselling books that teach regular people how to start sketchnoting and build a regular sketchnoting practice.

He founded the Sketchnote Army and hosts the Sketchnote Podcast, where he interviews visual thinkers to understand what makes them tick.

Mike teaches recorded, live, and in-person workshops to help accelerate your sketchnoting practice and provides personalized coaching for your specific visual thinking challenges.

He is the illustrator of bestselling books like REWORK, REMOTE, The $100 Startup, Honest SEO, The Culture Playbook, and The Future Begins with Z.

Become a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner to support Mike’s work.

Some links in Sketchnote Lab posts are affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools and resources I use and believe in.

©2026 Mike Rohde, Sketchnote Lab

Listen to the episode:

Running Order

• Introduction to the podcast style and guest

• Who is Tabitha Walker, and her background

• How travel journaling sparked her visual work

• The story behind her Mongolia trip and visual travel log

• Early artistic influences and formative childhood experiences

• Transition from analysis to graphic recording

• Challenges of large-scale drawing and building confidence

• The meditative state during recording sessions

• Developing a personal style and learning from others

• The role of randomness and serendipity in career paths

• Impartiality and filter skills in graphic recording

• Handling logistical challenges with tools and venue surfaces

• Building adaptable workflows and preparing for mobile recording

• Managing equipment and logistical planning, including vetting venues

• Exploring digital tools like iPad and Procreate for remote work

• Techniques for digital versus analog recording

• Creating effective readouts and summaries post-event

• Innovating with digital presentations and paid add-ons

• Practical advice for visual thinkers: practice, style, authenticity

• Three tips for aspiring visual thinkers

• Connecting with Tabitha and her online presence

• Closing remarks and appreciation

Resources & Links

• Sketched Journeys — Substack

• Sketched Journeys — Business Website

• Procreate

• Neuland Markers

• Faber-Castell 9000 Pencils

• Pentel Slicci 0.25

• Uni-ball Signo DX 0.38

• Watercolor Pencils — Faber-Castell

• White Acrylic Markers

Sponsored by The Reflective Travel Workshop

Have you ever wanted to create travel sketchnotes from an experience you’ve had, just using the photos and memories you’ve got?

In the Reflective Travel Workshop, I’ll guide you through my process for creating travel sketchnotes and then help you reflect on your own photos and memories so that you can make travel sketchnotes of your own trips, too!

This 2-hour recorded video includes a set of downloadable, printable sketching templates and a process to kickstart your own travel sketchnoting practice.

All this for just $20.

Buy the Workshop for $20

Subscribe to the Sketchnote Podcast

You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.

Support the Podcast

To support the creation, production, and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!

Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it’s Mike Rohde. I’m here with Tabitha Walker. Tabitha, it’s so good to have you on the show.

Tabitha Walker: Hello, I’m really excited to be here. Yeah.

MR: Pretty awesome to have you. I’ve been following you for a while. I think we crossed paths on Substack.

TW: Yeah, that’s right. And I’ve been following your work since I got into graphic recording, like 10 years ago.

MR: Wow. We probably have friends in common — Heather Martinez is one, and Brian Teralo is another. But before we get into reminiscing, let me ask you: who are you and what do you do, Tabitha?

TW: So I am a graphic recorder, instructional designer, and travel artist based in the Washington DC area. I live in Northern Virginia, about 45 minutes outside of the city. I’m originally from North Carolina, born and grew up there. I moved here a little over 15 years ago. It’s definitely not the South. It was a bit of a culture shock. I’ve got a dog, I enjoy traveling, I like eating, I like coffee.

MR: I’m very aware of your travel journals — that’s probably how we connected. This last year I’ve been into travel journaling myself. I traveled to Scotland, did a sketchnote of that experience, shared the story, and it turned into a course. Seeing your work, I really liked the way you approach it.

TW: Yeah, I didn’t start out doing visual journaling when I travel. At first I would just write it out, but over time I thought — I like drawing, I like traveling, I like writing, so why not combine the three? Almost two years ago I went to Mongolia for my birthday with a small travel group. I had a journal and I started jotting down and drawing pictures of the people I was with. One day one of the guys saw my journal and said, you really need to publish this. Everybody started looking at it. That’s where I got the idea for the visual travel log and Substack.

MR: I would love to hear your origin story. Since you were a little girl, what drew you to visual stuff?

TW: One of my earliest memories is when I was three — the first time I remember getting in trouble was for drawing on the wall in my room. Little stick figures, sunshine, smiley faces. My dad saw it and I got in trouble. But about a week later he came home with a huge ream of white paper he’d found at work and taped it to a blank wall in my room. He said, okay Tabby, now you can draw on the wall — if there’s paper on the wall you can draw on that. Fast forward all these years and now I make part of my living graphic recording, where I draw on white paper hanging on walls. It came full circle.

I’ve always been a very artistic person. My mother was also very artistic. Art class was my favorite in school. I didn’t go to school for art or design — I actually went for international relations and area studies. I started out working as an analyst with the federal government, nothing to do with drawing. Over the years I taught English abroad and worked as an ESL teacher at a community college. About seven years ago I went to school for instructional design. And my graphic recording journey happened kind of on a fluke — I was doodling in my calendar one day and a coworker said, she’d make a great graphic recorder. I thought, what’s that? She said go on YouTube and look it up. I saw a guy at a TED talk drawing on white paper hanging on a wall and I thought — I did that when I was three. I could do that.

MR: Was the transition from small-scale sketchnoting to large-scale graphic recording a big one?

TW: It was. The first thing I struggled with was how to fill up the whole chart — spacing, what do you put where, what do you do with the title. The first one I did was internal at work, a leadership conference. I was recording in a separate location so people couldn’t see me, and I remember feeling a little relieved. Now I do recordings while people are watching and it doesn’t bother me.

MR: I think you sort of get into a zone where you’re not even aware people are looking at you.

TW: It’s very almost meditative. When I record, I go to another dimension where it’s just me and the person talking. Over time with practice I’ve gotten better at also reading what other people are doing in the room — feeling people’s energy — even if they’re not talking.

MR: How did your background as an analyst impact your shift into graphic recording?

TW: I did that job for five and a half years. I was a media analyst — looking at trends, key topics. I had to learn to take all this information and distill it into key points that are concise and easy for people to understand, so they can look at one sheet of paper and walk away with the five main things. With graphic recording you get a fire hose and you have to make those decisions in the moment: what am I going to record and what do I leave off? Think of the sketchnoter as the filter — all this stuff comes in and you take out what’s key.

MR: And graphic recorders really strive to be as neutral as they can be. I imagine that carried over from your analyst training too.

TW: Yes — they were very clear that you have to be impartial, you can’t be partisan, you just report what’s there. You can’t make an inference. That carries right over. With the graphic recording I got to draw it out on paper instead of writing reports at a desk all day.

MR: Let’s talk about the logistical side — traveling to events, the toolkit, the challenges.

TW: You have to be familiar with your toolkit, know what to pack and how to pack it, vet the venue. Maybe the lighting’s bad, maybe there isn’t anywhere to hang papers so you have to bring a portable wall — that’s a whole other thing to transport. I now have an intake form with questions I ask before agreeing to even do the recording. There’ve been a few times I was told there’s a place to hang paper and then there isn’t. In those cases I’ll just do large-scale sketchnotes instead. I’ve never had a dissatisfied client when that happens.

MR: What about iPad — do you use that professionally?

TW: I haven’t used it professionally yet. I’ve done some informal recordings over Zoom meetups with other recorders. I’m definitely more of an analog person, but I’m getting my nerve up to do a digital recording. One thing I do like about it is you could be anywhere — I don’t have to travel to the event. I can be at home and record. I’ve also done recordings where a client asked me to create a graphic recording based on slides and notes after the fact — I know some recorders won’t do that, but it doesn’t bother me. It’s practice.

MR: You mentioned doing a chart readout. Tell me about that.

TW: The first time I did one was last year — I was asked on the fly to share with everybody what I’d captured. I spoke for about 10 to 15 minutes, condensing eight hours of content down to here’s what we talked about, the key themes that came up multiple times, the comments that elicited strong reactions. People got a lot out of it. It helps the attendees process when they’ve been deep in the material all day. The recording is also left there for them to look at, take pictures, ask questions.

MR: Have you thought about including it as a paid add-on in your proposals?

TW: That’s a really good idea. And it also helps with impartiality — as the scribe, you’re the impartial third party. I don’t have any stakes in this. I just heard what you said, and these are the reactions I noticed. It even helps clear up miscommunication. At some off-sites, a manager might think people are upset about one thing and it turns out through the recording it’s something completely different.

MR: Let’s talk about tools. I’m going to guess you use a lot of Neuland markers.

TW: I do. For graphic recording I use the Neuland Big One and Number One chisel tip markers. For visual journaling and sketchnoting I use the Neuland Fine One. They also came out with some felt tip pens I want to try. I’ve also just started using a white acrylic marker to add some foil accents to letters — still getting the hang of it.

For my smaller-scale work, my go-to pens are the Uni-ball Signo DX 0.38 — it dries really fast, which matters. I buy them in boxes of 12. The other one is the Pentel Slicci 0.25 — really fine, fits my hand really well. For pencils I use the Faber-Castell 9000 in different grades, and also graphite watercolor pencils where you can add water to get different shades of gray. For travel journaling I’ll bring maybe two small pencils, a couple of the 0.38 pens, a few watercolor pencils, and a water brush pen — just fill it up, screw the tip back on. Make sure you empty it before you go through airport security. Keep it simple.

MR: And digitally?

TW: iPad, Apple Pencil, and Procreate. I don’t know how to use Photoshop or Illustrator — Procreate works really well for my personal style. All the little drawings on my Substack I drew in Procreate. I also used Procreate to turn my handwriting into a font through Gumroad — there was a lot of trial and error but it worked really well. I should write that process up. The biggest hurdle with Procreate has been figuring out the right brushes. When I recently upgraded my iPad they didn’t transfer over, so I had to rebuild them.

MR: Let’s get practical. What would be three tips for someone who’s a visual thinker and maybe stuck in a rut?

TW: Number one: there is no right or wrong way to do this work. Everybody has their own unique way of processing information and transferring that to a journal or a chart or an iPad. The way you sketchnote won’t look like the way I sketchnote, and they’re all valid pieces of work. Just start — don’t get hung up on whether you’re doing it right.

Number two: practice to find your own unique style, and it’s okay if your style changes over time. The way my work looks now is not the same as it looked 10 years ago or even five years ago. It’s going to morph and evolve, and that’s okay.

Number three: it’s okay if your work doesn’t look like other people’s. Don’t feel like you have to dim your light to try to fit in with how other people are doing it. If you want to work in black and white, or all caps, or cursive — that’s your unique style. And that’s also good for business, because when people see a piece of work, they’ll know it’s yours.

MR: Great tips. How do people find you?

TW: I’m on Substack under Sketch Journeys for the travel journaling side. You can also reach me by email at tabitha@sketchjourneys.com or at my business website sketchjourneys.com, which covers the graphic recording side.

MR: It’s so good to have you on the show, Tabitha. Thanks so much for sharing your story and your process. For anyone watching or listening, that’s another episode. Until the next one, this is Mike Rohde — talk to you soon.

Sketchnote Lab is Mike Rohde’s space designed to bridge the gap between sketchnote theory and practice. You don’t need to be an artist to think visually. Join Mike and learn to use sketchnotes to clarify your thinking, solve problems, and move forward. Learn more about Sketchnote Lab.

Mike is the author of The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook, bestselling books that teach regular people how to start sketchnoting and build a regular sketchnoting practice.

He founded the Sketchnote Army and hosts the Sketchnote Podcast, where he interviews visual thinkers to understand what makes them tick.

Mike teaches recorded, live, and in-person workshops to help accelerate your sketchnoting practice and provides personalized coaching for your specific visual thinking challenges.

He is the illustrator of bestselling books like REWORK, REMOTE, The $100 Startup, Honest SEO, The Culture Playbook, and The Future Begins with Z.

Become a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner to support Mike’s work.

Some links in Sketchnote Lab posts are affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools and resources I use and believe in.

©2026 Mike Rohde, Sketchnote Lab

Happy June 2026! The sketchnote above was created during Danny Gregory’s Paris in a Day session, live with Sketchbook Skool. What a blast! If you want to learn more about Danny and his work, check out the podcast interview I did with him.

What’s in this issue?

• 5 Cool Things to share with you

• Sketchnote Lab May - Foundations Replay: Drawing People with Alejo Porras

• Coming soon: Sketchnote Lab Live June: Problem-Solving with Steven Lin

• Sketchnote Podcast's latest 5 episodes are live

• Sketchnote Lab 2026 Schedule - see what’s happening each month of 2026

Five Cool Things

Here are five cool things I thought you would enjoy:

❥ 1. The Neuroscience of Doodling: Understanding Attention and Creativity - Bryant Del Toro gets into the brain reasons why doodling is so good for you and how it helps you focus and recall more later.

❥ 2. The Story of Tomoe River Paper - This Japanese paper maker, which appears in the Hobonichi Techo, is legendary. I’ve always wondered how they make it so thin and yet handle fountain pen nibs and ink.

❥ 3. 4 Tips for More Balanced Journal Pages - In this article, my friend walks you through using the whole page, creating drafts, balancing drawings and text, and a final secret to make any page look better. Thanks, Zsofi!

❥ 4. You Haven't Drawn in 30 Years? Good. - My friend encourages you to pick up a pen or pencil and draw, especially if you haven’t for 30 years! Yes!!

❥ 5. Sketchnote Army Archive - I’ve moved every last Sketchnote Army blog post to a dedicated archive site featuring 1,000+ posts dating back to 2009. Includes podcast episodes too (over 175 to choose from). Check it out!

Sketchnote Lab Live Replay: May 2026 - Foundations: Drawing People w/ Alejo Porras

What We Covered

• The 5 Basic Shapes for people - how squares, circles, triangles, lines, and dots are the building blocks of recognizable figures.

• Heads, bodies, and proportion — practical rules of thumb for getting figures to look right quickly, without overthinking.

• Live drawing demos — I walked through building figures step by step, from stick-figure basics to more structured forms.

• Movement and gesture with Alejo Porras — Alejo showed how to add fluidity and dynamism to figures, so they feel alive on the page rather than stiff or static.

Here’s a little taste of Alejo on what people get wrong about drawing:

Watch the Full Video Replay

If you aren’t a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner, watch the full video recording by becoming a Lab Partner. You’ll also get access to the Partner Vault, with recordings from everything I’ve done here from December 2024 onward.

Watch the Replay (Members)

Sketchnote Lab Live June - Sketchnote Problem-Solving with Steven Lin

​In June, special guest Steven Lin will bring a challenge, and I’ll use sketchnoting to visualize the problem and brainstorm potential solutions.

​Watch as I work with Steven, sketchnoting solutions visually, live, while you watch. My goal is to show you how you can sketchnote solutions, too.

The session is free to all subscribers, with the recorded replay video available exclusively to Supporting and Founding Lab Partners (which includes all video replays since December 2024).

Sign up for the session (Free)

The Sketchnote Podcast’s Latest Episodes

The Sketchnote Podcast launched Season 1 in May with five episodes already out. Here’s a quick look at who’s been on the show:

S1/E1 — Federica Tabone & Claudio Nichele: Sketchnote Camp Verona 2026
The organizers of this summer’s International Sketchnote Camp in Verona, Italy, walk through the event. It’s a joint gathering of the ISC and European Visual Practitioners communities, running as a BarCamp Plus with participant-led sessions and a collective harvesting on the final day.

S1/E2 — Danny Gregory: Art with a Lowercase “a”
Founder of Sketchbook Skool and author of a dozen books on drawing and the creative life, Danny talks about how a personal tragedy sent him to a sketchbook and why he believes drawing belongs to everyone. not just trained artists.

S1/E3 — Sarah Greer & Adrian Peryer: Rethinking Meetings
Co-founders of Shared Vision Toolkit, Sarah and Adrian have spent decades turning ordinary meetings into immersive, co-creative experiences. They talk about their Design-Centric Facilitation approach, why 80% of the work happens before anyone walks in the room, and how live visual capture builds alignment that words alone can’t.

S1/E4 — David Armano: Unlocking Creativity in the Age of AI
Designer, creative director, and writer David Armano digs into how visual thinkers can use AI without losing what makes their work distinctly human, and why developing a recognizable style and doubling down on in-person experience matters more than ever right now.

S1/E5 — Andrew Tan: Embracing Creativity, Reflection, and Tools
Singapore-based freelance illustrator and Drewscape creator Andrew Tan traces his path from accidental business major to independent illustrator, sharing what he’s learned about vintage fountain pens, monoprinting, working confidently with pen on paper, and giving yourself permission to be imperfect.

All five episodes are available at sketchnotelab.com, SimpleCast, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

I have 5 more episodes this season to share, dropping every Tuesday through July 7th, wrapping up with the popular “All The Tips” episode 10.

Sketchnote Lab Schedule for 2026

I have two focus areas for 2026:

1. Teaching foundations for people new to sketchnoting

2. Live problem-solving sessions to show how you can use sketchnotes as a thinking and problem-solving tool at work and in your everyday life.

You can see January-May replays already as a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner!

Check out the full 2026 schedule.

Last Month’s Sketchnote Lab Posts

Here’s what happened at Sketchnote Lab last month:

Become a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner to support my work and access all Live Lab recorded replays since December 2024.

Subscribe now

Buy My Books

You have what it takes to create sketchnotes, even if you’re a complete beginner at drawing. My two books help you get started today!

The Sketchnote Handbook

This fully illustrated book is designed to teach people without any drawing skills how to create sketchnotes. You’ll learn how to capture your thinking visually, remember key information more clearly, and share what you’ve learned with others. Have fun taking notes again!

Learn more about The Sketchnote Handbook

The Sketchnote Workbook

This fully illustrated book and 2-hour video are the sequel to The Sketchnote Handbook, which shows you how to use sketchnotes in your everyday life to brainstorm ideas, plan projects, document processes, record travels, and more. Learn how sketchnotes help you think better!

Learn more about The Sketchnote Workbook

Sketchnoting Workshops

Check out my sketchnoting workshop videos to build your lettering, layout, and icon-creation skills for your sketchnotes, or to learn my travel sketchnote method.

Sketchnoting Skills Workshops

Custom Sketchnote Workshops

I love teaching teams like yours how to think visually and sketch simply with Custom Sketchnote Workshops.

I've presented workshops at schools: Drexel University, Marquette University, and The University of Michigan; Anne Arundel, New York City, and Fresno school districts.

I’ve also presented workshops for teams at SmugMug/Flickr, Hubspot, Northwestern Mutual, Johnson Controls, Dentsu Creative, and Sibley Memorial Hospital.

I’d love to teach your team as well. Let’s talk!

Sketchnote Lab is Mike Rohde’s space designed to bridge the gap between sketchnote theory and practice. You don’t need to be an artist to think visually. Join Mike and learn to use sketchnotes to clarify your thinking, solve problems, and move forward. Learn more about Sketchnote Lab.

Mike is the author of The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook, bestselling books that teach regular people how to start sketchnoting and build a regular sketchnoting practice.

He founded the Sketchnote Army and hosts the Sketchnote Podcast, where he interviews visual thinkers to understand what makes them tick.

Mike teaches recorded, live, and in-person workshops to help accelerate your sketchnoting practice and provides personalized coaching for your specific visual thinking challenges.

He is the illustrator of bestselling books like REWORK, REMOTE, The $100 Startup, Honest SEO, The Culture Playbook, and The Future Begins with Z.

Become a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner to support Mike’s work.

Some links in Sketchnote Lab posts are affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools and resources I use and believe in.

©2026 Mike Rohde, Sketchnote Lab

We dig into how his years as an advertising art director shaped his approach to working with clients, his love of vintage fountain pens, the push-and-pull between analog and digital tools, and what he’s learned about confidence, contrast, and giving yourself permission to be imperfect.

Listen to the episode:

Running Order

• Introduction and Andrew’s journey from YouTube rabbit holes to professional illustration

• The significance of sketching as a reflection tool and its flexibility

• How culture and background influence Andrew’s artistic path in Singapore and America

• Transitioning from art direction to independent freelancing

• How Andrew’s art direction experience shapes his illustration work

• Insights into Andrew’s tools: vintage fountain pens, monoprints, and more

• The impact of storyboarding and speed training in Andrew’s skillset

• Effects of the pandemic on Andrew’s professional projects and his COVID Chronicle series

• Cultural perspectives on comics and visual storytelling in Asia and Singapore

• Changing perceptions of comics from kids’ entertainment to sophisticated storytelling mediums

• Favorite tools: iPad Pro, Procreate, and challenges with digital vs. traditional mediums

• Embracing imperfections and the psychology of confident drawing

• Techniques for sketching and illustration workflow, combining paper and iPad

• Practical tips for visual thinkers in a creative rut: spontaneity, contrast, and permission

• Connecting with Andrew: YouTube, website, and ongoing courses

Resources & Links:

• Drewscape — YouTube

• Drewscape — Website and Blog

• Andrew’s Skillshare Courses

• Procreate

• Adobe Illustrator

• Greg Minuskin Vintage Fountain Pens

• Monoprint Techniques — Overview

Sponsored by The Reflective Travel Workshop

Have you ever wanted to create travel sketchnotes from an experience you’ve had, just using the photos and memories you’ve got?

In the Reflective Travel Workshop, I’ll guide you through my process for creating travel sketchnotes and then help you reflect on your own photos and memories so that you can make travel sketchnotes of your own trips, too!

This 2-hour recorded video includes a set of downloadable, printable sketching templates and a process to kickstart your own travel sketchnoting practice.

All this for just $20.

Buy the Workshop for $20

Subscribe to the Sketchnote Podcast

You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.

Support the Podcast

To support the creation, production, and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!

Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everybody, it’s Mike and I’m here with Andrew Tan. Andrew, it’s so good to have you on the show. Thanks for being here.

Andrew Tan: Thanks for having me, Mike.

MR: I was cruising around on YouTube and stumbled across this guy teaching how to do diary comics. I watched the whole video, went down the rabbit hole, watched all the videos you made, and reached out. I was so inspired that I put together a one-hour diary sketchnotes workshop on Sketchnote Lab and people really loved it. So thank you for that.

AT: You’re welcome. I didn’t invent the diary comic concept, but I was amazed at how you took to it.

MR: When I find cool things I think others will like, I try to share. Tell us who you are and what you do, Andrew.

AT: I work as a freelance illustrator — I do stuff for various clients, work from home, love the flexibility. I’m also a parent with two kids. These recent few years I’ve been teaching more — I’m an adjunct lecturer at a local art school. I think I got the love for teaching from my mom, who used to be a teacher, and the drawing part from my dad, who was an architect. I also like solving things, which can keep me up at night, but it’s also how I learned art. I didn’t go to art school — I was a business major — so figuring out how to draw something was like solving a problem for me.

MR: Tell us your origin story. You’re in Singapore, which is a unique culture. How did you come to where you are?

AT: Like all kids, I liked drawing. I liked it even more when people said I could draw well. I was a daydreamer — drawing was like playing with action figures on paper. What got me interested was Star Wars. I drew Star Wars comics in my school exercise books. My mom threw those away.

I wanted to study art, but my dad said artists don’t make money and sent me to Washington State University for four years to study mass comm and business. When I came back, I wanted to be an art director but didn’t have a portfolio, so I went to a certificate course in graphic design — at the same school I’m teaching at now, actually. I eventually got into advertising and became an art director doing work for corporate clients like banks. But I was at the agency until 11pm three times a week, handling five projects at once. I wanted out but my dad said don’t quit until you have clients lined up. My mood just got worse and worse until my boss picked up on it and said he thought it was time for me to leave. I was really happy. I told my dad and went straight into freelancing. I’ve never looked for another job since — that was about 20 years ago.

MR: Your art director background probably helps you understand exactly what clients need.

AT: Yeah, I know exactly what the art director is asking for, or I’ll ask the questions to get me there. And I already critique my own work before I hand it over — sometimes there are hardly any changes, or I’ll even propose changes they hadn’t thought of. I just have to be careful not to seem like I’m taking over their role. I stay in my lane as the illustrator and supplier.

MR: You did some storyboarding early on that must have trained your speed.

AT: A former lecturer gave me storyboarding work for Sony and other TVCs — 15 frames in two days, all colored in Photoshop. That definitely trained my speed and clarity. Right now I’m doing mostly finished editorial illustrations, which is really rewarding because there’s a concept and I’m free to find the right picture for it. During the pandemic the advertising jobs dropped off, but the National University Hospital commissioned me to do the COVID Chronicle comic series — chronicling the pandemic from inside the hospital, combating fake news with real facts. I did that for about two or three years, once or twice a week.

MR: Do you think there’s more acceptance of comics and visual storytelling in Asia compared to the West?

AT: I think we’re getting influences from all over — West and Japan. Education books are definitely using more comics now, where before you’d never bring comics to school. The manga and anime style resonates with younger people. I wouldn’t say Singapore is as immersed in it as Japan — there everything from train posters to books for housewives to books for businessmen is anime. Singapore is somewhere in the middle, with influences from both directions. But in any case, graphics help communicate to wider audiences. You can get something from just the visual, and then text plus visual gives you even more.

MR: Let’s talk tools. What are your go-tos?

AT: I got really into vintage fountain pens. What got me started was dip pens and the thick-to-thin pressure line they gave me. Vintage fountain pens could do the same thing. I found Greg Minuskin in California — he’s like an Indiana Jones of fountain pens, goes to flea markets, restores them, retips the nibs. We’re still friends. Every time I buy a new pen it makes me want to draw more. I like the flex nibs, the extra-broad double broads, the Fude nibs — anything that gives me an unusual line. For ink, Platinum Carbon Black is my most useful because it’s waterproof and scans cleanly as black. Beyond pens, I’ve got gouache, acrylic, acrylic gouache, oils, monoprints. I’ll never finish mastering all of it, but what excites me is the combinations — pencil with monoprint, fountain pen with watercolor. Each combination gives a different look.

Monoprinting is another method I like — you spread screen printing ink on an acrylic sheet, put your paper down, and draw on the back side. You get an unpredictable texture with accidental ink that adds a kind of dirt to it. Especially now with everything moving toward AI and more perfection, I like having something that goes the other way.

For finished illustration work I use an iPad Pro and Procreate. I’ll sketch the rough idea quickly for client approval, then transfer to Adobe Illustrator for the final vector piece. But I cycle back to paper often — I get tired of looking at the screen, or I want something I can’t move around on paper, and I go back to the iPad. Still figuring out the best method for comics.

MR: What would be three tips for a visual thinker who’s in a rut?

AT: First — practice drawing spontaneously with a pen, directly, no pencil sketch underneath. A diary comic or sketchnote is like a spontaneous diary. You don’t pre-plan your diary. Going straight to pen prevents overthinking. Whatever mistakes appear, just leave them or cancel them out. It looks more honest, more charming, and it trains your confidence.

Second — add black. A lot of artists forget the dark areas. They do midtones and outlines and call it done. But adding black to the areas of focus — the face, the eyes, the most important parts — gives contrast and lets the reader know where to look. Without contrast, everything is equal and your brain works harder just trying to figure out where to look.

Third — give yourself permission to be distorted or imperfect. I had to tell myself this because I didn’t go to art school. Especially from my storyboarding days, I’d want to erase every small mistake and I’d never get the job done. So I started giving myself permission: if it’s a bit off, just leave it. The imperfections are often what make it look nice. They make it human.

MR: Where can people find your work?

AT: Google Drewscape — that goes to my commission work and my blog, which I update more often. YouTube is Drewscape-art. I also have four short courses on Skillshare, slowly building that out.

MR: Well, Andrew, thanks so much for sharing your story — I loved the origin story, and we clearly have more in common than I initially realized. Not only Star Wars, but being in the trenches in advertising and design as art directors and illustrators. For anyone watching or listening, that’s another episode. Until the next one, this is Mike Rohde — talk to you soon.

Sketchnote Lab is Mike Rohde’s space designed to bridge the gap between sketchnote theory and practice. You don’t need to be an artist to think visually. Join Mike and learn to use sketchnotes to clarify your thinking, solve problems, and move forward. Learn more about Sketchnote Lab.

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Saturday's Drawing People session was a blast! We worked through how to draw people, starting with the simplest shapes, and then Alejo took it further, showing how to add gesture, movement, and energy to your figures. Attendees drew along live, which made for an active, hands-on session.

“It was a very helpful instruction session with Aleja Porras.
He should publish a book.” — Regine T.

A lot of information, but really well presented. Quite a few good ideas I can put into practice straight away. Thank you. — Fred Z.

Fun, helpful, and inspiring. Thank you! — Rebecca

Here’s a little taste of Alejo on what people get wrong about drawing:

What We Covered

• The 5 Basic Shapes for people - how squares, circles, triangles, lines, and dots are the building blocks of recognizable figures.

• Heads, bodies, and proportion — practical rules of thumb for getting figures to look right quickly, without overthinking.

• Live drawing demos — I walked through building figures step by step, from stick-figure basics to more structured forms.

• Movement and gesture with Alejo Porras — Alejo showed how to add fluidity and dynamism to figures, so they feel alive on the page rather than stiff or static.

Subscribe now

Sketches from the session

Below are sketches I created during the session:

Here’s a sketchnote of the session by Jatin_infosketch you can see on Instagram:

Resources

• Alejo Porras on Substack

• Alejo’s Website

• Alejo on Instagram

• Lamy Studio Fountain Pen

• TWSBI Eco Fountain Pen

Watch the Full Video Replay

If you aren’t a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner, watch the full video recording by becoming a Lab Partner. You’ll also get access the Partner Vault that has recordings from evertthing I’ve done here from December 2024 onward.

Listen to the episode:

Running Order

• Introduction to AI and creativity in the digital age

• David’s background in design and experience with web and AI tools

• Evolution of design education before tech and navigating change

• How manual processes shaped early digital work and the push for quality with new tools

• Lessons from Photoshop’s early filters and digital experimentation

• Blending analog sketches with AI fine-tuning for authentic style

• Training AI to match your visual aesthetic and guidelines

• The importance of structure and boundaries in AI-generated design

• Building consistent visualizations and curating style through feedback

• Using AI to manage content and automate visualization in ongoing projects

• Combining human and AI efforts for scalable, reliable outcomes

• Identifying your niche to stand out and create memorable, in-person experiences

• The power of in-person presence, personality, and memorable engagement

• How to differentiate your work and avoid being commoditized

• Creating memorable sketch notes and in-room experiences that evoke “magic”

• Developing a unique style that stands up to AI mimicry

• Transitioning from designer to creative director—guiding AI as a tool

• Embracing the opportunity for anyone to leverage AI, even with simple sketches

• Tips for overcoming creative rut and the importance of reflection and intentionality

• Resources to follow David Armano and stay connected

• Final thoughts on innovation, community, and future opportunities

Resources & Links:

• David by Design

• David’s Homepage

• TBDaily — David’s curated and AI-generated daily update.

• David on LinkedIn

• Launch by NTT Data

• DALL-E 3 — for image generation with prompts

Sponsored by The Reflective Travel Workshop

Have you ever wanted to create travel sketchnotes from an experience you’ve had, just using the photos and memories you’ve got?

In the Reflective Travel Workshop, I’ll guide you through my process for creating travel sketchnotes and then help you reflect on your own photos and memories so that you can make travel sketchnotes of your own trips, too!

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Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everybody, it’s Mike Rohde here again with another episode of the podcast. I’ve got my friend David Armano here calling in. David, good to see you.

David Armano: I’m Mike, and Mike’s audience, glad to be here.

MR: So David is an interesting guy. We’re talking before we start recording like when did we meet? I’m pretty sure it’s South by Southwest, probably in the glory days in the early 2000s, which are the mid 2000s, I guess 2010s. Yeah, so. But David’s been doing some really interesting stuff on Substack. I’m on Substack as a platform with Sketchnote Lab and he’s been pushing using AI and sort of the way he thinks about

DA: Yeah, I think so. I think so.

MR: the market and creative people and creativity. And I just thought it was really fascinating. And I thought David would be a really good voice for people who are sort of maybe jittery or not concerned about what if nano banana takes my job? Like how do you differentiate and how do you think about using AI in an ethical way that doesn’t lose off? Like I’m real concerned about people losing skills. Like by just turning over stuff to other tools, like you

what if that tool like the subscription goes up by 10x or it stops doing that thing that you used to rely on it and you’ve now got to do it again what if you’ve lost that skill so that’s sort of my concern but let’s get into it by seeing like David what do you do and then we’ll get right into your origin story

DA: Sure, yeah. So by day, I work for a very large company that probably a lot of people haven’t heard of. It’s one of the big tech consulting companies. It is called NTT Data. I work for sort of a boutique within NTT Data that’s kind of an experience design, centric, human centric kind of product design.

It’s called Launch by NTT Data and my title is

DA: And the second part, I guess like when I’m not on the job clock, I do a lot of thinking and writing kind of what you alluded to. I write a Substack newsletter called David by Design. You can get to it by davidarmano.com.

And, apropos this podcast, I do usually at least one visual that goes with my posts. Sometimes I do a series. And that’s been something that I’ve been doing that goes back, gosh, 18 plus years. Kind of the following during the blogging years, which created all kinds of opportunities for me that were really fun. Got to travel the world. And so

visual thinking, my style has changed, my approach has changed, but it’s been core to both my day job and my sort of little kind of what I do for a hobby and just to try to stay sharp.

MR: That’s really cool and I think you know I can relate to that too because I have a day job and I do stuff on the side as well so yeah that’s and I imagine there’s a lot of people like that who have something running on the side whether they it’s for fun or profit or both but I’m really curious I think you’re from out east I think from New York City if I remember my memory and yeah

DA: Yeah. Yeah, originally, New York City, Queens, I was born and was there until I was seven, then moved out to the suburbs of Long Island, also New York, Nassau County, and then moved to Chicago.

MR: Okay.

DA: just right out, almost right out of college, few years out of college. I did work my first couple of years in New York City as a visual designer. Started off, started my career as a visual designer and then a broadcast designer. And then as the internet was taking off, moved to Chicago, my first job in Chicago was with the Chicago Tribune and their interactive team as a formation designer.

MR: Okay.

Nice.

DA: So you can connect the dots there. And then Chicago, kind of got into marketing and advertising communications, really after like a pretty great foundation and sort of web design in the early days of web design as a creative director. And then...

My career really blew up during the social media days and sort of imploded during COVID. I got laid off after 11 years with a company, great company. And then I made a move, I made sort of a COVID move to Texas. I decided, okay, I’m gonna get a little.

MR: Hmm.

MR: Yeah.

DA: Going to leave the Midwest in the long winter, trade it for hot summers and sun. And now I’ve been in San Antonio, Texas now for about four and a half years now.

MR: Wow, I’ve been to San Antonio a few times, friend of the show, Prof. Michael Clayton. He teaches at the University of Incarnate Word in the graphic design group there. As a matter of fact, two years ago, International Sketchnote Camp was at that campus and it was a lot of fun. So we had really good food, of course, tacos and Tex-Mex and stuff. So that was a great memory. But yeah, that’s a great area.

Excellent. So going back, I think you went to design school like I did. I think you’ve talked about the school and I don’t want to say the school because I want to guess it wrong. Pratt. OK, it was either that or Cooper Union was one of the two that I thought it might have been. But so you have a traditional design education a lot like I do. Like, you know, I think about we went to school before any of this tech stuff.

DA: I went to Pratt.

Yep, on to Pratt.

MR: probably even existed, right? So we’ve had to navigate and adapt to lots of changes in our lives. And that’s really interesting.

DA: Yes, although for me, I will say it was a little different. It was actually just developing a computer graphics program. And so when I went, I had...

MR: Hmm.

DA: That was my major, but I did, I really feel like I learned so much more in the visual communications. I mean, I did learn the tools and that allowed me to get a job out of school. Like I did get a job as a graphic designer, like using Quark and Illustrator, because I knew the tools. And it was really interesting. My first job right out of school was Columbia House CDs. I designed, yeah, I designed the alternative little music catalog that you would get.

MR: Right.

MR: Really?

DA: Did all the layouts for like a section of those and what was interesting was I remember starting and I had one person left who had the big desk, the big drafting table and was doing everything by hand still and then within two or three months like they were no more and it stuck with me because

MR: Yep.

DA: I really had been working in technology related fields, honestly, ever since then, more or less. And that has been kind of an ongoing thing, which is sort of ironic given now where we are. It’s like, there’s always some major technical revolution, but it’s only gotten faster and more intense over the years. But even back then, it’s happening. The desktop publishing revolution. Yeah.

MR: Yeah.

MR: Yep, I was there for that too. I was there for the web transition, sounds like you were as well. And we both kind of rode those waves. I shifted into user centered design after that and had been kind of focused there and, you know, user experience stuff with software has been my fun spot. So I focused in that area, but a lot of change. And you know, the other thing I would say too is like, you think back, man, I’m thinking back like the way, how much manual stuff you had to do.

to just produce something simple and how much even like the jump to QuarkXPress or InDesign or whatever tool accelerated that. It didn’t like, like I think about it like the way it provided the basics that you didn’t have to think about anymore. Like, oh crap, I measured the board a 16th too short.

and now something the margins wrong or like that stuff was on me right because I was the one actually measuring the board out because I had the spec now you could still do the same you do still do the mistake inside quark but it was you know once you sort of established these things like you didn’t think about them anymore right like the it’s just letter size or whatever so like it sort of pushed you up a level to you know thinking more about the design and

DA: yeah.

MR: I kind of feel like it doesn’t really solve everything, but it pushes you up a level. And I feel like even in the AI stuff, there’s an opportunity for us to go up a level, but we still, a human influence seems like important in that mix for sure.

DA: Yeah. You know, there’s one parallel with all the AI stuff, since you’re going back to the design school days that I’ve been thinking about.

A unique thing about my experience back at Pratt was I remember, you know, learning the basics of Photoshop while I was also taking kind of like illustration or Vizcom 101, which is like foundational classes. And yes, I did learn the programs, Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator, right? And I remember specifically like my first few months with Photoshop, my output was just the worst because all I was, I was enamored by the

MR: Hmm.

MR: You

DA: filters. We probably all went through this like, Gaussian blur, remember? Like all these filters and that would be your output. But there was nothing about your ideas or even learning the craft of layout and juxtaposition and you know, just all the things that you have to learn. And my portfolio kind of reflects that. Like my non-digital stuff was way better than my digital stuff. So my digital stuff allowed me to get a job. And when I

MR: Yeah. Yeah.

MR: Right.

MR: Interesting.

DA: think about it, there’s a parallel to what’s happening today with all the vibe coding, because there’s a novelty. I think you have to get to this novelty phase when you’re learning something and then all the things you can do, especially if you haven’t mastered the basics, you get enticed by the novelty. And so we’re seeing a lot of people just build silly things that really shouldn’t be built or do all these things with AI that... Yeah.

MR: are unsustainable.

DA: Exactly, or like the slop, you know, things that we talk about, because it’s the novelty. Plus, it’s also they haven’t developed the domain expertise. But over time, that changes. And then what happens is the more people that actually have the domain expertise, you know, master these new technologies, and we were seeing that now, that’s when things get really interesting.

MR: yeah yeah for sure I think I think about that too like we used to have a joke inside the design firm is like if it showed up on the Sears catalog it jumped the shark so like if Sears suddenly had drop shadows on stuff like crap we can’t use that anymore right like that was our internal joke that we would always mess with and so it’s and I probably had the same things like

I always had stuff running on the side. I made, so I made the mixtapes back in the day for friends who all went away to college. And I had, was fortunate to have a local college radio station to play alternative music. So I sat at night, I would sit with my tuner and I would tune that station and try and catch good songs and string them together on two sides of a cassette. The fun part was designing the card that went inside and then duplicating it and mailing it to them. So that was, but that, you know, when I did the design, it was like all this experiment.

DA: Yeah.

MR: like Gaussian Blurs or whatever weird thing I could try in Photoshop and like I look back, okay

DA: I know it’s embarrassing when you look back, it’s like, I went to design school for that. But then again, one of my best, I think I took a photo of it somewhere, but I did, one of our assignments was to redesign the choking victim poster and just like be creative with it. So I did the choking victim poster from years ago, I went to school in the late nineties or mid nineties.

MR: Huh.

DA: and they probably still have versions of them today. I did it all using Keith Haring style illustrator. It was awesome. I mean, I could look back at that today and like I had train cars, like with the step one, step two, step three were all train cars and then all the little figures with all the bursts and it looked like a Keith Haring painting. It was so great. It was so creative and actually well executed. It was physical painting. It was acrylic on poster board.

MR: Interesting.

MR: Okay, so some of the sparkles were coming through and I kind of think too, like you had been trained in the analog ways and the digital was so new that you get enamored by what could be done that eventually it settles in and your digital catches up to your analog and then they become, you know, you can now express yourself, right? Like I think even like an iPad, using some of these tools, like it takes a while to kind of get to the point where understanding how what I want to achieve is possible.

DA: I think so.

MR: with this tool, you know?

DA: Yeah, the funny thing is that’s a great segue to my process with the way I do visuals right now is that it’s exactly that. It’s exactly sort of this blend of analog and AI. That’s all intentional, by the way. My best visuals do not look AI generated and that is by design.

MR: Okay.

MR: Mm. Mm-hmm.

DA: And the ones that do, I will say this. Sometimes I do a range. Sometimes I’m like, okay, this is a big idea. I want to give it the premium treatment. The artisanal treatment. And so the artisanal treatment looks like this. I’ll show it to you.

And I made this decision years ago, and it’s funny because I’m seeing this as a trend now where things are. This is the first thing I did, I got started doing stuff on my iPad and then I was like, okay, I want to actually take it even to more a paper like experience and strip away distractions and limit what I can do. So this is the Kindle, which is very comparable to,

MR: Huh.

MR: Rudimentary, yeah.

MR: Okay. Remarkable tablet, I think, right?

DA: Really is. It has a very tactile feel. You can get that nice pen weight. So what I’ll do is I’ll start with a sketch kind of like this, right? And maybe you’ve seen this one. I actually just posted on LinkedIn. That’s a long good, the AI version of it. And I’m really

MR: huh.

DA: mentally coming up with the concept for what I want to communicate visually, I sketch it out. And then I’m using AI to just like get the type to look handwritten, but a little bit less shaky, the lines a certain way, certainly the colorization, all that’s done with AI, the fine tuning. Yeah. Sometimes I’ll add things in AI. So my artisanal version really is like starting with...

the analog and my hand and bringing that in, the AI carries that over pretty well. And then I’m just not, instead of firing it up in Photoshop or pick your tool of choice where I’m actually manually, I’m now just saying make this line way thicker or thinner, try this color. I give it, I have trained an AI on my aesthetic look.

MR: That’s going to say that would be the next question.

DA: Yeah, it’s got a set of guidelines. And even I usually have to remind it, always use a white background. Dall-E always wants to use this yellowish background. So everyone’s going to have to re-hammer it. But it’s getting better. But yeah, it gets the results. I’ve kind of gotten it down to a science now.

MR: Okay.

MR: Yeah.

MR: Hmm. Yeah, I think about if we’re in early days, like where could this go if you could really define it? So two things. One, I think in my experience, at least, maybe this is not 100% true, but like it feels like AI does better when it’s given boundaries and structure and context, which is not what I’m learning a lot about. If you just

type, you know, give me this thing and describe it, our language is still not real super defined. So by you providing the drawing and then you’ve got these set of boundaries and like what kind of line weights do I want? What’s the font look like? What is always have a white background, whatever those things are. And then it just mixes those two and then you’re going to get a reliable output. That’s the thing. The other thing I observed was I think I watched a design person talking about using

DA: That’s right.

MR: another AI tool for design work because I was curious and you said something really interesting it’s like well you know you set the prompts up and you submit it to the AI if you do it today it’ll turn out one way but if you do it tomorrow it’ll look different and I was like I don’t know that that’s a good thing like I understand the novelty of it but like

DA: Consistency is hard to get, I will say. Yeah. And even if I look at my output, some look a little different than others. I’ve kind of just accepted it. Some are, but even with some of the variations, like some have like a little more of a watercolor, this and that. It’s also, I’m not super strict on it because I still feel like I’m still developing my style.

MR: So having structure helps for sure. Yeah.

MR: Hmm. Yeah.

MR: Hmm.

DA: with it. And when you look at it as a body of work, it is still pretty close. There’s still something in there where you go like, where you recognize it as one of mine, even if it’s like a slightly different style. I do think though, the goal, but then the technology will get there, will probably be more consistency.

MR: Yeah, experimenting.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Yeah. And I think that was interesting. I mentioned the same problem to a developer on a design problem at work. And he said, it’s almost better, like if you want consistent output, don’t go to the AI to do something even with specs. It’s actually build an app to produce the output you want and then submit to the app because then you take that variability out.

that the AI produces, you build an app that actually would generate. So you would actually build a fine-coded app, I guess, that would take your instructions and build it a certain way. Like, that’s interesting.

DA: Yeah, that is...

DA: That is interesting. Yes, that would probably be a really good way to do it. You know, in a way, I kind of did that recently. So I don’t know if you saw my little Vibe experiment was creating like a curation website, because I do a lot of curation.

MR: Yeah, yeah, I saw that, that was cool. I wanted to mention that.

DA: I approached that very deliberately. I wanted it to not look like there’s an aesthetic that’s developing with these vibe codes. Because if you leave a default or you don’t really know the design, they all look the same and well, it’s not good, right?

MR: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

DA: So I was like, I did it differently and I actually did it. Yes. First I started with a hand-drawn sketch. Then I took it into, you know, don’t judge me, but it worked. I just, I wanted to get the basics. I brought it into Canva and I had a design header and like got the basics of like the tabs.

MR: huh. Yeah.

DA: And then I started the Vibe coding process and it was pretty amazing. I told it the font information, had the color of the tabs and then it just started building away. The really interesting part was on the backend because it actually, the TBD.ai is the URL and it looks deceptively simple. It’s got this backend where it...

I’ve trained the agent to look for stories the way I do. I gave it a bunch of parameters, which it does. And every day I work with the agent and it gives me a number of choices based on my preferences. And then I act as the human in the loop or the editor in chief, and then it publishes the next day. I also though, to the point that you brought up, I also just connected the Dall-E API. I’ve settled, today it doesn’t have it just cause I wanted to keep it simple, but

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Okay.

MR: Mm.

DA: I’ll pick about three because it’s manageable and each one of the stories, it’ll create a visualization. And usually the way that, so what it’s doing is the agent now hits the Dall-E API with my parameters of like, do this visual style. And then when it gives me the list of, you know, I picked the final, it’s usually nine. And then for, say, let’s do it now at the end. Say, let’s see a visualization for these three. And I do actually in this case, because this is the non-artisanal approach.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DA: I do see what it comes back with. Usually it’s good enough, because these are daily, every day this thing pumps out new story. Right, new story. So I’m like, I’m going to keep the human intervention minimal. And then I only will refine it if like there’s a misspelling or something really blatant, the wrong visual. And usually I try to limit it to like two prompt refinements for the three visuals. But it’s like, here, I’ll show you an example.

MR: Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Gotta be sustainable, yeah.

MR: Hmm.

DA: I could just pull one up. It’s not bad. It’s not like the ones that I do that are much more like, this is a good example. Like this is an example of what it would look like. So that story’s summary, that visualization, that’s one that actually, I will tell you that one right there, it got it on the first try.

MR: Okay. Yeah.

MR: okay well I wonder too like if you like if now you’ve got a collection of these you could go through and say these 15 out of the 60 you produced are what I like, feed those back and say follow these as a reference and as you build like you just start refining it by saying I like this I don’t like that so it’ll veer away from the things you don’t like

DA: That’s right.

DA: That was going to be another side project I was going to do. I won’t give away the idea, but I wanted to create a very, very consistent set of icons. And what I was going to do was actually

MR: Mm.

DA: I’m just going to use one of the Google tools. I forgot which one I recommended that I think I might be able to get what I’m looking for, but I was going to take my best, the ones that I really, exactly what you just said, like 20 of them. And then just say like, this is what I’m going for. And even now, like when something goes off, I’m like, no, follow it and I’ll give it two or three. And it usually course corrects. I’m doing it pretty organically, but

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Yeah.

DA: You know, from my perspective, it gets really close. It’s so much faster. I don’t render things by hand. It does the majority of the rendering. And it gets it to where I want it to be. And I’m going off the feedback. The number one thing I’m going for is it feels...

MR: Mm-hmm.

DA: Actually, I’m going for a couple of things. People are like, that’s AI. That’s the first thing they say is they’re like, that doesn’t feel like AI. I’m like, good. That was by design. And then the second thing they say is anytime I see one of yours, I know it’s one of yours. I’m like, good. Those are my two. Right. That’s like, doesn’t feel like AI, feels immediately recognizable as a new style. That’s what I’m going for. And if there’s a little watercolor effect or a line or this and that, I’m like, those are negotiable for me.

MR: Yeah, style.

MR: It’s really interesting to hear that process and show notes are a big part of the show so I’ll definitely get a bunch of links from you that people can go poke around and see. The app basically that you built to gather stories that you’re interested in, different categories, pretty interesting, I’ve checked it out. And as well, your Substack David by Design so they can follow your stuff.

My question for you is, since you’re in the space of kind of, you’ve always been, I guess, a futurist or a strategist or I don’t know, a mixture of those things. So there’s someone, let’s assume there’s someone listening who, maybe they’re a professional sketchnoter or visual thinker, graphic recorder that are doing this. And they see like Nano Banana is starting to do like you could dump a transcript on it and it could produce, for somebody who doesn’t have a budget,

it might produce a good enough sketchnote that they don’t hire me anymore. How does somebody like that look at AI and what are some maybe mental strategies they could think about to get ahead of that curve or to leverage it, right?

DA: Yeah, I’ve got some thinking on that. So I should share, like during my day job, the visual thinking does manifest in different ways. Like just yesterday I was working on a deck and just to say, at the enterprise, we tell very, which we’re in a lot of ways, it’s very technology, technology is so core and sometimes that’s just a very complicated story. So I’m trying to figure out.

MR: Yeah.

DA: And so visual thinking plays a role in that. It’s very much the copy that you write and like simplifying visuals. So that’s one way. Another way in my career, I still do it now. I actually, sometimes in in-person meetings, I’ll be the person that gets up and I’ll actually do like a very low fidelity version of like visual note taking and it’s magic.

MR: Hmm.

Yeah. Go up to the whiteboard? Yeah.

DA: They love it. They love it. I look at my stuff and I compare it to what the real people, like the professionals do. And I’m like, wow. They’re like, are you an artist? I mean, it’s laughable because that’s nothing for the quality of the stuff that I’ve seen people like yourself do. But here’s some thinking based on everything that you said. I think if someone’s doing that and that’s their business.

MR: Yeah.

MR: Ha

DA: They probably want to evolve their model so that it kind of goes off in two directions in a very distinct and intentional way. One is like build a machine for the remote meetings so that, you know, like they can be generated, but you’re the person actually sort of facilitating and like as a value add tapping into that. And you’re the human in the loop. You’re going to get better output versus them trying it, number one.

MR: Hmm.

MR: Right, right.

DA: That’s you can do those remotely. And so that’s not your premium offer, but that is something that you can do and you can do repetitively. You know, you can probably get it to like, as we’re talking about, you can probably get it to like a virtual whiteboarding, not using nano banana or something else, like you’re like, this feels good enough. And that can be part of it. And then the other one is triple down on your in-person, anything that you can do to make your in-person

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DA: person more memorable or then if you have to show up wearing something okay Mike I’m going to show this to you or not me. I, in the past year I put myself out there so I’m not going to ever pretend to be shy but I

put myself out there in a way you’ll notice you don’t see a ton of video of me it’s actually I’m not like, I’m like if someone puts a camera on me I could do it but I’m uncomfortable putting it on myself. I’m also not very comfortable drawing a lot of attention to myself like the physical you know but something that I learned and I did this a few times the past year we had an event and our president wanted the team to show up wearing like she wanted us to be her tiger team so everybody wore like

MR: Okay.

DA: Tiger, you know, whatever and I yeah, and so I found a hat as like I found a tiger hat with the tiger pattern on it and my guy said wear this and she was like well I guess you could but like I always say go big or go home. I was like, alright so I wore a whole like sport coat and it looked like a Tony the Tiger smoking jacket and I mean in a way it wasn’t super high quality, but it was very loud and it certainly

MR: stuff.

MR: wow.

with the velour lapels and everything.

DA: People could not get enough. I had person after person after person coming up to me and I was absolutely uncomfortable at first. By the end of the day, I was like, okay, what did I learn? I learned that I’ve been doing this wrong and that actually these people have figured this out that I’ve kind of judged honestly, like people like this, they figure it out that they’re creating an experience. By the way, things that you and I have been talking about for years.

And so my point is like, I’ve actually since then, I’ve now created a tradition of like, find these kind of eclectic sport coats and I wear them and it’s always the same thing. So all this to say is if you’re sketchnoting, really triple down on making experience, even if it’s like, feels gimmicky, people love it. We’re moving toward a world right now where synthetic feels synthetic.

It can get the job done. It’s kind of like what you and I were talking about before you turned this on. It’s like the gap is widening between the mediocre and the exceptional. So your in-person sketchnotes should be exceptional. Like that should be a memorable experience, not just what you put on boards, but how you show up. Like make the entire thing an experience because people value that now and face to face is more valuable than it’s ever been. But on the other side, yeah, do the.

MR: Yeah.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DA: sort of just good enough and create a system on that because there’s a great model there to be had that you can do remotely, right? And so be really intentional about the divide and the directions that they’re sort of, you know, the fork that those are going into. That would be my advice.

MR: you

MR: Hmm.

It’s.

and the implication is don’t get stuck in the middle, where you’re neither, you know, you’re dead, you know?

DA: Don’t. You will be. You will be roadkill in the middle. If you’re not, make yourself memorable in person. And if you’re not now beyond your art, the art’s not gonna be enough. Think about it. People who see those things, they may assume that’s AI, even if you crafted it by hand.

MR: Yeah.

DA: That’s it. So many people now think, oh, that’s done by AI, even if it’s not, because that’s where AI is now so good at mimicking. So you have to look at the experience that you can create while you, and by the way, it kind of already is the fact that they’re in the room and you’re doing a good job, but dial it up a notch, do something like literally wear something, show up, bring personality, like figure out what’s going to be your own thing.

MR: That’s a level above, yeah.

Go up again.

DA: And then figure out how to scale the remote stuff so that it’s like, you can almost get it done like in your sleep or whatever the case. Do not be that person in the middle.

MR: Yeah, no, two things that come to mind is one of the things you could do on the high end is maybe you dive deep into a niche, right? So like you talked about, you were in the room doing these whiteboards. The reason that you’re getting such a reaction is well, partly because you are able to distill those ideas. So that’s your knowledge. And that’s because you’re overlapping on that specific niche and you can talk intelligently to it.

So for me, that’s software. I could talk about software. I have a really good rapport with developers. I understand their challenges. And so that’s my special sauce. But like, if you’re in the, I don’t know, landscaping, like you could sort of combine those two. Like you go in with a client instead of just talking landscape. Maybe you actually, while they’re there, you’re drawing it with them, right? So that’s an experience. And then the second thing, I kind of forgot what I was going to say. I think, I know what it was. Go ahead.

DA: Well, I was just going to say, don’t hold onto that thought because I want to hear it. I think the other thing that makes that, even though I’m sort of like, I know it’s not to the quality of, I don’t want to sell myself short. I do the, I listen to the lines really well. I’m just talking about.

MR: Sure.

DA: I don’t think my artistry is all that great. But part of the reason why they love it, I think is because it’s also unexpected. It’s one thing to go to a retreat and then they have like a professional visual note taker and you kind of almost expect that. I’m showing up at a very typical meeting with a whiteboard, you know, in a run of the mill, like it’s just any other day with a bunch of executives filling up. And then all of a sudden the whiteboards are filled up. Right. Yeah. It’s like magic.

MR: Mm-hmm.

Magic, magic, yeah.

DA: in an otherwise mundane business meeting.

MR: It makes it more memorable. And then, you know, you’ve got the chops to understand the context of everything they’re talking about. So you can tailor it to their understanding. And then like the thing I’ve done with software developers, like hearing what they’re saying and drawing it while they’re talking, it’s like freaks them out in a great way. Right. So that’s been good. The other thing I just remembered was, say this is a long time ago, this was back in like...

DA: Yeah.

MR: must have been 2010, this is pre book and everything. We had this really interesting experience because I work with a team that was really forward looking. So they flew to Oakland, they met with the school district and they were trying to help them.

with I can’t even remember what the topics were. But what we tried was we had a really crappy webcam. So they turned a really crappy webcam on in the room and I was observing the discussions and listening to the talks and I was sitting in Milwaukee on the other end on my computer and I was making sketchnotes out of it, what they were saying and trying to make sense of it. It’s all black and white, pretty straightforward. By the end of the day I think I had 12 pages or something. Scanned them in because there was no phones that were good enough back then. Cleaned them up in

Photoshop, made a PDF and I emailed it to the team in Oakland so the session was done they received the PDF they ran to Kinko’s they had them printed bound into books and showed up at dinner with that team and presented them with books so like you know that again that’s like okay we have very limited resources the technologies you know

DA: That is awesome. That’s so awesome.

MR: limited but with what we have what can we, like I always think like what resources do I have and what interesting thing can we make out of what seemed like sort of like an amazing chef could take the same ingredients that I make an average dinner and they make it amazing because they know like how to cook it right or the spices that will fit and like that’s again your knowledge making it a unique experience so we all have that capability

DA: Something almost, I did almost the exact version of what you just explained in one of these sessions and I scanned visuals off of the boards I did my little AI treatment cleaned them up with AI and basically incorporated them as slides and as a part of our follow-up with them like they had them and so instead of them just being the raw photos they were like blueprints and they were just a little bit more polished but yeah yeah a little nicer. There’s so many

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Nice.

MR: Well.

MR: Yeah, little nicer.

DA: And again, that could be a part of the kind of experience that you curate. Like they’re getting the boards, but what else could they get? What else could they be getting digitally behind that as well? Yeah, there’s lots of options. I love that you used the word magic because I think that is the potential that this has.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Right.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DA: Yes, something that I imagine your audience, and I’ve seen that your craft is very good. My craft is not as good as yours. But that doesn’t mean you can actually hit the same level of magic without the level of craft that you apply to your notes.

MR: right exactly that’s kind of what I’m trying to teach people is the the overlap of your experience and the tools makes it magic right it’s you being in there to do that to interpret it

and I think you mentioned like we didn’t talk a lot about the low end so of course naturally the high end make yourself visible do something unique on the on the low end or on the average end what what comes to mind is like you know those jobs where they had maybe they had a big week-long conference and there’s a hundred talks well you can’t be at all those hundred talks but they can record them they can make transcripts you can throw it at your stylized nano banana or whatever the thing is and produce outputs and then think of yourself

as a creative director where individually you’re going through them and editing them and changing things maybe you have to draw some bits and replace them and then you end up with you know this ability to do more capacity than maybe you could as an individual that could that could be interesting too

MR: Hey, networks, networks.

DA: I just lost network, just totally went dead for like three minutes.

MR: Okay, yeah, maybe the heat wave affecting you guys down there.

DA: Sorry, now we’re forcing an edit.

MR: that’s fine, easy, I just find the spot and cut it out with Riverside it’s pretty easy because you’re actually editing text like Descript did so I’m kind of experimenting learning a little bit more so basically the point when you dropped out was to think more like a creative director with the lower end of things where

DA: okay, good.

MR: Like in the past, if you had a hundred sketchnotes, you would have like, I would have sampled like, you know, which stuff is most important, go to those, produce a set that represents those. You would now in a position, you could transcript all of them, edit the transcript, dump it into some tool and then basically creative direct, you know, it would be trained on your style and produce a hundred sketchnotes. So everybody gets one, right? That’s a new offering that didn’t exist, you know?

DA: Yeah. I’m sure.

I’m so glad you brought up the creative direction and that’s something that I’ve done, something that I learned. It’s funny, cause this has been kind of a theme that naturally came up, but I’m going to call it out. Yeah. I, even though I went to design school, I learned early on. I transitioned from hands-on designer to creative director pretty early on in my career. I want to say within the first,

MR: Mm-hmm.

DA: five years. And so I was still pretty hands-on as a creative director, but over time became less so and less so. What I realized was that I was just a much better director than I was a designer, right? You know, I was a better director of talent. And what’s really interesting is that I talk to people about this, because I find that I get

MR: Okay.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Mm. Mm-hmm.

DA: good results from AI when people are like, this and that. I’m like, I don’t know. I can kind of get what I want because I’ve been directing for 30 years, literally. Language models are at a point now where I can direct and talk to a language model. So for work, I basically, I work with AI and the output that I create for work, you know, deckware, whatever the case.

MR: Yeah.

MR: Yes.

DA: And basically like I have AI acting as a researcher and an analyst, you know, and a writer. Why not direct a researcher, an analyst and a writer. And so when I’m working with AI, I’m directing them, like I’ve directed teams for the past 30 years of my career. And I know how to get what I want to get from those teams. And so if you have those director skills, even if you’re running your own business, like that’s something you’ve had to build muscle and you’re going to do great. If you have to build that muscle, figure it out.

MR: Yeah.

MR: Yeah, might be an advantage.

DA: Because that’s how you’ll get it. Yeah.

MR: That might be an opportunity for creative directors, creative direction for AI might be an interesting training for those who don’t have that, who are doers, right? Because the doers are the ones that are in trouble because if you just do production that can be maybe mostly replaced unless you have some really unique skill. But yeah, that.

DA: Yeah.

DA: You’ll be in a much better place if you know how to direct.

MR: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, if you think about the high end, we go back to the high end example. There’s direction in there. There’s creative direction. You’re also directing, depending on what level you’re doing it at, you know, you’re trying to create an experience, but you’re defining what is happening. And you’re also in the room. You’re probably doing research if it’s a new topic to understand that space so you can accurately represent what they’re talking about. So they don’t look at that, working, say, like, what the heck is he talking about? Like, doesn’t make sense.

DA: Well, there’s also a parallel here to the example that I’m giving and it’s going to be an uncomfortable one for people. Early in my career, I remember the, I had a light bulb moment. It was like, these designers are better than me. And so I realized my talent was in making that, you know, getting even better results from them and being an intermediary with clients, right? Which is what a creative director does.

And so it’s, I’m kind of having a little bit of a deja vu with AI, but it’s scary because you have to say like, this is smarter than me or can do X, Y, and Z better than me. And so it’s the same thing. Like why would you compete with it on that level versus direct it and where you can actually elevate it, but only if you figure out how to work with it.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: yeah it kind of moves it to a different stratosphere than it could with if you didn’t have those skills or direction skills to you know know like a lot of it is knowing what to refine and like you’re working on a deadline too right so what can I divine within the time frame that I have available what’s going to be most impactful like I could spend all kinds of time because the brush isn’t quite as textury as I want so am I going to spend five hours getting the brush textury

maybe not this round maybe that’s a future thing that I do for the whole model so that everyone that comes after has that thing but maybe for this one it’s focusing on getting this metaphor right or tuning that thing which is you know more of again creative direction and decision-making it’s really interesting any other thoughts for someone who is in that place you’ve given some great stuff I want to make sure I don’t take away opportunities for other ideas if you have them

DA: Yeah.

DA: Well, I would say yes. I think a lot of what we’re talking about, at least for the past 15 minutes, has been more toward someone who’s either full-time or part-time, they’re doing the sketchnoting thing. You mentioned to me that you also connect with a lot of people who are getting over that hump of I’m not really a designer or like the baker, right? Give that example. Wow. If this is an area that you want to, could not be a better time.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Yeah.

DA: Now I picked up my book, right? And I showed the sketches. You can see like clear connection between a sketch and then the finishing, right? And I deliberately don’t make my sketches very involved because I know what the output is and I’m kind of working within the range that I want to work within. But let’s say you were that baker and you want to do visual, you know, like you want to do sketchnotes or whatever. Absolutely. You can put in something extremely crude, like stick figures.

MR: Hmm.

DA: And probably if you know what you want, to get back to the directing, you can probably get to some pretty great output. So there’s never been a better time. If this is an interest of yours, it’s the same thing with vibe coding. I mean, it’s like vibe noting. Have you used that term yet? I think you may want to use vibe noting in the future. That’s my gift to you. Vibe noting. Take it.

MR: Mm-hmm.

No, not yet. Vibe noting. Interesting. Free gift. All right.

DA: Take it, take it, and go forth.

MR: interesting that might be that hundred you know the hundred sketchnote challenge where you do every meeting in a week long event and you know you’re more of a creative director around a style that maybe that’s vibe noting

DA: Yeah. I mean, again, the Baker who draws stick figures, you know, they can absolutely, if they can figure out how to direct an AI and tell the AI what they want it to look like, they can get the output they’re looking for. 100%.

MR: especially with this I mean the thing I think what’s unique about your approach is a lot of LLMs depend on you describing, you’re typing and trying to describe what’s in your mind, you’re at an advantage by going to the next level which is you’re drawing what you exactly want so the LLM or the tool actually has a reference that it’s building some framework against instead of

guessing every time you hit it with that prompt right you’re giving it structure because it seems like AIs do better when they’re given tight structure and are highly defined than open world kind of stuff you know

DA: Right, and our friend Dan Roam probably wouldn’t like this, but theoretically, to use the Baker example, you could do the stick figure with the house and then show it to Dan Roam and say, hey, could you have a look roughly in the ballpark of this style? And then when you kind of figure out how you get that to look like, you already said this, you can then feed it back into the AI and say, I want it to look like this again and again and again. You can create whatever and it’s not going to look exactly like Dan Roam, it’s going to look like some kind of merger between the direction that you’re giving it and the references that you’re giving it.

MR: Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

MR: Well I mean ChatGPT can do Studio Ghibli stuff already right so I mean it’s been done, I’ve obviously force fed it a ton of comics apparently and could be done for anyone. I think you even in your tool, your vibe coded tool, you’ve done your voice right so you can have it read to us right so I mean if it can do it with a voice yeah so that’s really interesting

DA: I did. That’s right. It’s pretty close. Yeah. But again, now the risk with that though, is that this is why I do try to, again, there’s something about the level of control I give to my sketches. It does help me get to that. That feels like Armano. And if you’re going to do what I just described as like the Baker, you’re emulating, you are in that middle ground area because it’s going to feel like somebody else’s work.

MR: yeah yeah you really kind of need to develop a style in that case that’s really I mean this whole this is going to be a continuing discussion for many years probably beyond you know we’ll be long gone when they’ll still be having discussions about this who knows where it will end up going and so we’ll see but it’s really fascinating to talk and hear thank you for the strategies for people who are listening or watching and trying to figure this thing out and how they think about it

DA: Yeah, it’s not gonna be as vulnerable.

MR: I’m really, so we’ve talked a little bit about process. I want to get a little bit into, and we’ve started to step into this, tips for someone who is listening, they’re a creative person, they do visual stuff. But maybe they’re kind of stuck in a rut or they’re just bummed out or whatever the reason they need a little inspiration from you, David. What would be three tips you would give them to maybe get their mojo back or get them a little bit more on track or maybe look at things differently if you were to offer that?

DA: Well, ironically, I found myself in a little bit of a rut, not a couple of times. I’m doing the thing that you’re probably reading articles about telling you not to do, which is don’t use your AI as your therapist or even your career coach.

Here’s why they tell you that because absolutely AI is sycophantic and will absolutely tell you what you want to hear as a default. But I will say this, I’ve learned you can push it. If you’re really, really clear with it, it’s kind of the same thing of like, I get what I want. It’s the same thing. It’s like, I get what I want in my visuals. I have been using, and it’s not.

The only thing, I mean, I talked to my wife and you whatever, like, so you obviously like, you feel like, but I will say I have had pretty good luck with AI helping me get unstuck and I can even compare it. There’s at one point I worked with a career coach, real accomplished guy. He was just building his hours and I’m like, yeah, I’ll sign up and it was great, but I’m even comparing that experience to sort of like now getting stuck and now I don’t have access to a human career coach.

I find myself like yesterday, I did something that I got some counsel on from my AI and I was like, okay, that was really good. Like that was actually good advice. I have to be really selective. So I would say if you feel confident that you know yourself well enough, that you could get what you want out of it, that could be one thing. The second is, gosh, I was just talking to Noa Hanley.

MR: No, I don’t know her.

DA: Oh, she’s an author. We had just had a great conversation about intentionality. And I was talking about how I went from the shift from using my iPad to even just like getting a scribe to just pair back. For me, I didn’t need the iPad because I didn’t want to, again, I have the developed process but going to a scribe

has been helping me like it feels like paper, like a Remarkable, gives me the best worlds of digital and analog and strips it down to where I feel like I could be more intentional with it versus an iPad. But I think anything that you can do, that’s an example in visual thinking, but even just like going for walks and giving yourself the breaks. I think our number one nemesis these days is just

MR: Mm. Mm-hmm.

MR: Hmm.

DA: all the technology and distractions that take away from our ability to be intentional with our time. Ironically, yeah, ironically, you’re hearing this from an engineer, but it’s not just engineers. It’s like when you’ll find in vibe coding or in working with AI, it moves so fast. It’s almost like, I had another revelation about this. It almost acts like another, like if you’re in Slack too long or you’re multitasking, you’re not in flow.

MR: Yeah, intentional and present probably, right?

MR: Hmm.

DA: that you can, when you’re spending time multitasking with AIs and doing all these different things, it almost puts you in a state of what is the opposite of flow.

MR: I think it’s, I’ve read an article, there’s an article I read about this last week, it called it puts you in brain fry where your brain basically gets fried and you have to step away yeah

DA: Yes. Yes. Yes. So you have to be mindful about that, that that’s now another thing that we have to deal with, like this brain fry versus being in flow. Yeah, I mean, now if I were just to sort of distill down to one thing, I would say out of all of this, or maybe two things, figure out ways where you can be intentional about all these new emerging tools and then find ways to be

memorable, experiential, distinct, find ways that you can own it and really lean into, like it’s great that we’re doing a podcast as a remote. I think there’s so many awesome things, but you know what? If there’s opportunity where we meet in person or, you know, like that’s really, it’s more important than it’s ever been.

MR: different.

MR: Yeah, I think I’ve been feeling the same way leaning into in-person and human things that you’re talking about here and that definitely helps. You know, we work in tech, both of us, so it’s real easy to kind of get seduced into just staying there, but I think you have to push yourself out. So for sure, that’s really great. Well, thanks for the tips.

Where would be the best place to find you? I guess davidbydesign.com. Is that the, or no, it’s davidarmano.com, yeah.

DA: Yeah, go to davidarmano.com, it will take you to the Substack. And then there’s davidarmano.me, or I always tell people, something I did right in my early years. You can ask about me in your AI of choice and I will show up in all of them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yes.

MR: Okay.

MR: Interesting. Interesting. Is that like AISCO kind of a thing or something? Or just partly because you’ve been around for so long, right? Yeah.

DA: My legacy SEO was strong enough to get me in all the AI engines. Yeah.

MR: I think I’ve heard someone reach out to me and said that they discovered my book through their ChatGPT or something. So probably the same thing, you know, just having, we have the advantage of being old. So we’ve been around long enough to develop these histories.

DA: I bet.

DA: It’s like an AARP card, right? It’s like, we got something out of it.

MR: yeah exactly you get the free wallet or whatever they’re trying to pitch you now

DA: We got the AI AIO.

MR: There we go. Well, David, thanks so much for making time for me and chatting about this. I think it’s going to be encouraging for people and hopefully opening some minds and getting people thinking about like, what is this tool and how can I use it in an interesting way to set myself apart? Because I think there’s definitely opportunities if you think of it that way, rather than being afraid, because afraid doesn’t get you anywhere. You just don’t do anything. So, you know, move forward. So thank you.

DA: Thanks for having me, Mike. And I appreciate that you’ve been doing this for years. It’s a great community that you’ve built.

MR: Yeah.

MR: Well thank you, and there’s a lot of people involved besides me so I have to give credit to everybody and it’s definitely a friendly welcoming community and you’re invited to come anytime you like if you want to go to Verona this year we’re going to have an event on the weekend so anybody who’s listening go check out International Sketchnote Camp is merging with European visual practitioners and putting on a thing in Verona like go to the city of Romeo and Juliet and hang out with cool people so

With that, it’s another episode. We’ll talk to you again in the next one. See you soon.

Sketchnote Lab is Mike Rohde’s space designed to bridge the gap between sketchnote theory and practice. You don’t need to be an artist to think visually. Join Mike and learn to use sketchnotes to clarify your thinking, solve problems, and move forward. Learn more about Sketchnote Lab.

Mike is the author of The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook, bestselling books that teach regular people how to start sketchnoting and build a regular sketchnoting practice.

He founded the Sketchnote Army and hosts the Sketchnote Podcast, where he interviews visual thinkers to understand what makes them tick.

Mike teaches recorded, live, and in-person workshops to help accelerate your sketchnoting practice and provides personalized coaching for your specific visual thinking challenges.

He is the illustrator of bestselling books like REWORK, REMOTE, The $100 Startup, Honest SEO, The Culture Playbook, and The Future Begins with Z.

Become a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner to support Mike’s work.

Some links in Sketchnote Lab posts are affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools and resources I use and believe in.

©2026 Mike Rohde, Sketchnote Lab

People are one of the most useful and most intimidating things to draw. In this session, we’ll break it down into two parts so you can start simple and build toward more expressive, dynamic figures.

​​Mike Rohde will kick things off by showing you how to draw people using simple shapes and structures. No art school required, just practical approaches you can use immediately in your sketchnotes, presentations, and visual notes.

​Special guest will take it further, teaching you how to add movement, gesture, and fluidity to your figures. You’ll learn how to make your drawn people feel alive on the page, not stiff or static.

What you’ll walk away with: A process for drawing people quickly, starting from the simplest possible forms and building toward figures with energy and personality. Whether you’re capturing a speaker at a conference or mapping out a team scenario, you’ll have techniques you can put to work right away.

Attend the Lab for free

The session is free to all subscribers, with the recorded replay video available exclusively to Supporting and Founding Lab Partners (which includes all video replays since December 2024).

Sketchnote Lab is Mike Rohde’s space designed to bridge the gap between sketchnote theory and practice. You don’t need to be an artist to think visually. Join Mike and learn to use sketchnotes to clarify your thinking, solve problems, and move forward. Learn more about Sketchnote Lab.

Mike is the author of The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook, bestselling books that teach regular people how to start sketchnoting and build a regular sketchnoting practice.

He founded the Sketchnote Army and hosts the Sketchnote Podcast, where he interviews visual thinkers to understand what makes them tick.

Mike teaches recorded, live, and in-person workshops to help accelerate your sketchnoting practice and provides personalized coaching for your specific visual thinking challenges.

He is the illustrator of bestselling books like REWORK, REMOTE, The $100 Startup, Honest SEO, The Culture Playbook, and The Future Begins with Z.

Become a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner to support Mike’s work.

Some links in Sketchnote Lab posts are affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools and resources I use and believe in.

©2026 Mike Rohde, Sketchnote Lab

We dig into their Design-Centric Facilitation™ approach, the magic of a well-designed room, why 80% of the work happens before anyone walks through the door, and how visual thinking helps build genuine alignment within organizations.

Listen to the episode:

Running Order

• Introduction to transforming meetings into immersive, collaborative experiences

• The role of environment: whiteboards, lighting, and space design

• The extensive preparation process: months of research and iteration

• Using questions and frameworks to guide co-creative sessions

• The magic of walking into a thoughtfully designed room

• The impact of immersive environments on productivity and engagement

• Redesigning weekly meetings to maintain freshness and effectiveness

• Icebreakers and humor: building trust and vulnerability

• The power of visual listening and capture techniques

• Navigating virtual environments and building shared spaces online

• Case studies: product feedback sessions, strategic off-sites, and re-purposing physical spaces

• The origin story: from initial practices inside HP to scaling across tech giants

• The importance of leadership sponsorship and organizational culture

• Capability transfer: training clients to sustain practices

• Making tools affordable and accessible for broader impact

• Practical tips for listeners: navigating creative challenges, challenging oneself, and seeking inspiration outside work

• Setting up environments to sustain flow and energy

• The journey of scaling practices, including the transition from corporate parent to independence

• Embracing chaos and turning moments of disruption into opportunities

Resources & Links

• Shared Vision Toolkit

• Shared Vision Toolkit on LinkedIn

• Shared Vision Toolkit on YouTube

• Sarah Greer on LinkedIn

• Adrian Peryer on LinkedIn

• Ron Westrum’s Culture Framework

• Mental Canvas

Sponsored by The Reflective Travel Workshop

Have you ever wanted to create travel sketchnotes from an experience you’ve had, just using the photos and memories you’ve got?

In the Reflective Travel Workshop, I’ll guide you through my process for creating travel sketchnotes and then help you reflect on your own photos and memories so that you can make travel sketchnotes of your own trips, too!

This 2-hour recorded video includes a set of downloadable, printable sketching templates and a process to kickstart your own travel sketchnoting practice.

All this for just $20.

Buy the Workshop for $20

Subscribe to the Sketchnote Podcast

You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.

Support the Podcast

To support the creation, production, and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!

Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it’s Mike Rohde and I’m here with my friends Sarah and Adrian. Sarah, Adrian, thanks for being on the show.

Sarah Greer: Hey, thanks for having us, Mike. Before we ever say anything, I really wanna thank you for doing this podcast. I’ve listened to just about every single one of them. I think I told you this before. I’m working out at the gym with my weights and stuff, and I just love it as a practitioner in this field. I’ve gotten so much out of all of the very diverse people that you’ve talked to, and it’s just amazing. Thank you so much.

Adrian Peryer: And we sometimes talk, Mike, we talk about the episodes we’ve listened to.

MR: Well, thank you. Yeah, we have a really fascinating community. Really interesting people that came from all kinds of strange places, which is like the most fun part. So, maybe we just get right into it — Sarah and Adrian, tell us who you are and what you do. We’ll do Sarah then Adrian, just so we have a standard order.

SG: Excellent. So we are Shared Vision Toolkit. We’re basically designers of meetings. We design super engaging meetings for folks all over the world. We mostly work in the tech space. We’ve been doing this for such a long time now. We believe so wholeheartedly in this methodology that what we really needed to do was teach other people how to do it. Because we see people all the time getting stuck in the default mode — turn up, have slides, chairs and tables. What we do is the complete opposite. We work with our clients to design agendas and create these amazing immersive environments for clients to come and spend a day or two days with us. We take away the tables, use rolling chairs, have floor-to-ceiling panels we turn into whiteboards, and create frameworks depending on the type of meeting.

MR: Interesting. Adrian, anything to add?

AP: What people don’t see is probably 80% of the effort isn’t in the meeting. These things take minimum three months from concept, sometimes six months. We interview customers — we do voice-of-customer reports, anonymous interviews. We’re regarded as Switzerland neutral. Because of that, we get to spend most of our time in deep preparation. Then of course, whatever we plan doesn’t actually happen because reality meets your plan. But we always go in with a detailed hypothesis for every session. We love to work with questions — what question are we trying to answer? Then frameworks to help people explore it together.

MR: The image that came to me was an iceberg — you see the tip, but there’s a lot underneath. I imagine a lot of the planning is not only research, but contingency planning too. If this happens, go to plan C.

AP: And the process of designing for clients is itself a forcing function. Sometimes the value is in preparing for the session and realizing you shouldn’t do the session.

SG: We work with electrostatic white gridded paper — Magic Whiteboard — in 66-foot lengths. We draw the base layer structure right on it. Adrian pushed me to make everything modular, and he was absolutely right. If I allow 10 feet for a conversation and it takes 12, I can just move the header over. The modularity really lends itself to this type of work.

MR: I imagine for people who go through this experience it must feel like magic — you thought of that, you know about that — because you’ve done all the research and the back-channel discussions.

AP: The magic starts when people walk into the room. Most people’s experience of meetings is they normally suck. They walk into our room — no tables, these wonderful walls Sarah’s prepared, frameworks and art, thoughtful lighting. People come in and go, “wow.” The second time they’re invited, they never have a problem attending. We find the environment, the immersive space, the absence of tables — all of it helps people move rapidly into a flow state and stay there for hours. The facilitator says time’s up and people go, “what?”

MR: Right — you may not be able to do the six-to-nine-month planning every time, but for recurring meetings, why couldn’t you plan all these things until they become routine?

AP: That regular meeting is the hardest thing in our view. Sarah and I looked at our own weekly meeting and said, isn’t it getting a little stale? And we realized — aren’t we meant to be the people with the mission to make meetings engaging? So we designed our own weekly meeting and keep redesigning it. We measure it. We do an after-action review. The big aha is meetings go stale very easily.

SG: We always kick off every meeting with an icebreaker, and we rotate who hosts. We’ve been cataloging the best ones and plan to give them away. Icebreakers that take people back to their childhood are the best — a few layers of the onion just get peeled back immediately.

MR: I can relate — I do sketchnote workshops and I made up an exercise called The Treehouse Exercise. People love it because it’s personal and lets them express themselves freely. It’s been in my workshop hundreds of times and it keeps working.

SG: The minute you said treehouse I was transported back to Girl Scout Camp. Icebreakers that take people back to childhood just work. There’s something about it that sets a great tone — people are being a little vulnerable with each other.

AP: And we’re on a virtual meeting right now. We have people in the UK, California, Ohio. In 2020 all our work evaporated in a couple of weeks.

SG: Within a week or two I was set up in my studio using my iPad to record myself capturing on the wall. We just carried on.

AP: Our customers still wanted to do customer advisory boards. How do you do that virtually? One tech company needed to do a big transformation — a virtual leadership off-site with a new team who’d never met physically. We worked with them for about six months, doing town halls and things. Sarah built a shared vision with that team and then animated it.

SG: They had a racetrack metaphor for their team. I figured out the animation feature in Procreate — cars zooming around the track, people in the stands waving as they went by. It wasn’t difficult, but they were just so tickled with it.

AP: Now when people come to us needing a virtual product advisory board on short notice, we can do it. What holds it together is the live visualization — as people talk, Sarah’s picture gets richer and bigger. We did two hours yesterday, 30 customers for a large tech company, 15 product managers. The product space is very early — nobody really knows what problem they’re solving. But the live capture held it all together.

SG: I was using Concepts. I make these feedback buckets — just a pretty bucket — and as customers speak, I synthesize and capture the essence. To me, that magic is demonstrating the deepest form of active listening. You don’t have to be an artist. You just need decent listening skills, and they’ll get better. Find a flip chart and start capturing what people are saying. You’d be surprised.

MR: There’s almost a spatial, positional thing that ties meaning and solidity to it — rather than a fleeting stream. I once claimed a little strip of a room for a project and the whole project lived in that room. I’d bring people in and they’d say, “I’m inside the project.”

AP: We did a session with engineering leaders in a large tech company — security engineering. A year later, they said, “we’ve still got the vision up on the wall in the engineering department. It’s our orientation.” Another client — an energy company CEO we’ve worked with for 12 years — booked a hallway for six weeks so all leaders could be walked through the strategy in context of the space. That’s what they wanted: walk and explain the strategic outcomes, the vision, the from-to journey, the key initiatives — all laid out where you can see everything at once.

MR: The client was so convinced of your process that they’d already thought through where it would happen and what the follow-on use would be.

AP: Two years later they reached out about an AI strategy session. The first thing they said was, “we’ve got a really good space to do this.”

SG: That just raised the bar on us. I think of it like a mission control — if we could just get more clients to build these spaces and leave them up, it’s so powerful.

MR: Being a really good listener is an intimacy. For someone who maybe is never listened to, finally somebody is — and it’s seen as valuable. That’s what we can do as visualizers for our clients.

SG: I love that. When Adrian and I work as a team, he can focus on facilitating and I can focus on designing and synthesizing — center justifying, making bullet points, coming up with an icon that represents what’s being talked about. We had a brand new client a couple weeks ago. They came in visibly nervous. By the end of two days, there was hugging. It’s a connectedness people are yearning for. I always say a little prayer: please let me be of service to this group today, that they can feel heard and make connections they haven’t been able to make before.

MR: Teams that were most effective were the ones aligned and all going for the same thing — 10 people working like 30 because they were aligned and integrated.

AP: Alignment is sometimes the result of managing through conflict. Leadership teams are not all on the same page — they have legitimate, opposing points of view. Putting people together in a space where they can say, how could we make the pie bigger differently? What is the win-win? That takes time and effort. Getting aligned on a shared vision for a product is one of the single most important activities a team can do. Using pens and whiteboards, you can figure out a lot of the hard stuff before you spend millions building out software and hardware.

MR: How did this all start? Tell me the origin story.

AP: Hewlett Packard bought EDS and merged it into their services division. They said, can you have a look at this interesting thing EDS does — a British company called Group Partners with a neat way of visualizing and working collaboratively with customers. We said, can you build one of those practices inside our company? We had CEO Meg Whitman sponsoring it. She quickly figured out that collaborating live with customers was what was needed. We got the mandate: set up a global practice, scale it. Sarah came in as one of many talented artists. It grew and scaled.

MR: And then eventually you left HP?

AP: Nothing lasts forever in tech. They split the company up. Sarah and I went independent. A group went to Amazon and set up another practice there — still running, very successful. We’ve been doing this now for getting onto 18 years.

MR: Have you ever had a customer intentionally bring you in to teach them to do this internally?

SG: Yes — sometimes we’ll do an advisory board and stay an extra day, leave all the content up, walk through the facilitation, talk about how we captured and why we prepared what we prepared. Those days after are fantastic.

AP: We call it Capability Transfer. We’ve built multiple courses for customers — how as an executive can you be a really effective contributor to an advisory board, for example. We also pivoted from trying to sell the whole practice guide to offering small, affordable technique modules. And we’ve gone from enterprise sales to asking, how do we make this affordable for anyone? Our latest is a culture diagnostic survey tool built in partnership with Professor Ron Westrum — $4.95 per person. Team of ten, less than $50.

SG: Culture is always coming up, especially now with AI. Cultures that aren’t generative are struggling and lagging behind.

MR: Let’s get practical. Three tips for someone listening — maybe they work in a company, maybe they’re a graphic recorder or sketchnoter. What would you tell them?

SG: First: learn to navigate the shitties. We did a Pixar course and they talked about this — the creative process is a roller coaster, and when you hit the downside, just hang in there. Go for a walk. It’s always darkest before the dawn. Second: challenge yourself often. I got an iPad and threw myself into the deep end — a week later I was doing live orals for a big tech company virtually. I just recently got into Mental Canvas, which is really hard, but that’s the point. Third: find inspiration outside your daily practice. Go to museums, plays, musicals. Get fresh eyes. For me it’s crawling around on the floor with my grandson — looking at the world at a completely different level.

AP: First: set the environment up right for yourself. Figure out what will get you and others into flow state more often. Second: find your wise mind every day. Try to be balanced, check your ego at the door. Sarah talked me into yoga and it’s the single best thing for helping me start each day in the right mode. Third: remember that emotions are a wave — they will pass. Under pressure, when you feel like it didn’t work, pause. It will get better.

MR: Six tips for the price of one. Where’s the best place to find you?

SG: SharedVisionToolkit.com, and we’re both fairly active on LinkedIn. We also have a podcast on culture and a YouTube channel.

MR: Well, thanks so much you two. This has been a fun surprise — we went a little off the rails and I loved every minute of it. My tip for today: when things go sideways, ask what’s interesting about this, because there are opportunities in that chaos.

SG: Thank you so much, Mike. Your podcast is food for the soul. Keep making them.

MR: Thanks — I’m planning on it. Until next time, talk to you soon.

Sketchnote Lab is Mike Rohde’s space designed to bridge the gap between sketchnote theory and practice. You don’t need to be an artist to think visually. Join Mike and learn to use sketchnotes to clarify your thinking, solve problems, and move forward. Learn more about Sketchnote Lab.

Mike is the author of The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook, bestselling books that teach regular people how to start sketchnoting and build a regular sketchnoting practice.

He founded the Sketchnote Army and hosts the Sketchnote Podcast, where he interviews visual thinkers to understand what makes them tick.

Mike teaches recorded, live, and in-person workshops to help accelerate your sketchnoting practice and provides personalized coaching for your specific visual thinking challenges.

He is the illustrator of bestselling books like REWORK, REMOTE, The $100 Startup, Honest SEO, The Culture Playbook, and The Future Begins with Z.

Become a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner to support Mike’s work.

Some links in Sketchnote Lab posts are affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools and resources I use and believe in.

©2026 Mike Rohde, Sketchnote Lab

We dig into his philosophy of art with a lowercase ‘a’, why constraints and personal projects are the best way to push through plateaus, and how travel journaling can deepen your experience of place while building your artistic voice.

Listen to the episode:

Running Order

• Introducing Danny Gregory and his approach to accessible art

• Danny’s shift from advertising to personal drawing practice

• The life-changing event that inspired Danny’s artistic journey

• The therapeutic role of drawing and storytelling in life challenges

• Recognizing style and personality in beginner artists

• Developing Sketchbook Skool and its mission to democratize art

• The concept of travel journaling and capturing memories in sketchbooks

• Using constraints and personal projects to foster growth

• How travel influences perception and the importance of experiencing place

• Travel storytelling and how sketching enhances the experience

• Overcoming plateaus: beginner’s mind and trying new things

• Rethinking practice: applying skills through projects and constraints

• The value of frequency, variety, and embracing life’s unpredictability in drawing

• Final thoughts: making art accessible and inclusive for all

Resources & Links

• Sketchbook Skool- Danny’s online creativity and drawing school

• Paris in a Day - A live workshop with Danny on Saturday, May 16th! Save 15% with coupon code SKETCHNOTE

• Sketchbook Skool (Danny’s YouTube Channel)

• I Drew Across America - See Danny’s sketchbook unfold as he and his wife drove across America.

• Danny Gregory’s Weekly Essays

• Book: The Illustrated Life — by Danny Gregory

• Book: The Creative License — by Danny Gregory

• Book: Art Before Breakfast — by Danny Gregory

Sponsored by The Reflective Travel Workshop

Have you ever wanted to create travel sketchnotes from an experience you’ve had, just using the photos and memories you’ve got?

In the Reflective Travel Workshop, I’ll guide you through my process for creating travel sketchnotes and then help you reflect on your own photos and memories so that you can make travel sketchnotes of your own trips, too!

This 2-hour recorded video includes a set of downloadable, printable sketching templates and a process to kickstart your own travel sketchnoting practice.

All this for just $20.

Buy the Workshop for $20

Subscribe to the Sketchnote Podcast

You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.

Support the Podcast

To support the creation, production, and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!

Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everybody, it’s Mike Rohde. I’m here with Danny Gregory. Danny, it’s so good to have you on the show. Thanks for making it.

Danny Gregory: Great, I’m glad to be here.

MR: Yeah, it’s I’ve been a huge fan of yours for a long time. I don’t know when I came across your work, probably on YouTube, I would guess. But I really liked your attitude toward simple drawing. I am the same way, feel similar about it. I see all these people that say I can’t draw. So my mission in life is getting people to do one step forward and draw like just basic stuff. And I think you sort of take over after that, or you’re probably doing the same thing, but you then

push them further. And I love the way that you approach this. And I thought you’d be a great guest to have on the show.

DG: Great, I’m looking forward to it.

MR: So I’m kind of curious, we always start out like, who are you and what do you do? I think I have an idea, but I don’t know that I totally do. So I’m kind of curious myself to know all the things that you do. So why don’t you start there and tell us a little bit about yourself.

DG: Sure, so right now my job has been for the last dozen years or so, I’m the founder of Sketchbook Skool and we’re an online art school. It’s changed in various ways over the years, but basically it’s designed to focus on drawing in a sketchbook, watercoloring in a sketchbook, lettering, expressing yourself, but just taking a sketchbook from being a sort of a preliminary thing.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: to being an art form because I, and I’ve published about a dozen books now that are kind of around this idea. So one of them is called The Illustrated Life, which is about, I went to some of my favorite artists and I just made a book about their sketchbooks as kind of the final art. And then I did one on travel journaling as well called An Illustrated Journey, which is people who keep great travel journals, which is an art form I really love.

MR: Hmm.

DG: And then I have also written a couple of different visual memoirs and I wrote a book called How to Draw Without Talent, which is also the name of one of our courses. And I wrote another book called Art Before Breakfast, which is about how do you make art if you have no time? How can you like fit it into your life? So I’m a writer and I’m also, you know, a guy who draws.

MR: Hmm.

MR: Yeah.

MR: Hmm.

DG: And I have a YouTube channel. I have about a half a million subscribers and I make videos about drawing, about not drawing and about various things in between, and I write an essay every week on a thing called Danny’s Essays, which is about the creative life, about the things that get in our way or the weirdness of it or just advice on it. And I’ve been.

MR: That’s great.

DG: I’ve been blogging for more than 20 years, but before that I was in advertising and I was an executive creative director at a couple of big ad agencies in New York. And so I spent, I don’t know, 30 years being a copywriter in advertising and working on lots of different kinds of accounts. So I understand the sort of the creative life.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: and the creative life as I experience it, what it’s like to have clients, what it’s like to come up with ideas on demand and how to produce ideas, because I did a lot of like Super Bowl commercials on down to small space print ads. So I’ve done, I have a lot of experience in that arena. And yeah, so that’s who I was and that’s who I am.

MR: Mm.

MR: That’s really interesting. There are some parallels. I worked as a graphic designer as my former life and worked with ad agencies in Milwaukee, smaller ad agencies. But I always remember this is back in the day pre-computer. So a lot of my work was sketching and the art director that really liked my work because he would give me an idea in the morning and I would have like a ton of sketches by the afternoon that he could then filter through and like that one, that one, and then we would do the production.

So that was really fun. I have, there’s some crossover there. I didn’t really get into the advertising world too much other than that. It was more in the graphic design world, but it’s really interesting to think about. I always think about Mad Men, of course. Now you came a little bit after that, but still I’m sure there was some of that culture that existed in New York City, right?

DG: Yeah, I mean, I came, I started my career at the kind of the end of the three martini lunch. But, you know, I certainly, you know, I don’t really understand the way advertising is functioning these days. I know, but I think it’s a very different experience than it was. You know, I was there during really at the heyday. People represent Edmund as sort of the heyday. But to me, to be able to spend millions and millions of

MR: Okay.

MR: Yeah.

DG: of other people’s money to make my ideas come to life. I think that that’s increasingly less the case now. But when I started out in advertising, I graduated from college with a degree in political science and I had been an intern at the White House. I had worked for my congressman and I had no interest in politics. From that point of view, I had no interest in being an academic. I’d grown up in a family of academics.

MR: Wow.

DG: And I had been the editor of my school paper, but I didn’t want to be a journalist. So I kind of had no real career path besides being a guy who could write and make stuff. So I blundered into advertising and I started my career doing that without any training or preparation. And in those days you could do that. Now you have to have gone to ad school and so forth. But I, you know,

MR: Yeah.

DG: When I was in advertising, you could just be a guy, you know? And so that was, as a creative person, there weren’t that many things that you could do for a living. Now there’s a million things that you can do for a living and you can be entrepreneurial and you can express your creativity in a million ways. But in those days, it was kind of like, you go into advertising, you could go into graphic design, which really wasn’t as much of a thing as it became.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: And I don’t know, you could maybe go into working in entertainment, but that I had no idea how to do that. Yeah, so it was a great business to be in and I really enjoyed it. And I kind of left as I started to see increasingly the power of sort of interactive technology in general, but also seeing that

MR: Yeah, music or something maybe. Yeah.

DG: advertising agencies were no longer at the forefront and that clients were going to lots of other places to get ideas and to get execution. So I remember working, I was working for a big oil company as my client and we went and had a meeting at the New York Times and they showed us some of the things that they were doing on the web that an ad agency could never have come up with, could never have executed, way too slow. And I thought,

MR: Hmm.

DG: there’s no way that this business is going to keep up with that. And so, you know, I had been really interested in online technology for a long time. IBM was my client for a long time as well. And I had built my first website probably in the mid nineties. And I really love that world. But I remember when I first started to get really interested in it and,

MR: Hmm.

DG: other creative people would say to me, why are you bothering with that? You can’t laminate it and put it in your portfolio. So what, like, what are you going to do if you make something, who’s going to see it? And I was like, I don’t know. It’s really fun. It’s really interesting. Plus kind of nobody’s paying attention. So I love to write long copy and you could write a website. I mean, I wrote websites with linking text that would take you to other pages. And that would, as a writer, that was just.

MR: Mm.

DG: amazing as opposed to trying to just write one paragraph that would go in a print ad. So, you know, I always thought the advertising business as it’s now constructed doesn’t get it. And I need to sort of try other stuff. So I ended up quitting and I wasn’t really sure what the hell I was going to do. And I kind of stumbled into what I do now because I had started to draw in my late thirties and

MR: Ha ha.

DG: that kind of opened everything up for me in a new direction.

MR: What spurred you to start drawing in your 30s? Was it frustration with work? Or you just remembered what it was like when you were a kid? I’m kind of curious how that happened. What was the...

DG: So when I was 37 or so, 38, my wife, my son had just been born. He was nine months old. And my wife who worked in the fashion business was going to work and she, we lived in New York and she fell onto the tracks and the subway train ran over her. And it broke her back and paralyzed her. She was a paraplegic.

for the rest of her life. And I was on a photo shoot and I was working on this big campaign and the police came and got me, went to the hospital. And basically from one minute to the next, our whole life changed. Our whole path that we had been on, all my attitude towards my career and where we were going, everything changed. And I had to cope with it. My wife had to cope with it.

And so she kind of adjusted to her new life and she carried on with it. But for me, I was just in my head. I was just a mess. I couldn’t. I just lost my sense of meaning, purpose. It was like the ultimate sort of midlife crisis. And I just wasn’t sure what I was doing with myself. And I went and I looked for meaning in books and met with priests and.

MR: Hmm.

DG: rabbis and various things. I was just really on a quest. And then one day I had this impulse to go into my bathroom with a piece of paper and draw the contents of my medicine cabinet. And I hadn’t really drawn since I was in high school. And I mean, I had doodled, you know, when you’re in advertising, you draw an idea, whatever, but I hadn’t really, yeah, I had never really tried to do a drawing for any other purpose. So I did this drawing and

MR: Yeah, functional stuff.

DG: For the first time, I just felt this like sense of calm. I felt grounded. I felt present in the moment. I wasn’t worrying about stuff. And so I started to just draw kind of stuff. And I had a sketchbook with me and I would just take it around with me and I would just draw my life, you know. And this process of drawing and writing about what I was doing helped me to see the purpose and beauty of my life, you know, to see.

MR: Mmm.

DG: life in New York, see my family, my home and to draw these things. And you know, again, I didn’t really know how to draw. I hadn’t taken art lessons, but I was just, I’m just going to draw this thing. I’m going to look at it and I’m going to draw it. And so I just fell in love with doing that. And I did it sort of at lunch. I did it as I walked to work. I would stop. If I saw an interesting building, I would draw it, you know, in the evening when I was hanging out with my family, when watching TV, whatever, I would just.

draw stuff and I would fill pages with lots of little drawings in a kind of a collage style with little sentences and quips and stuff like that and sometimes lettering and I would just fill these pages and it’s kind of what you do but I was doing, I kind of came to it from this other direction because I wasn’t doing drawings to have drawings, you know. I was doing drawings to be drawing, you know, because being drawing was

MR: Mm. Mm-hmm.

MR: Mm-hmm.

Different perspective, yeah.

MR: Hmm.

DG: was my therapy and you know, and then I, the more I did it, the better I got at it. The more comfortable I was with it, but you know, I’ve basically been doing it for 30 years now, starting with that thing. It’s just become this thing that I,

MR: Hmm. Wow. Wow. Just that one impulse like changed your life.

DG: Yeah, so I ended up, yeah, so I did, I wrote a book called Everyday Matters, which was about this experience that I just described to you, how my life was transformed there. And then that became, then I did another book called The Creative License, which was kind of about how do I teach people to think like this? And how do I do a thing that I encountered a lot with advertising people, which was, you know, you mentioned art directors hiring you to do drawings.

MR: Okay.

MR: Mm.

DG: there are a lot of art directors who can’t draw or who don’t draw. And, you know, I was just encountering a lot of creative people who weren’t really very creative. You know, they were, they knew how to function in an ad agency, but they kind of didn’t do anything else creatively. And they, their world was kind of the world of advertising award annuals and advertising trade magazines. And my world was like, I don’t know,

MR: Yeah.

Mm.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: books and going to museums and going to galleries and looking at art. I just didn’t, I didn’t particularly care about advertising as a creative thing. It just felt like pretty low grade to me compared to the things that great graphic designers do. There were just higher levels of things. So, and I think I wrestled also with the idea of like, am I allowed to really be creative? Because I’m not going to be an artist. I’m not going to like quit my career to go and paint in a garret somewhere.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: So how does this fit in? And I had a little kid, I had a disabled wife, I had a pretty intense career. So how do I do any of this stuff? But I knew that I needed to do it. I needed to do it to be able to deal with all of this stuff. So I just found ways to do it, to integrate it with what I was doing. So that’s, anyway, that’s yeah.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: pretty cool. That’s really cool. You know, finding like, I think the perspective that I like is finding little slots of time where you can do this, right? It sounds like it wasn’t, like you said, you’re not going to quit your job and go and paint somewhere. And I think I kind of got a sense there are people that are creative or could be creative and they just, this is why I have the statement in my books. It’s ideas, not art. It’s not that art is bad or that we shouldn’t do it. It’s like, I think there’s

a ton of baggage tied to art. And so it’s like, either you’re an artist or you’re nothing. Like there’s no gradient in between it in that thinking. I kind of wanted to push people to say, well, you know, the first step is you can draw these little symbols and draw something and express yourself. That’s a form of creativity, but it’s functional, right? It moves you to the next step or whatever. And then there’s a whole gradient all the way up to being an amazing artist. You could be somewhere in between.

And then I think the other thing I like, and the thing that I see in your work is even though you were not trained per se, is your stuff has a style. When I see it, that’s Danny Gregory. Like I didn’t even have a second thought when I see your work because now I know it, I spot it. No, because it’s just, I don’t know, it’s the way that you, I find it really attractive. Someone else that you remind me of, maybe you know this guy, Tommy Kane. He’s also in New York City. He sort of has a really.

DG: Because it’s bad, yeah.

DG: So Tommy Kane is my best friend. He and I worked together in advertising for 20 long years.

MR: Yeah, that’s right. He was also an advertising guy. He’s got a really unique style too. Like, and I wouldn’t say, you know, you look at the work that you do, it doesn’t look the same, but it’s got kind of a, it’s related or something. Like, I don’t know the way you guys look at things and call them out on the page here, but I just love that. Like, and I think that’s what gets me excited when I encourage people to do sketchnoting and they, with the basic skills they have, and I see what they do. Like I start to see their personalities kind of sneak out a little bit.

DG: Yeah, he copies me. He copies me a lot.

Thank

MR: And it’s not, they’re not necessarily trained as artists, but they’re able to produce something. And I think when they get excited, that gets me excited. Right. So I think maybe in the same way, the kind of work you’re doing with Sketchbook Skool is the same, right? You’re getting people to just make that first step kind of like you did in your bathroom. How did, maybe talk a little bit about that, how you now shifted into Sketchbook Skool. Was that a pretty immediate thing that you started doing, or did it take a while to kind of figure out that, hey, this is kind of the school thing and I’m helping other people.

Obviously you’re writing books that seem like you were leading that direction. When did it actually like officially turn out for you?

DG: I said I started to draw probably in 96, 96, 97. And I published Everyday Matters in 2003. You know, six or seven years later, and I started Sketchbook Skool in 2014. So like 17 years later. So there’s a long distance between. And I started Sketchbook Skool when I left advertising. So I left advertising.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Okay. Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

MR: Okay.

DG: And I was doing, I did a bit of freelance, but I was also like doing public speaking and I wrote another couple of books then. And I was interested in the idea of teaching online. This is like before it became the kind of thing it is now, 2014, yeah. And in 2012, I got my hands on a DSLR for the first time. And, you know, having spent all these years in advertising, filming stuff and suddenly realizing like I can actually.

MR: Yeah, yeah.

pretty early.

MR: Okay.

DG: film things with a DSLR that don’t look like they were shot with a VHS handy cam, but they look like at least 16 millimeter film and you know, you can get really beautiful images. So, and I had seen people teaching online and they had been like, it was a lot of like web cams, you know, and people who just didn’t know anything about presenting. They didn’t know anything about filming. And I thought, well, I know a lot about production.

MR: Yes.

MR: Production, yeah.

DG: And so I thought if I could teach online, I could. And my idea at the time was there’s a TV show called Chef’s Table, which is, you know, a big Netflix series that they did for a long time. And what was interesting to me about Chef’s Table is they took like the standard way of like talking about cooking, you know, which had been sort of going back to like Julia Child or something like that. It hadn’t really evolved much, but it was kind of like.

MR: Mm. I’ve heard of that. Yeah, yeah, Mm-hmm.

DG: have a camera above the person and they would be talking to a camera and that was kind of it. And Chef’s Table said we’re gonna make like documentaries about chefs. And so I thought, well, nobody’s really done that with art. Nobody’s really made like art classes or art documentaries that are like films, you know, couldn’t you do that? So that was how we started Sketchbook Skool, my partner who I had started with, she had been a photographer, she also was

MR: sort of cut back and forth.

Yeah, yeah.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: an illustrated journal keeper. And so we just started making films about artists that were filmed well and were good stories and stuff like that, as well as demos. But it wasn’t just about like, here’s a technique. It was more like, what would it be like to spend a day with an artist in their studio? What would that experience be like? What would the conversations be? What would they show you? Like they pull tools out and say,

MR: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Yeah.

DG: I use this watercolor brush or I like to draw this way. They would take some sketchbooks off the shelf and say, let me just show you some stuff that I did. And then they would do a demo, you know, kind of as part of it. So that was sort of our approach to making courses. And it was phenomenally successful right away. I mean, it sounds weird to say, but it was the point where I was like, wow, this is what I need to be doing. And so we, you know, I mean, we had.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Hmm.

MR: Yeah.

DG: we’ve had like 50,000 people have taken our classes now. And it just became a real phenomenon using lots of different sketchbook artists. That was kind of my thing. I want to bring sketchbook artists to people and make them understand that this is a thing. And it’s evolved since then, but that was really what the impetus was. For me, was I differ with you a little bit on the idea of a continuum.

MR: Wow.

MR: Hmm.

DG: because I’ve been interested in art with a lowercase a as opposed to art with a capital A. And so to me, art with a capital A is at the top, it’s like you’re a gallery artist in, you know, Chelsea in New York and you’re a conceptual person and you’re part of that whole world of dealers and collectors that has nothing to do with it. And then there’s the world of like, I guess, illustrators who are selling their art.

and people who are professionally trained and who make a living doing it. What I’m doing is different. I feel like I’m not trying to open a restaurant. I’m trying to make a tuna sandwich. And most people are afraid of making tuna sandwiches. Like, I’m not a, I have no talent for making a sandwich. And it’s like, yeah, you do. I mean, you don’t need talent to make a tuna sandwich and you don’t need talent to start drawing. And it isn’t because

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: you’re eventually going to quit your job and become a professional illustrator. That’s not the goal. The goal is to be a human being who expresses themselves and reacts to the world around them and is engaged with the world and with their imaginations. And it’s just part of life, just like it was when you were six. When you were six years old, every single six year old draws, that’s a given without exception. And none of them worry about talent.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Mm-hmm. Yep.

DG: None of them have any of these limitations and they’re not interested in developing a portfolio and they don’t give a damn what anybody else does. They just make art and you did that too. And it was so much fun and that’s how you learned about the world was by drawing it, you know, and eventually when you were nine, that all fell apart and you know, 1% of you ended up becoming, went to art school, but the rest of you were just like, forget it. I’m not, I have no talent.

And I just have this feeling constantly that there’s like a con that’s been played on all of us by, I don’t know if it’s like the art world or if it’s capitalism or what it is, but something has said to us, only special people can do this. And you’re absolutely forbidden from doing it in any way because you will suck at it. And that just seems so unfair that this thing has been taken away from us completely unnecessarily.

And it’s so much fun and so interesting and can take you anywhere. You can do so many things with it. Why aren’t we allowed to? And so that’s kind of been my sort of thing, the flag I walk around waving, which is like art for all. Like we can all do this and just do it. Even if it’s just taking notes and doing a drawing of, you know, just start there, why not?

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Yeah, yeah, that’s great. I love that. I love your attitude about that. And I don’t know what the big con is. I think partly I have a sense maybe education and pushing toward writing and then junior high school, you know, the battle of like, well, he’s better than me, so I’m just going to give up, probably a bunch of different things involved in it.

DG: Yeah, and also professionalizing everything. You know, it’s like a lot of things we learn in school, we don’t become professionals at it. We don’t become professional mathematicians and geographers and biologists, but we still learned it and we still, you know, it’s good to have. So like why is this thing taken away from us? And part of it is because the art world changed and also artists had it, it was in their interest and in gallerists’ interests to make it seem like this is a special thing that not everybody can do because.

MR: Yeah.

DG: If you want to sell something for millions of dollars, you can’t have made it yourself, right?

MR: It’s got to be exclusive. Yeah. It’s like, you know, diamonds, right? You know, diamonds are prolific, but if you control the access, suddenly they become really valuable, right? Similar kind of idea. Interesting. Well, you talk about some of these courses, the one that I saw most recently you’re promoting, I don’t know, depending on when this comes out, that might already be passed, but you’re talking about visiting Paris. I want you to talk a little bit about what’s your thinking about this, because I’m sure you’re going to do other ones like it.

DG: you

MR: I’m really curious how you’re approaching that and what the thinking is.

DG: So I love travel journaling and I think like when you go somewhere and you bring a sketchbook with you and you draw what you see and you write down notes about what you’re experiencing, you’re creating memories that you will have for the rest of your life. You’re burning it deep into your brain. And you think about when people go on vacation, they spend like $5,000, $10,000, whatever on a vacation. And then you come back and you have like a few photographs that you took, snapshots. Most people are not very good photographers.

MR: Yeah

DG: and they kind of like snap, snap, snap. So, you know, I feel like I’ve been on this mission to try to convince people to do this. One of the things that people say is, well, I’m with a bunch of people and they don’t draw. So what am I going to do? I don’t have time to do it, you know, or I’m not good enough to do it, or I don’t want other people looking at me and seeing what I’m doing and going like, what are you an artist now? You know, I don’t want to deal with any of that stuff. So, and it’s like, well, that’s.

MR: Ha ha.

DG: those are the kind of minor considerations and there are ways around them. But I can show you how to draw quickly. I can show you how to use photo reference, but yet capture things immediately. I can show you how to write your experience quickly. So that’s kind of the idea is let’s do a virtual trip to Paris and we’re gonna go for three hours. And in three hours, we’re gonna start in a cafe and then we’re gonna go to the Louvre and we’re gonna

look at the outside of the Louvre, we’re gonna go inside, we’re gonna look at some art, we’re gonna look at the Mona Lisa, we’re gonna see all the people taking snapshots. You know, go to the Mona Lisa and it’s like a room full of people taking pictures and there’s a tiny little painting way in the distance. So I’m gonna capture that experience, what it’s like to walk along the Seine, what it’s like to eat lunch in a cafe, and then we’re gonna go and visit the Eiffel Tower, we’re gonna just cover all of Paris, we’re gonna do it all in three hours. And you’re gonna...

MR: Yeah.

DG: draw quickly, throw a bit of watercolor on it. I’m gonna show you what you can do back at the hotel that you started somewhere here. I’m gonna show you how to convince your significant other to go and look at a magazine, but in five minutes you’ll have drawn this. Yeah, you’ll have drawn this in five minutes. You’ll have it. And at the end of the day, you’ll have one spread that is packed with stuff. You will be so excited by it that you won’t be able to wait to go on vacation. But also what I find is,

MR: Give me the patience.

DG: When I go away and I do travel journaling, when I come home, I want to do it of my town. Like I immediately want to go, you know, I’ve never been a tourist here. Let me go and do this stuff. It just gets you really excited. And so that’s kind of what we’re going to be doing on May 16th. Yeah, it’s going to be really fun.

MR: That sounds really fun. I’ve been to Paris with my wife a couple times and it makes me want to go as well.

DG: Yeah, I mean, there’s my favorite illustrator is Ronald Searle and he did a book called Paris Sketchbook where he and his wife went to Paris and they drew all the stuff and they did a thing much better, more complex than what I’m talking about. But I was hired by an author, he did a book on Paris and he said, were you illustrated? And I said, so my wife and I went to Paris and we, I think we were there for four days and I did.

I think like 50 illustrations for the book in one weekend, thinking about Ronald Searle the entire time. And I actually got, I was actually corresponding with him and I talked to him about it. He handed me the torch. So I felt like, okay, good. I’m allowed to acknowledge Ronald Searle.

MR: wow. So did he have a list of things that he wanted to be represented in his book or did he kind of turn it loose to you? Yeah, yeah.

DG: I think the guy who I illustrated for? Yeah, sort of, yeah. The book was about going to Paris to write a novel. So the idea was like, you can go to Paris, you can rent an apartment, you can go and do this stuff. It was kind of like, anybody can do this, which was a bit of a stretch, but yes, that was the idea.

MR: Mm.

MR: Well, if you have money, I suppose anybody can, but end time. Yeah, I guess if it’s important, that would be a way to separate yourself. That’s really interesting. Last year, I took my family to Scotland and we did something similar. And I knew with my family, I had the same challenges and I’ve done it live before. I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting if I actually took the limitations of my trip with my family and turned it into a

DG: Right, well, yeah, he thought it was something you could save up to do.

MR: into a challenge. So the way I approached it was I love taking photos, I’m pretty good. So I would, took photos of everything I thought would be interesting to make into a drawing. And then I was really good about every night when we got back, I would write the description of the day or a lot of times I would speak with, you know, Apple Notes, converting it into text. It wasn’t really to be beautiful. It was just not to forget. So every night or the morning I would write that down.

And my intention was, I knew that it was going to be a busy almost two weeks. And so I just captured everything in detail. I wrote descriptions every day, everything we did and all the funny stories and stuff. And then when I came home, I took all those photos and I then sat down and made layouts and stuff and looked at my own reference and rebuilt a travel journal that way, just to see like, would this work? And it was really fun. It was kind of like reliving the trip twice in a way.

Um, but you know, of course I would always prefer to like sit for two hours and draw something. It’s just, you know, when you have a 13 year old boy, it’s not always going to work that way. So now I’m kind of curious to take this as well to see like what your tricks are and maybe I can take those on board for my next family trip.

DG: Sure, join us. Absolutely. Yeah, I think that what you just described to me sounds like work. It sounds like a project that you have to, you know, to me, drawing is part of the experience. And so, and a lot of times I’m not, I’ll draw like a garbage can. I’ll draw like a pigeon. I’m not drawing, you know, perfect photos. Not necessarily. I mean, in this case, we’re probably going to be focusing on that, but yeah, to me, my travel journals are full of like weird cab drivers and stuff. They’re not,

MR: Yeah. Yeah.

MR: The sights, the sights, yeah.

MR: Yeah.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: You know, and a lot of it is also when you’re drawing on location. You mentioned my friend Tommy Kane. He’s done so much incredible. He only draws on location when he draws. And then, you know, it’s, you have experiences because you’re drawing, you know, so part of it is you’ll interact with other people, but also you just, you’re looking in a way and you’re seeing things that you’re never gonna capture with a photograph. In my experience, you know, and it’s also.

MR: Yes. Yep.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Right, I agree.

DG: What I like is I’ll start doing a drawing and then it starts raining or I do a drawing and the other person’s like, come on, we’ve got to go. So I have a half finished drawing and that half finished drawing is like, great. That’s a story. You know, started raining. You know, my wallet was stolen while I was drawing, whatever it is. There’s other things that happen that become part of it. Because to me, that’s what travel is. It’s like, it’s an adventure and it’s doing things you don’t normally do and eating things you don’t normally eat and you just, you’re just living life.

MR: Yeah.

DG: you know, more intensely when you’re traveling and drawing is part of that. And I think if you are a person who draws, you should be drawing when you’re traveling, cause that’s what you do, you know? And that’s why I resist the idea of making it into a perfect thing that then later on you can come back and look at it. It’s like spending a lot of time editing your travel photos and like putting them into Photoshop and correcting them, like whatever.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: yeah. Yeah.

MR: Yeah. What’s interesting the way you describe it, almost the thing that came to mind is everything is the material in the way that you’re approaching it. So like the pigeon that’s wandering around the garbage can or the angry taxi driver who made you get out of the cab in the rain or whatever the thing is, like everything is the material. My wallet getting stolen, like that’s part of the story. Instead of looking at it as like an inconvenience or a problem or which maybe it is, but it’s also the thing you laugh about when you

look back at the sketchbook and you see, that’s right. I did get my wallet stolen. That was, that was quite a story. Let me tell you about that one. So.

DG: Yeah, I remember my father-in-law came to visit from a small town in Ohio to visit us in New York for the first time. And he went out and he wandered around. He was gone for like a couple of hours. I was kind of worried about him, like, is he getting lost in the city? But he came back and he was like, you wouldn’t believe it. I said, did you have an interesting experience? He was like, you wouldn’t believe it. And I said, really? So like, what did you see? And he said, a six pack of Coke was $5.99.

MR: Yeah.

DG: I was like, really? Like that’s your perception of New York, but that’s your perception of New York. Like that’s a thing, you know, that’s like, that’s very personal takeaway, but he was amazed at how expensive it is here. So to me, it’s like that, those experiences, I just have a lot of them of like, just weird things happen. And they’re the things that you might forget unless you told them and they became like your.

MR: Yeah, yeah.

MR: Yeah.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: the story you always tell about your trip to Thailand or whatever. But when you put it down, you know, and I also find that like there’ve been a lot of times where I’ve been drawing in places that are convenient to draw. So you’re sitting in a cafe, you’re sitting, you know, on a bench somewhere. And that’s a lot of times when I first was drawing on location, I would have to look for a place that was comfortable to sit. And a lot of times that place wasn’t a great way to look at the thing.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Hmm.

DG: I was drawing. Since then I’ve learned to have a camp stool that I carry with me and I can sit wherever I want to. But a lot of times you’re sitting in a weird way and there are people in front of you and there’s a tree and you can’t quite see the building. But then that becomes part of the drawing too. That becomes part of the thing. It’s like this experience of discomfort was part of

MR: okay.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: the story.

MR: Yeah, I think the other thing that comes to mind too, and maybe you can respond to this is I got a feeling like when you first arrive in a new place, like when we first got to Scotland, a lot of it just feeling it out and like your father-in-law, well, six pack of Coke’s really expensive. It feels like as you sort of settle into the place. So like by day two or something, I was really intent on taking my kids to the grocery store and buying some food because we had a flat that we rented. Right. And I wanted them, my intention with the whole travel thing was what does it feel like to be

a Glaswegian, right? The Glaswegian in the city. We live in a flat. We got to walk to the grocery store. We got to go to the Aldi. We got to walk to the train. Like this is what it’s like to live in the city. I want you to feel what that’s like. Now, maybe that’s not where you’ll ultimately go, but I want you to feel comfortable doing that and experiencing that. So that’s my ulterior motive. And then I sort of piggybacked the experience on my own, but I kept the feeling is like, it sort of takes a couple of days for the shock to wear off. And then you start.

Like you’re noticing changes a little bit, I think. Would you find that as well?

DG: Yeah, and I agree with what you’re describing also because you’re getting to see what it’s like to live there as opposed to what it’s like to live in a hotel there, you know, because hotel living is completely artificial, right? But I’ve lived in apartments in lots of different places, like we lived in, just before the pandemic, we were in Amsterdam for like a month and a half, you know, and so we went from like really loving Amsterdam to frankly not liking it that much because we saw what we had been thinking. We had been thinking about moving to Amsterdam and we spent some time there.

MR: Mm-hmm. Right.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Hmm.

DG: and we thought, I think we don’t want to be here. But I think that that’s, again, that’s what’s so great about travel. And that’s why I love travel writing. There’s just so many great writers who write about travel because you’re going to a weird place and your senses are open to everything. It’s not like being at home where you are so used to so many things and you know where you buy coffee and you know what bus to take and those kinds of things. When you’re in a new place, you’re like, your nerves are all.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: raw and so you’re picking up all kinds of stuff. It’s exhausting as well, but it’s fascinating and kind of helps you to, I think, learn about yourself and what you’re capable of.

MR: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I find that it feels to me like whenever I’ve traveled, there’s been shifts in my life, either perceptually or I’ve, you know, as an example, I went with my wife to Sweden. I was right at the point where I was deciding, do I want to continue being a print graphic designer or do I want to take this job with this guy being a web designer? It was brand new in 97, 98. And so we went on this trip and I just remember coming back and it was so clear like

You know, I can always get a job as a graphic designer now, but there’s not going to be always this opportunity to be early to web design. I want to go for it. I was single. I didn’t have any bills. I lived in an apartment. You know, I had like a car payment and that was it. So I went for it and it totally changed my life, but I’ve always tied travel with sort of realizations in my regular life, even though I was away from it. That’s really unusual to say, but sort of like stepping out of normality. Let me sort of look at things a little differently. I think.

DG: you were willing to take risks. Yeah, you were taking risks when you traveled, which opened you up to the idea of being risky in your career as well. I had a similar thing when I left advertising. I was afraid that if I stayed in New York, I would, within six months, have another job doing basically what I had done. Somebody else was gonna offer, and I would just be a creative director of some other agency. And so my wife and I moved to Los Angeles for a year.

MR: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

MR: Mm. Mm-hmm.

DG: I kind of didn’t really know anybody. I didn’t really know what I was doing and everything was new. I ended up actually going to clown school because I was like, I’m just, nobody knows me. I can do whatever the hell I want and I can do. And so that opened up so many things to me by just being willing to be in a different place and being away from habit. And because I was afraid that.

MR: Mm.

MR: Wow

MR: Yeah.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: all the habits that I still maintained would end up making me just return back like, you know, like a rubber band back to where I had been. And so this opportunity, this door that had opened, I would close it myself and I didn’t want it. And I’m glad I didn’t.

MR: Hmm. Interesting. That’s like the burn the ships moment, right? You don’t have no way back. I mean, obviously you could move back to New York City if you wanted to, but sort of forced you to deal. Yeah. You’re a different person and it was a different place, right? And yeah, really interesting. I know this whole discussion has turned a lot toward travel, but I love travel. I think the other observation that I would say for those that are listening and thinking about, should I do this? I kind of feel like

DG: And we did, we did. But when I came back to New York, I was totally different.

Everything was different, yeah.

DG: Thank

MR: I need travel. Like I realized this, I’ve been realizing this for a long time, but like when I could travel, I come back refreshed and more alive. I’m looking at a trip right now to Chicago, where I was born, to go back and see people. And I just love wandering the city and, you know, I’ll take my family to places where I feel comfortable, but maybe it’s new for them. But I just feel like when I come back, like my life sort of kicks up a notch and I’m just kind of recognizing like, I need this. Like it’s not.

It’s not even like it’s for business or anything. It’s just, I need it for me. And that’s kind of interesting to observe that. So.

DG: Absolutely.

Yeah, I did a lot of business travel over the years, but ironically, I live in Phoenix, Arizona now. And the reason I live here is because my wife and I went for a three day weekend to Palm Springs in March of 2020. So we went away for a long weekend. And when we got to Palm Springs, the pandemic hit that weekend.

MR: Hmm.

MR: Wow. Wow.

DG: and we couldn’t go home. So my sister-in-law was here, she lives in Phoenix, so she said, well, you can’t go back, there are no flights, like the airports are all closed, you might as well just come back to Phoenix with us and you can stay on our couch and whatever, figure it out. I still live here six years later because of that. Literally, like we ended up, yeah, we ended up, like we couldn’t go back for months and months and we ended up selling our apartment in New York and now we live here and it’s, I,

MR: Mm. Mm.

See you guys.

DG: I didn’t know anything about this place. My wife is from here originally, but she hasn’t lived here for like 20 years either. And so that little, and I, but I also will say that the pandemic kind of scared us about travel, not just because of that experience, but just in general, everything seemed so dicey around travel. I would say this year we’re just starting to crawl out of our holes and start to travel again. We’re going to go to France in a couple of months. So yeah, it’s going to open up again.

MR: Hmm. Interesting.

MR: Yeah, everybody’s different, you know, in what they want to do. And I was like you. I went to New York City, I think New York City was one of the last places I did a workshop for sketchnoting, and then down in Jamaica. But I stayed in the city. I try every time I go to New York City to try a different area. So I stayed a little bit closer to, I don’t know what the neighborhood was, but I really enjoyed being there. And it was like my last big, you know, and I walked around the city, which I like doing and just

trying to be like, again, I always approach this travel, like, what would it be like to be a New Yorker? I knew what it would like to be a Chicago kid, but I was a little kid. So I’d walk around, I’d go around to the neighborhood restaurant and have lunch. Sometimes I’d go to the same place a couple of times. And what does it feel like to be a regular here? And like, I met a friend up in Alphabet City and I wandered around and hey, there’s a barber shop. So I went in and I got a haircut. Like, and when I told my friend, he was like, oh man, you’re just being like a New Yorker, right? You’re just getting stuff done.

DG: Ha

MR: And I was just kind of having fun doing that, you know, it’s only for a weekend or a long weekend, but it was fun to do that. So I guess I hadn’t planned on this being so much about travel, but I’m pretty excited about travel. And I think it sounds like you are too. And I encourage people listening and watching to consider it. Like Danny says, take this workshop he’s offering and learn how you can integrate drawing, sneak it in, in a sense, I think is a really great way to make that.

I agree with you, that makes the experience just so much more memorable and interesting for yourself to, you know, rather than just do it and sort of experience it and then forget about it, like to really live it fully. And then you’ve got a record, you know, it’s pretty cool. Well, we can maybe jump into some tips here. I like, I always like something practical. I just was growing up, my dad’s blue collar. I grew up with blue collar.

DG: Absolutely.

DG: Sure.

MR: He would always say, what have you learned, Mike? So I always want to bring something practical for people to apply. So in this context, maybe we frame it around travel stuff. I don’t know. What would be three things you would say? Frame it this way. There’s a visual thinker of some kind listening. They might be just a hobbyist who’s doing it for fun. They might be a pro. They could be a professional who just uses it on a whiteboard.

I think everybody has opportunities to travel. So maybe we frame it around that. What would be three things for somebody traveling to consider as tips they could do to kind of step into this world that we’re talking about that would encourage them.

DG: Well, I think the tips I was gonna give are broader, but they could certainly be applied to this. So the first one, it’s exactly what you just said, which is to embrace constraints. I think we’re so used to, particularly if you’re a creative professional, you’re used to having constraints on what your ideas are. You have a strategy, you have a brief, you have a client, you have this and that, so you work within that box. I think a lot of times when people come to me and they say, what should I draw?

MR: Okay, all right.

MR: Hmm.

DG: I’d love to draw, I don’t know what to draw. They think that they’re supposed to be like making some art. So like, what is that supposed to be about? But I think if you try and find constraints, and the constraints could be just draw a certain way. You could say, I’m only gonna, I’m gonna go to Paris, but I’m only gonna draw things I eat. And I’m only gonna draw food. Or you could say, I’m only gonna,

MR: There you go.

DG: take two colored pencils with me and everything I do is gonna be just using those two colored pencils. Or you could say, you know, I’m only gonna use materials that I find in Paris along the way, you know? So when you have a constraint, that I think stretches your mind to solve a problem. You’ve created your own problem and then it’s much more interesting and I think

MR: Hmm.

MR: Hmm.

DG: When you look at, I don’t know, look at impressionism, for instance, or look at lots of great art works within constraints. I think that’s also aesthetically, I find that really appealing because I think when you think about lots of different ways to solve the same problem, it’s like the old kind of like, how do you drop a light bulb off a building kind of design exercise that we all got in high school, and protect an egg from a

I forget what it was, right? When you work within that and you try and think of lots of things, and I really like this exercise of exercising your imagination by giving yourself a list of 10 things. And saying, you start by saying, I’m gonna come up with 10 lists of 10 things, 10 topics for 10 lists. So the first topic might be,

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Hmm.

DG: you know, 10 ways to drop an egg off a building. And the next topic might be 10 things I could cook with radishes. And the next thing is 10 people I’d like to have dinner with who were dead, 10, you know, and you just have a list of, so you make a list of 10 things. And then the next day, and this is literally something you can do every day. The next day you take 10 things, 10 people I want to have dinner with and you come up with 10 things, you know? And so doing those kinds of things,

MR: Hmm.

DG: If you do that every day for a year, that means you’ll have come up with 3,650 ideas. And there might be five really good ideas in there. And you could just spend five minutes doing that as you’re brushing your teeth or whatever. So to me, having, again, having constraints really stretches you. I also like the idea of having, as a part of this, is having personal projects. So I’ve had lots of different kinds of personal projects like

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: When I first got Procreate, I decided that I would, I wanted to get to know Procreate and I didn’t want to like do a lot of courses or whatever. I just decided, I’m gonna give myself an assignment. Every day on Instagram, I’m going to post, for 100 days, I’m gonna post a different drawing of a dog, a different kind of dog and a different way of drawing that dog.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Mm.

DG: And I’m gonna do that for a hundred days. And so I did that and I did all kinds of things, styles, cartoony and oil painting, all the great things you can do with Procreate. And I learned how to use Procreate really well, enjoying those hundred days. I learned how to draw dogs well. I learned how to kind of come up with ideas, you know, cause each one was a different idea. My thing was just like, I’m gonna spend like 15 minutes doing each one, 20 minutes, whatever it is, quick, get it up on Instagram, move on.

MR: You

DG: I’m just doing it. And the reason I included Instagram was because it was another constraint, which is I have an obligation to do it, and not that anybody cared or was paying attention, but for me it was like, don’t want to break my streak. So I did it for a hundred days and that was really helpful. But I think there’s just a lot of projects that are, you know, I drew my same teacup with the same pen every single day for an entire sketchbook’s worth of a thing while I was waiting for the kettle to boil.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Yeah, don’t break the streak.

DG: I had a tea sketchbook that I kept next to the tea kettle. And then I would put the kettle on, wait for the thing, wait for it to pour the tea, wait for it to steep. The whole thing would take six minutes and I would draw my teacup each time. Sometimes it’s the same way. Sometimes it’s different. So having things like this are just, it’s just, it’s fun. It has no particular purpose, but something might come out of it. Projects can turn into things, but that’s not why you’re doing it. And it’s just a way of.

channeling what you’re doing. So that would be my first tip is constraints and projects. My second thought is plateaus. I think that if you draw a lot, after a year, sometimes longer, you will hit a plateau, where you’re just not getting any better. You had this like incredible run when you first were learning, but now if you look at what you drew,

MR: Mm-hmm. I like that.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: six months ago and you look at what you’re drawing now, it’s kind of the same. You’re kind of doing it the same way, you know? And basically you’re getting better and better at the same thing, but your brain isn’t really growing because there’s no more challenge anymore, you know? And I think about it in terms of exercise, you know, the same things happen if you’re like lifting weights or running or whatever. You just kind of get to this point and then you’re just doing it. And I think the danger with that is you will fall off the plateau.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Yeah.

DG: your enthusiasm for doing has changed. So I think that an important way of getting across that plateau, getting back to getting better is beginner’s mind. So beginner’s mind allows you to really take off. What I suggest is like, try something that you are really uncomfortable with doing. You know, it might be subject matter that you never like to draw. It may be a tool that you’ve never used before.

MR: Hmm.

MR: Mm.

DG: It may be looking at some artists who are very different from you and really like studying what they do and maybe doing some, you know, just try to draw in their style. But whatever you can do to snap that default way you have of doing things will help you to grow into a different thing. Yeah. And I do this thing called Draw With Me, which is a weekly live stream on YouTube, but I’ve been doing it for six years now.

MR: Hmm.

DG: And every week, we draw something really different. And sometimes we draw one thing and sometimes I’ve done as many as 40 things in an hour. Sometimes we draw people, we draw animals, we draw things from our imaginations, we draw things from photo reference, we do lettering, we do all kinds of stuff. But my objective in doing all of this is to really stretch myself and to stretch

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: people who come and to just say like, here are things because everybody will say I never thought I could draw X. And I can’t believe that I did it. And a lot of what I do is I really move fast. I’m like, going, and I’m not waiting for you, you’re gonna keep up with me. And if I have photo reference, it’s gonna, you know, if you haven’t taken a screenshot, you’re out of luck. And I’m amazed at how people can do it. People can just, they can

MR: Hmm.

MR: Ha ha.

DG: learn to draw really quickly and they can draw really weird things and we can draw, we draw upside down sometimes, we draw with our non-dominant hand sometimes, we do watercolors, all kinds of things and it’s, and then at the beginning of each show, we show all the things that people drew and posted from the week before. So you get to see like all the different things. So to me again, that’s, if you’re just feeling like, ugh, I’m just not getting any better.

MR: Hmm.

DG: try something like this or come join me on YouTube. But you know, just get over yourself, get off what you’re good at and get bad at something, get bad. And then you will shake it up. So that’s my second thought. And then the third thought is I don’t like the word practice, you know? And I think a lot of times we’re like, well, I really got to practice and I should practice. And I like thinking of, yeah, I think it’s like,

MR: Hmm.

MR: baggage on that one.

DG: I think of practice, and I think when it comes to drawing practice, drawing practice is really bad. It’s like drawing an egg or putting the light, shading. This is like a horrible thing. I just, I don’t know, I just, maybe it’s because I didn’t go to art school, but every time I sat down to teach myself and I would open a book on how to draw, it’s just, I didn’t want to do it. So I like the idea of thinking of practice the way lawyers think of practice.

Doctors think of practice or yoga instructors think of practice. It’s just a thing that you do. And what you’re doing is you’re practicing the thing you do. Not because you’re doing exercises, but because you’re applying it. That’s what practice really means. It’s you’re practicing what you preach. You’re practicing what you’ve learned. You’re applying it. And so I think to think about like, what can you do so that instead of trying to learn fundamentals, but maybe you do want to learn fundamentals, but you’re applying them.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: in some way. So if you say, I want to like get better at drawing noses, well then fill a whole sketchbook with portraits of people with big noses, you know, make it something else, but don’t just draw like grids and cubes and you know, all that stuff. I think it’s terrible. And people who are first learning to draw, that’s where they start. It’s like learning chopsticks. I don’t want to play chopsticks. Nobody wants to play chopsticks, right? You want to play songs. So like great.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Yeah, doesn’t apply to anything necessarily.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: Go and do that. You’ll be bad at it, but keep going and then you’ll get good at it. But it’s really like keeping it interesting, keeping it varied. Those are the things that, you know, I think push you forward. So those are my three tips. Constraints and projects is one. Plateaus and beginner’s mind is two. And then the third one is practice redefined. You find practice for yourself.

MR: Yeah. It’s interesting when you talk about that, the way you describe practice, it’s almost like you’re putting yourself in a plateau, right? If you think of it that way, because you’ve got this thing you’re not that interested in, but you feel like you have to do it. That sounds like plateau to me. But the solution that you offer, I think of it like I tie personal projects with practice, like the doing is like, I want to learn how to draw noses. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to find out who are the most interesting people in history who had big noses.

DG: Yeah

DG: Mm-hmm.

MR: I’m going to find pictures and draw them and then tell their story and make it into a personal project of big nose people or whatever. You know, just to like, I feel like when I do any kind of work, like sometimes it’s best when I have a project where I have to use the tool that I don’t want to use to force me to learn how to use the tool, right? Maybe it’s going to take a little bit longer, but by the end of it, then I’ll have a better sense of the tool and how it works as a practical way.

DG: But also I think if you apply the tool, if you apply the tool to something that you are interested in so you can form a linkage between them. Like for me, there were things about Procreate that were like, yeah, I could do lots of tutorials about it. But I like dogs and I like the idea of that challenge. And so then I was applying the tool so it became painless, you know, and I wasn’t constantly failing at it, you know, which is I think another thing that becomes really painful is that.

MR: Yeah.

MR: Right.

You

MR: Yeah.

DG: if you’re just trying to learn a tool without having some purpose, you’re going to fail a lot and that’s very discouraging.

MR: Yeah. Yeah. It becomes secondary. Like the learning Procreate is almost secondary to the project itself and the doing the dogs. And I think the other thing I like is you’re kind of overlapping. Like I want to learn Procreate and I like dogs and I’m going to challenge myself. So you’re sort of doing this overlapping activity so that it’s not one thing. It’s like three things at once. So if you

DG: Yeah, and related to that is like life drawing classes. Like I’ve gone to life drawing classes at various points, you know, and a lot of times I’ll get to the point where I’m like, why am I spending three hours drawing this naked person? I don’t know. Like, what’s the point? Like, what am I going to do with this? And you know, and also this way of drawing, spending three hours doing a single person and drawing them with charcoal, whatever, like it has nothing to do with anything that I want to do. It is kind of fun to spend three hours in a concerted way drawing.

MR: You

MR: Yeah. Yeah.

DG: but I often would feel like, okay, I have all these drawings that I’ve done. I just, I think I could find a better way of spending three hours drawing. And you know, and I know that not everybody feels that way and life drawing is great and all those things, but for me, it’s just like getting to know yourself, but not giving up, just modifying it so that you find a way of continuing to draw that fits with you, your way of seeing the world, the kinds of things you like to do.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: Mm-hmm.

DG: the amount of time you have to do it in, all that stuff, keep it fun.

MR: Yeah, I love those tips. Those are great. Thank you so much for doing those, for sharing those. Well, Danny, it’s been great to have you on the show. What are the best places for people to go find more about you? Of course, I’ll have show notes with all kinds of links, everything we’ve talked about. But is there one place where you would send people?

DG: You bet.

DG: Yeah, I would say I mean, yeah, I mean, I have sketchbookskool.com is our website and Skool is spelled with a K. We also have our YouTube channel, which has thousands of videos on it. And also Danny’s Essays is my weekly essay. That’s free. YouTube is free and my courses are affordably priced. Yeah.

MR: Okay.

MR: Mm-hmm.

MR: I think they’re all pretty reasonable. Yeah, I think they’re all really reasonable. Yeah. And I think the latest book you published I purchased, is your Danny’s Essays book. And I’m also a subscriber to that as well. So I really enjoy your essays when they come out. Yeah, for sure. Got to support your people. Yeah, not a problem. Well, Danny, thanks so much for being on the show. It’s great to have you. Thanks for sharing. I love.

DG: yes. Great. Thank you. Thanks for wanting it.

Yeah, every Friday.

Yes, thank you.

DG: Thanks.

MR: just your whole mindset and approach and the work you’re doing. Thank you for doing it. You’re making the world a better place. I think I just want to say thank you for that. Yeah. And for anybody who’s watching or listening, this is another episode. Talk to you soon.

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