Craighton Berman

Call it what you want: Visual thinking. Visual communications. “Sketchnoting.” Craighton Berman is one of the most eloquent champions of the increasingly popular trend of capturing your thoughts visually.

Craighton Berman is teaching us the power of the visual medium at his Sketchnotes blog. “Sketchnoting is not about drawing,” he says. “It’s about organizing your thoughts, emphasizing important stuff, showing relationships, and being crisp.” Drawing circles, or containers, around concepts and creating connecting lines and arrows is a great start. From there, let your sketches reflect your own personality, your interpretations, and your own view of the highlights. Not only are you capturing ideas, you’re synthesizing as you go.

Beyond sketchnoting, Craighton is an avid fan of using a pen tablet when giving a presentation. Just the ability to highlight and emphasize key points during a conversation makes his time with a PowerPoint that much more effective.

Craighton says that sketchnoting, and all various forms of visual thinking, is a lot easier than it may look. All you really need to do is pick up your pen and capture away.

As a blogger, he also says that writing about sketchnoting is a lot more work than simply sketching it out. “But that’s the point,” he adds, to which we say, “Amen.” So just have a look around.