Sketchnote Lab Live Replay: March 2026 - Foundations: Creating Sketchnote Icons
A full video replay (for Lab Partners) from this session, where I taught the foundations of icon design, from basic shapes to building your own personal icon library.
Saturday's icon foundations session covered a lot of ground in just 60 minutes. We worked through how every icon starts from five basic shapes, why recognizable beats realistic every time, and how to build a personal icon library you can put to use right away. Attendees drew along live, which made for a fun, active session.
Here’s an 8-minute teaser of creating icons from the 1-hour live session:
What We Covered
The 5 Basic Shapes - how squares, circles, triangles, lines, and dots are the building blocks of every icon.
Recognizable, not realistic - simplicity is the goal; nearby words in sketchnotes carry some of the weight.
Live icon demos - I created houses, books, coffee cups, mountains, and pizza slices, drawing each with as few lines as possible with the first template sheet.
Icon Generator Sheet - I shared how to use my template for generating icons quickly; quantity over quality.
Icon Iterator Sheet - I also shared the template sheet for refining your best ideas into clean, repeatable icons.
Final Icon Library Sheet - The template sheet where your finished icons end up, ready to reference and practice against.
Visual metaphors - We took a quick look at moving from drawing objects to capturing abstract ideas and shared Dario Paniagua’s metaphors community.
Sketchnote Icon Samples
Below are my sketchnotes created during the session.
Session Overview & Icon Principles
The schedule, 5 Basic Shapes, and icon creation with the template, page 1:
Icon Generator & Iterator Work
Detail work on a laptop icon using the Icon Iterator template, page 2.
Supporting and Founding Lab Partners can watch the full video to see how these were developed during the session.
Resources
The Noun Project - icon reference and inspiration
Dario Paniagua’s community - in-depth training on visual metaphors
Icon Template Sheet in US Letter or A4 formats for printing.
Spring Discount — 10% Off Annual Lab Partnerships.
As a thank-you for this spring, here’s 10% off an annual Supporting or Founding Lab Partnership through May 1, 2026.
Claim it here: sketchnotelab.com/spring10
Watch the Full Video Replay
If you aren’t a Supporting or Founding Lab Partner, watch me demonstrate my icon design process by becoming a Lab Partner. You’ll get access to the full session recording and all recordings in the Partner Vault from December 2024.