This Skillshare course entitled Draw Your Notes: Intro to Visual Note-Taking by Wallis and Sarah from the Ink Factory Studio shows a fun, visual way to take notes. It's great for any learner, young or old. I found this course when I was researching how to make worksheets for my students. So it's a great course for teachers also. As the demonstrations are done with analog paper and colored markers, the same process can be used on a digital tablet or computer.

Wallis and Sarah begin with a discussion of how visual note-taking is great for organizing your ideas visually on the page. They discuss their favorite tools for the class project which is a summary of your "visual note-taking journey". They use beautiful examples and offer their personal tips, tricks and best practices for developing your own personal style and visual library of icons, images and more.

After the introduction, Wallis and Sarah discuss visual hierarchy, which is a topic that flows throughout the entire course. They discuss how you can use scale, contrast, saturation, color and space to create visual levels of importance in your notes, as each of these will help to guide your eyes throughout your notes. A major tip is to decide on a combination of these main elements of design to create visual hierarchy.

Next Wallis and Sarah discuss their favorite analog and digital tools. They suggest using the size of your paper, whiteboard, iPad or tablet for choosing your writing tools accordingly. They say to start with three writing tools of different sizes and three warmup exercises to train your hands to take visual notes effortlessly.

Color is next and very important to visual hierarchy. Wallis and Sarah suggest using the download pdf to help with working with color. They show how the use of color, contrast and saturation help important information stand out on the page. They suggest starting with a grayscale palette with one accent color and then creating three more palettes with three or four colors maximum.

Wallis and Sarah suggest that learning visual note-taking is like learning a new language. They discuss the difference between handwriting and lettering and when each becomes important to the visual hierarchy. Moving on to more advanced topics, they suggest turning letters into drawings, icons and other embellishments.

Composition was my favorite topic of interest and the reason I choose to take this course. Wallis and Sarah discuss three types of arrangements or layouts for your visual note-taking, which are the popcorn, pillar and timeline compositions. They also discuss details about how to use connectors and containers, such as speech bubbles.

Wallis and Sarah suggest starting your course project by creating five icons for your new visual library. If you are new to drawing, they suggest staring with drawing shapes and progress to icons and other graphics.

The Ink Factory Studio is a group of visual note-taking specialists.

Draw Your Notes Intro to Visual Note-Taking (affiliate link)

Disclosure: As a participant in the Skillshare affiliate program, some of the links in this article are affiliate links. However, my opinions are completely my own based on my experience.

Screenshots used by permission of Skillshare, Inc.