What Is Sketchnoting? A Beginner's Guide to Sketchnotes, With an Example

Sketchnoting is note taking with words and simple drawings on the same page. Instead of line after line of text, a sketchnote uses boxes, arrows, stick figures, small icons and big lettering to show what mattered and how the ideas connect. You don't need to draw well. The drawings work like abbreviations that only have to make sense to you.

We make Ophaya smart pens, which save drawings as well as writing, but every technique here works with any pen and paper. A cheap notebook is fine for practice.

What a sketchnote is, and where the name comes from

Designer and illustrator Mike Rohde says on his own site that he coined the term "sketchnoting" in 2007. His book The Sketchnote Handbook (Peachpit, 2012) is written for people without drawing skills, and The Sketchnote Workbook came after it.

Sketchnoting isn't the same as mind mapping. A mind map is a structure (one topic in the middle, branches of words). Sketchnoting is a style, so it can borrow any structure, and it puts drawings and lettering into the notes. Our guide to five note taking methods covers mapping on its own.

The small visual vocabulary behind most sketchnotes

Containers group things. A rectangle goes around a main point, a cloud around an idea, a speech bubble around a quote and a banner around the title. Write the words first and draw the box afterward, so it always fits.

To show what leads to what, use arrows. A straight one means cause and effect, and a long curved one can jump across the page. A dotted line is a loose link. If the link isn't obvious, write a word on the arrow, like "blocks."

Speakers get drawn as simple people, and a star person (a circle head on a five-pointed star) is plenty. Arms up means a win. A hand on the chin means a question.

An icon replaces a noun: a light bulb for an idea, a clock for time, a dollar sign for cost, a check mark for a decision. Keep each one to a few strokes and draw it the same way every time, so you aren't redesigning the light bulb in the middle of a talk.

Lettering is how you rank things. Tall block capitals go on the title and smaller capitals on headings, and the rest is normal handwriting. Small squares, arrows or stars work as bullets that mark priority, and a dividing line shows where one idea ends.

Three layouts: linear, radial and columns

Pick a layout before the talk starts, since it's hard to change one halfway down the page.

Linear runs top to bottom, or along a winding path, in the order you heard things. Talks that tell a story or go step by step fit it well. It's also the safest choice when you don't know what's coming, and it's what we'd use for a first try.

In a radial layout the topic sits in the middle with points around it. That suits one big idea with several parts, but live it's risky, because you have to guess how many points are coming.

Columns split the page into two or three vertical strips. They're the obvious pick when a speaker announces "three ways to" do something, and they work for comparing two options.

A worked example: sketchnoting a 30-minute talk

Say you're at a made-up 30-minute work talk called "Small habits for remote teams." The speaker opens with a story about a handoff that went wrong, then gives three habits: write decisions where everyone can find them, protect two quiet afternoons a week, and send a short written update every Friday. She closes with "If it isn't written down, it didn't happen." We'd fit the whole thing on one A5 page.

Before it starts

Write the title in block capitals across the top and draw a banner around it, with the speaker's name underneath. The agenda slide promises three habits, so go with columns. Draw three faint vertical sections and leave a strip across the bottom empty for takeaways.

During the talk

Don't retell the opening story. Draw its point: write "handoff missed," an arrow, then "a week lost," and put a dropped baton beside it.

When each habit arrives, write its number and a short heading at the top of its column, then one icon: a lined page for written decisions, a closed door for quiet afternoons, a calendar with a check mark for the Friday update. Under the icon, jot only what the speaker adds, like an example.

If she says the first habit makes the third easier, draw an arrow between those columns and write "feeds" on it. Her closing quote goes in a speech bubble with a star person beside it. Skip the jokes and anything on slides you'll get later. If you fall behind, write a keyword and leave space.

After the talk (10 minutes, same day)

Thicken the title and add a gray shadow along one side of each container. Color the three icons and nothing else. Then fill the bottom strip with one thing you'll act on, such as "quiet afternoons Tue and Thu," and box it.

For a biology lecture on a process like cell division, go linear instead: one container per stage, arrows between them, and the lecturer's diagram copied roughly in the middle.

Does drawing help you remember?

One lab study suggests it does, though it didn't test sketchnotes. In seven experiments published in 2016, Jeffrey Wammes, Melissa Meade and Myra Fernandes of the University of Waterloo had students draw or write out words from a list. Students remembered drawn words better than written ones, even with only 4 seconds per word, and deeper thinking, mental imagery or viewing pictures didn't explain the gap.

The words were simple nouns like "apple," and the authors note that single words are far from real class material. We'd treat it as a nudge to draw in your notes, not as proof that sketchnotes beat plain text. In the university's news release, Wammes said the quality of the drawings did not seem to matter. For pens versus laptops, see our summary of handwriting vs typing research.

Tools: paper, an iPad or a smart pen

The cheapest kit is a notebook, a fine black pen and a gray marker for shadows. Plain or dotted paper works better than lined, because lines fight your boxes. Sharing a paper page means photographing it.

On an iPad, Apple's guide says the built-in Notes app lets you sketch with Apple Pencil, choose markup tools and colors, and draw straight lines with a ruler. The iPad (A16) starts at $449 and the Apple Pencil (USB-C) is $79, list prices at our October 1, 2026 check. If color matters most to you, an iPad is the better sketchnoting tool.

A smart pen is somewhere in between. You draw on paper, and the page also shows up in an app. The Ophaya pen has an infrared camera that reads a dot pattern printed on Ophaya dot-code notebooks, and strokes sync live over Bluetooth to the free Ophaya Pro+ app on iPhone, iPad or Android. Ordinary paper holds the ink but isn't captured. Away from your phone, the pen stores about 1,000 pages and syncs them later.

The app's OCR converts handwriting to editable text, which is handy for the takeaway strip. It's built for writing, though, so icons and arrows won't convert into anything useful (more in our guide to converting handwriting to text). To keep the sketchnote itself, export the page as a PDF or PNG, which keeps the drawing as you drew it. Color is the other catch: only the pen's own strokes are captured, so marker color and shading stay on the paper.

At a talk, the app can record audio on your phone (not through the pen) and link it to what you wrote, so you can replay what was said when you drew an icon. Ask before you record. The pen with five A5 notebooks is $79.99.

Common sketchnoting mistakes

The biggest one is trying to draw well. If an icon takes more than five seconds, write the word and draw it afterward.

Close behind is trying to capture everything. Sketchnotes hold less than written notes on purpose, so listen for the main points and, when they come up, the best example and a line worth quoting.

Plenty of people also run out of room. Halfway through the talk, you should be about halfway down the page.

Practice 15 to 20 icons for your field before you need them, since inventing them on the spot slows you down. For biology, that might be a cell, a flask, a DNA ladder and a leaf.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to be good at drawing to sketchnote?

No. Circles, rectangles, arrows and stick figures cover almost everything, and clear handwriting matters more than drawing skill.

What are some easy sketchnote ideas for practice?

Pick something you can pause: a podcast episode, a recorded talk, a recipe or one book chapter.

Can I combine sketchnotes with Cornell notes?

Yes. Draw in the wide notes column during class, then add cue questions and a summary afterward. Our guide to Cornell notes explains the layout.

Is sketchnoting slower than regular note taking?

Not by much once the icons are familiar, because you write fewer words during the talk. The cleanup afterward counts as a review, and our guide to taking better notes has more review habits.