As a photographer, I know the importance of pictures to remember things. As a teacher and a continuous student, I am intrigued by the art of visual notetaking. Emily Mills did an excellent job explaining how to start, what paper to use, advice on pens and, markers. Illustrated with many examples and, exercises this book is an excellent starting point for both students and people that attend meetings and conferences. It is a short book that asks for a second edition for the more advanced visual notetaker

I received an ARC to write my honest review.

It has amazing tutorials on how to create different fonts and to organize work. While, I probably won’t have the commitment to create visual notes, I’ve definitely been motivated to make my notes more aesthetic and organized.

Emily Mills leads you through the know-hows and howtos of visual note-taking. Even though it is specifically for visual note-taking, it provides advice that also apply to normally taking notes and how to extract important information from a lecture or presentation.

A major proportion of the book is learning to draw markers and objects such as headers, arrows, or visual diagrams. In the most simplest ways possible, Mills directs readers on making their notes and journals more aesthetic.

I found this book to be very interesting. I expected it to show how to use symbols to insert instead of words when taking notes for a school class or when doing research. To the contrary, the notetaking described in this manual involves taking notes at a conference or assembly and distributing them among the participants. It even suggested this may be a form of income if proficient enough. The notes can come from an outline and provided ahead of time or can even be used in a presentation.

Visual notetaking makes things more interesting. The book does not throw a bunch of symbols at you for your copying. It tells you why and how to do visual notetaking. Then it instructs you to practice, practice, practice. After you read this book, that is a great suggestion.

I suggest this book as a way to make your work product more interesting or for future endeavors as a way to possibly make a little extra money. If you are looking for a fun activity while learning a new skill, this book is for you!


I received an ARC from Quarto Publishing Group through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affects my opinion or rating of this book.

This book is short but packed full of information on how someone might get better at visual notetaking. It had some good tips and good examples but I wish there were a wider range of examples and a list of resources provided. Also, I would have liked a section on note-taking in general, separate from the drawing. I think that visual note taking requires being proficient in standard notetaking, something a lot of people actually are not good at. The simple drawing techniques were fantastic and made drawing complex things very manageable for folks.

I really enjoyed the structure of this book (I feel I should be providing a visual notetaking review rather than writing a review but you get the idea!) and the illustrations that are offered throughout the book are both inspiring and informative. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who has to take notes (whether as a student, as a teacher, as a business employee, as an academic) as it offers a creative perspective for how to record your notes/experiences/thoughts in an innovative manner.

Anyone interested in learning visual notetaking or "sketchnoting" as it's often called, can learn from an expert in Emily Mills' book The Art of Visual Notetaking. She provides some basic principles for visual notetaking, helps readers evaluate if they want to go old-school or digital, and gives simple, step-by-step instructions for various aspects of visual notetaking.
Having just bought the Goodnotes app an an Apple pencil, I've been wanting to transition to a digital bullet journal and notebooks. I'm already eyeing the ideas in The Art of Visual Notetaking and evaluating how I can incorporate many of the techniques and ideas into my own digital notebooks.
This how-to guide is perfect for a variety of people--students, business people who want to better digest their meeting notes, teachers, and so many others. I highly recommend Mill's new book, and I plan to buy copies for the students in my life to help them develop some great notetaking skills early on and make their study time more profitable.

Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.

This was an interesting book discussing a technique for note-taking that involves not just notes, but graphical elements to enhance the written word, highlight portions of it, and make specific points stick in the memory.

While I am confident this will help people who are very visual in how they retain information, I have to say that for me personally, I saw no use for it. I am not a student and rarely attend lectures and conferences, so I have no need of note-taking for that purpose, but I can see a use for this in brainstorming ideas for writing projects which I'm very much into!

One thing I would have liked to have seen discussed is how well this author's note-taking held up over time so that, for example, if she went back several years later, and consulted notes she had taken much earlier for a conference or lecture, how much of what she had drawn and written would be clear to her.

The reason I mention his was that she included images of two examples of her own work, one a church conference which was the first thing she did this on, and another - a later example of her note-taking - when she attended a lecture by a writer. To me the church conference material made a kind of sense, but the material she had prepared representing the writer's lecture made zero sense at all. It conveyed literally nothing except that the writer was tall, which to me was irrelevant and said more to me about the author of the notes than the author the notes were about! Obviously they were not taken for me and would mean more to the person who created the record, but I would have liked to have heard about that side of the process.

This raised another issue related to the one I just raised: we do not remain the same people over our lifetime. While there are, of course, continuities, we are different in high school than in college and different again in a college senior year than we were when new to college life. It occurs to me that we do not perceive the world in quite the same way, and therefore the imagery that we might employ to represent something as a high school senior might be significantly different from that we employ as a college senior or a doctoral candidate. This author must have insights into that, but I don't recall any of that being raised here which mades me sad and a little disappointed.

That aside, though, I think this book has value and it was a worthy read for me. There were some minor issues related to the fact that this was obviously designed as a print book with little thought given to the electronic version which is why page 73 for example, led to blank page 71, which in turn led to page 74! Strange but true. Note that this was an advance review copy, so maybe there will be changes to get rid of the 'sticky' screens, where one swipe won't move the screen to the next one.

I had several similar issues with books I read this weekend, all of which were no doubt designed as print books while other books I read had no such issues so something was going on independently of my tablet. Maybe I should have tried two tablets and written this in the morning?! But my considered opinion is that the ebook version requires attention and I'm sorry publishers undervalue ebooks so badly. Sometimes I found myself swiping three or four screens just to get the page numbering to go up by one! Obviously there is an issue with the conversion process which perhaps ought to be given some serious attention if this is going to be actually issued as an ebook.

But I am willing to let that slide and declare this a worthy read because I think this process has a lot of potential.

Very helpful!
It's a short book, very easy to read and straight to the point, which I found very useful. I'm always studying something and my notetaking habilities are not the same as it used to be when I was in college, that's the reason I requested this book. Maybe someone more creative can benefit more from it, you sure can make such a great and helpful visual notes with it! I'm more prepared to make better visual notes, so I'm pleased with the reading.

An interesting book on the art of visual note-taking. Based on the fact that the majority of people are visual-learners and that most information comes to us visually, this book aims to help you record information in an interesting and stimulating way.
The instructions start off gently and through exercises, build up to more advanced levels. There are chapters on writing styles, the use of colour, visual libraries and much more.
A very comprehensive book that is fun and inspiring to read.

This was a really interesting book that I think would be better read as a physical book than in ebook form. It was also shorter than I thought it might be but I really liked a lot of the concepts. It's been a few weeks since I read the whole thing but I've been utilizing visual notes and, not only are they more fun to re-read, it is easier to find larger concepts because I remember the picture that I drew as much as where information is on the page or what color I was using that day.

Three stars
This book came out March 5
ARC kindly provided by publisher and NetGalley

The Art of Visual Notetaking is a fantastic book full of instructions and practical information not only for the beginner but also for the intermediate visual notetaker who wants to improve on this very useful and eye-pleasing skill.

Chapters include information and tips on tools, prep work, listening cues, writing, hierarchy and composition, drawing, visual direction, finding information, visualising information in diagrams, visual library, visual metaphors, headers, layouts, refining, and what makes a visual note good. These are followed by short chapters on why, how and when you should share your notes, some advice for those who aspire to become professional notetakers as well as tips for left-handed people.

There is also a bonus guide that can be downloaded from the publishers website on turning note taking into a side business or career and how you can practise notetaking as a student or teacher.

The "interactive" part of this book are blank spaces left for you to do the exercises. I only have access to a digital copy so am unable to comment on the quality of the paper. However, the author recommends that the reader use a separate journal or notebook.

It occured to me that this book would be useful not just for notetaking but also for visual journalling or illustrated diaries. Many of the instructions could easily be adopted or adapted for starting or improving your visual journal.

I do wish that the author included more information on certain chapters, which appear to me to be rather brief, such as the one on visual metaphors which is very challenging for me!

Still, I would highly recommend this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Walter Foster Publishing for the advanced copy.

Nice for those who do get more out of visual note taking or making a presentation that is more than just words. You get pros and cons sections. Does show images of what is being talked about and to show point. Reader does get some practice sections and a few exercises. So nice take on visual learning.

I had so much fun reading through this book. It was entertaining, but also provides a lot of great information. I have often envied the ability to sketch an idea in such a way as to communicate that idea to others. This book provides the basics on how to do that. There are many, many exercises. I have done none of them yet but fully intend to. The instructions and illustrations are as helpful as you would expect a book on that very subject to be. It also provides tips for left handers. I will definitely be using these techniques.

The Art of Visual Notetaking is a methodology and information guide to interspersing graphics and illustrations in notes when journaling or producing lecture notes or other situations for disseminating information to others or accessing it ourselves at a later point in time.

Released 5th March 2019 by Quarto on their Walter Foster imprint, it's 128 pages and available in ebook and paperback formats.

When I was in school the first time around, notes were written almost verbatim from the lectures. We copied things by rote and learnt things by repetition. There was very little information (or, honestly, interest) about different learning styles or the effectiveness of other note taking strategies. My second educational experience, after a gap of more than 25 years was a shock to me. We had workshops and tutorials where the primary goal was to develop effective visual strategies for note taking.

This book builds on the research suggesting that the majority of us are visual learners who benefit from interspersing written notes with illustrations and graphics. The point of taking notes is to be able to access the information at a later point; either for one's own use or for sharing with others. It was interesting to me to see so many of the talking points in the book coordinated with the extracurricular study help lectures we had available during my education as a bioengineer.

Effective and accessible notetaking helped me to succeed when getting a second education. Now that I work in the healthcare sector, my data presentation and note-taking skills are more important than ever. To give one example, we have resources at work which teach academics to make an effective presentation poster for conference or lecture use. There are regular departmental meetings which have direct impact on our lab procedures and our production goals. Keeping track of my notes from these meetings is absolutely vital.

This particular book uses illustrations, sidebar notes and highlighting to break info down into digestible chunks. Different media (electronic, whiteboard, paper, etc) get their own treatments along with a list of their pros and cons.

In my opinion, there's a fair bit of 'fluff' in this book. Probably 15-20% of the content is things that might not contribute significantly to the subject at hand, such as a diagram of the inside of a felt tip pen.

That being said, there's a phenomenal amount of information here for such a short book. I will definitely practice and incorporate sketch-notes in my professional note-taking and my personal journaling.

Four stars. It's a useful and accessible guide.

Visual notetaking or sketchnotes have been a part of my life for some time now.

The book is a workbook which provides introductions to different fonts, page arrangements, and offers enough room to try out the shapes, forms, and letters.

Sketch notes and visual note taking is gaining popularity in education and as an English Language Arts teacher, I have adopted this practice with my students. It really is a fantastic method for students to express their knowledge and to code information and learning to memory. Emily Mills' book, The Art of Visual Notetaking is an ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC resource! It is so informative and practical. It is loaded with examples and practical hands-on tips on how to effectively take notes visually. And there are so many tips on how to make your notes and drawings look better. While I love doodling and drawing pictures, my artistic ability is fairly minimal. This book makes visual note taking possible for anyone.

In the introduction, the states that the format of the book follows the structure of her workshops. Having read this book, I would love to attend her workshop. The Art of Visual Notetaking is an incredible resource. I have already e-mailed our teacher librarian about ordering this in for our students.

The Art of Visual Notetaking An

interactive guide to visual communication and sketchnoting by Emily Mills is a fascinating book published by Quarto.
This book will start illustrating first of all what it is a visual note, and the various tools and intruments, one of the most powerful one a journal, that you can use, for leaving a legacy, a passage on this Earth, of vice-versa, thinking digitally and with a touch of more modernity and leaving alone sadness, to communicate something important to a large or restricted number of people.
You musn't be excellent in drawing or paintings, you must present yourself, with the message that you want to spread.
Visual noting are great for business, convention, for yourself, with plenty of instructions for being a successful, satisfied visual notetaker!


Highly recommended.


I thank NetGalley and Quarto for this ebook.

I have only recently come across sketch notes as a visual communications practice. This book is an ideal resource for exploring this concept, for teachers, students, and those who have an interest in communication.

Visual notetaking may bring to mind adding doodles in the margins, but it is much more than that. Visual notes help people to clearly understand what has been written down. People worldwide understand pictures, so visual notetaking clarifies what may be a big block of text that people don't want to sit there and read all the way through.

The Art of Visual Notetaking is thorough and informative. Emily Mills starts with the basics of what visual notetaking is and why it's something to utilize, and takes you through the whole process from preparing for the notes to sharing the finished result. She includes different techniques and the tools that she likes, as well as why she prefers them.

I admit, I first thought that the book was going to be about adding pictures throughout the text, but I can see how wrong I was and why I need to start practicing. Though I intend to use visual notetaking for private notes first, I think that I can use what I've read in my graphic design. I believe that it will help me do better with both keeping notes on what clients want and making sure we're on the same page with projects. With enough practice, I might branch out further.

Whether I start making my visual notes public or not, this is definitely something I want to start using.

I received a complimentary copy from the publisher through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Very cool guide to getting started with visual notetaking. I have VERY little artistic skill or inclination, but it still was interesting for me to learn new notetaking techniques.