People
We tend to recognize two dots and a curved line as a face. The official word for this is “pareidolia.” Even power outlets have faces once you know to look for them. This is a simple way to add some emotion to anything.
While watching coverage of the 2024 Olympics, I saw an advertisement asking, “What brings us together?” and the answer was, “Emotion.” The same question could be asked about visual notes—“What makes visual notes more impactful?” The answer—“Emotion,” the reason I tend to use a lot of people in my notes.
The four basic emotions are happy, sad, angry, and neutral. These four emotions will likely work for most of your notes if you decide to add faces to notes. The difference between sad and angry is a slight directional change of eyebrow lines.
Headshots
Most of the time I draw a “headshot” and a speech bubble container to call out key points. As I mentioned earlier, visual note elements must be drawn quickly. I tend to draw heads, but bodies only when needed.
The concept of drawing people is not about art or realism or lots of detail. Visuals in notes are designed to help transfer content from a speaker to your brain. For me, the headshots I draw accomplish two purposes. First, they are essentially large bullet points to indicate something important. Second, all of us are drawn to emotion and react to it. Drawing with the basic emotions allows you to capture the tone of key points.
Emotions grid
Beyond the four emotions I drew earlier, you can mix and match eyes, eyebrows, and mouths to create an almost infinite variety of emotions. This is a fun activity to do for yourself, and I encourage you to take the time to create your own emotions grid.
For the emotions grid below, each row has the same mouth, and each column has the same eyes. Each mouth/eyes combination creates a different emotion.
The human body consists of a head, torso, and limbs. Draw a circle for the head, a square for the body, and thin lines for limbs. Avoid stick figures. It is easy to draw more dynamic characters when they have bodies.
Look At My Notes
This post is from Look At My Notes! How to take and share visual notes. It is available at Amazon.com.
Visual notes consist of text and graphical elements arranged to enhance learning. Because emphasizing content visually makes it memorable, visual notes are ideal for learning, training, and handouts.
In Look At My Notes you will learn (1) how to take and share visual notes with others, (2) why visual notes are effective, and (3) what to include in your visual notes.
Notes For Learning 