Bytemarks

While at SXSW 09 this past March, I sat through an inspiring keynote by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. As interesting as his talk was, I found myself drawn to what was happening on the left side of the stage. A graphic recorder was taking notes while Tony was speaking. She paced herself throughout the 50 minute talk highlighting Tony’s key messages. This was new to me and I had not seen this before.

I later found out that graphic recorder was a woman named Sunni Brown and this style of visual note taking and information design is a technique that dates back more than 30+ years. Obviously, not at any of the conferences or companies I have previously been to over that period. The notes were augmented with simple graphic drawings that captured my continued attention. I found myself studying the image and rereading the notes captured there. It seemed like a great way to preserve a talk for future and continued reference.

Wanting to learn more, I contacted Sunni to find out more about what I had just experienced. She talked about graphic recording but the broader topic of visual thinking. It was an idea that is rather simple. Design information so it is more compelling to the audience. We’ve gotten so used to the standard bulleted text presentations created on PowerPoint that our idea of knowledge retention is simply getting a copy of the PowerPoint preso and stashing it in a file folder somewhere. With a graphic recording the information is presented in a way that engages the viewer. I got so excited about this method of presentation I invited Sunni to help me at my workplace (HMSA) present concepts our execs were promoting. This is an example of what see created:
I couldn’t stop there and invited her to be on Bytemarks Cafe on 6/3/09 to talk about Visual Thinking and info design. Chris Gargiulo from KCC also joined us to offer tips on this applies to web design. You can catch the entire show on our MP3 download or on iTunes. Enjoy and let me know what you think. It’s such a refreshing and enjoyable way to encourage knowledge retention more organizations should use it.