Guide to Graphic Notes:
I’ve had a few asks about these, and these posts are often some of my most popular so I thought it was time to make an updated post of my note taking. The exact style of my notes will vary depending on the topic and how I’m feeling, but there seems to be a general pattern/structure that I can share:
The first thing I do is decide what topic I’ll be focussing on. These are usually the topics that I’ve most recently studied, or topics that I’m struggling to grasp well. This topic is then placed in either the centre of the page (as in a mind-map) or at the top of the page as a title. More recently, I’ve been favouring a mind-map style.
This is a photo of how I began some notes on connectionism. I usually choose a colour scheme for my notes. In this case I chose orange, reds, yellows, and browns (earthy kind of colours). I always incorporate my black pen into my notes as well. If I want to make my title particularly bold then I’ll go over the coloured pen with the black pen as well (as in the case of the word connectionism here and IAC model).
Like with mind-maps, I use connecting arrows to add major ideas, theories, or points to the title. These are usually written in the coloured pens. I then elaborate on the points, with evidence, contrasting ideas, or my own thoughts in the black pen. Using the different colours like this helps me differentiate between the ideas. Another way to differentiate is through fonts. People familiar with my notes will know that I switch between different fonts a lot. In particular, I use my natural handwriting, large capital letters, italic writing, and tall, narrow letters. A couple of the different fonts that I use can be seen above.
This is a picture of my complete page of notes on connectionism. For some topics, I only need one page, but with more complex topics, I’ll often take up a double page (preferably two that are together as above, rather than having some notes on one side of a page and having to turn the page for the second half). You can see here that as well as using different colours and fonts, I like to use diagrams (probably comes from being an art student for so long). I find that diagrams can be a very quick way to help understand something; you have to be able to understand it to demonstrate it visually instead of verbally, I think. For example, here I’ve used an arrow to symbolise the top-down processing in connectionist models, and I’ve used a flowchart to show a connectionist model of face recognition. I sometimes box in words or terms as well. I like boxing studies in purple; I’ve always used the colour purple for studies/theories in colour coding so that colour is just automatically associated with that for me now.
I keep building the pages until either the page is full, or I’ve written everything that I need.
Connectionism is quite an abstract idea so I was kind of limited in the notes I could take, but with other topics I’ve been much more creative. Some of my favourite notes came from depression (shown above). I used a large picture of a head to identify the different brain structures that have been implicated in the disorder rather than just list them because I felt this was a more interactive and effortful way to demonstrate them. As you can see with these notes, I switched to a blue and purple colour scheme. You can also see in these notes, how I like to use bullet points to list information quickly and concisely, rather than writing entire paragraphs. Summarising the information is a strategy that a lot of people use to test their understanding of complex topics. Sometimes I use symbols like { }s to separate a quote or important thought from other writing.
There’s a lot of freedom in how you take notes.While I enjoy this method, and I find it useful, I wouldn’t recommend it for taking notes in class or lectures (because you might lose valuable information). Instead, it’s more useful for reviewing material and adding extra information from your independent readings and study. And remember, your notes don’t have to be beautiful or neat; you can do anything, and take your notes how you want.