Yahnyinlondon

[yahnyinlondon]

Surgery & The Senses (Links to Article)

A new sketchnote from me from an event at the Royal Institution a few months back published in this month's UX Magazine.

[yahnyinlondon]

Pioneering The Internet (Links to Article)

My latest sketchnote for the User Experience Magazine is out now. Inspired by a Coursera that I took recently - Internet History, Technology and Security

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Sneak peek from @oliverjeffers talk @southbankcentre last night. Brilliant, want to go buy all his books now!

[yahnyinlondon]

Acrometis Sketchnote

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by Tim and Lee from Acrometis about doing a sketchnote for them to accompany a talk given by their President and CEO, Jerry Poole at an industry conference. The sketchnote contained the key messages of the talk, all in a one page handout which could be given to the audience. 

I am so pleased with how the sketchnote turned out, which was the result of a few tweaks to my normal process which I'll go into on a future blog post. Although I'm not familiar with insurance claims handling, it was amazing how much I absorbed when I did the sketchnote. 

Thank you to Tim and Lee for being such a pleasure to work with, I really hope you were pleased with the outcome. Interested in having me sketchnote something similar for your presentation? Please say hello on Twitter. 

[yahnyinlondon]

Spitalfields Life - The Gentle Author @ NPG

I had hoped to catch The Gentle Author's talk at the Southbank Centre London Lit Festival earlier this year but unfortunately I missed it. I was very happy to spot that he was going to be giving a talk at the NPG as part of their Late Shift series. If you haven't been to their Late Shift events, I highly recommend you check it out. Lots of free creative events including life drawing workshops and gallery talks. 

Every day since 2009, The Gentle Author has published a post to his blog Spitalfields Life. He plans to write 10,000 stories about Spitalfields over the coming years. Each blog is accompanied by absolutely stunning photography, some his own, some by photographers who contribute. The talk covered just a few highlights.

The stories that touched me the most were those of family businesses, often the last of a particular kind in the area, which had recently closed - you could hear a collective "Ohh" from the audience as he mentioned that a family metalworks business had closed last week, or a woodwork shop was now an estate agents. He commented that it is ordinary people's lives which are most interesting and how sad it was that they often go undocumented. 

If you are interested in reading more, do subscribe to his blog and there is also a book available which the Evening Standard proclaims as it's "London Book of the Year".

There was so much to capture in the talk, that I probably got 2/3 through the talk and had filled the page. I wish I had started a new page as there was so much to capture. Going to need to get my phone out in future so I can better time myself. Lots of great things to illustrate too which was nice. I struggle with some talks where the concepts are quite abstract. I love the font I used at the top, which was quite random.

[yahnyinlondon]

Sneak peek sketchnote from tonight's talk at the @NPGLondon by @thegentleauthor

[yahnyinlondon]

The Extraordinary Story of the Anglepoise® @ Design Museum

It was nice to be back at the Design Museum, for the first time in a long time. The walk from London Bridge to the museum is chock full of landmarks which remind me what an amazing city I live in. I'll be very sad when they move to Kensington in a few year's time (although it will be great the museum will have more space).

The talk was on The Extraordinary Story of the Anglepoise - a British Design classic and part of their Extraordinary Stories exhibition. It was a conversation of sorts between Sir Kenneth Grange and the Brand Director of Anglepoise, Simon Terry. It was a shame the talk was rather sparsely attended, I suspect people were making the most of the balmy weather outside.

Both Simon and Kenneth talked about having the utmost respect for your customer and a dedication to customer service. Simon mentioned how they field calls from people wanting to fix 80 year old lamps (and how they are happy to help them out) whilst Kenneth mentioned focusing on even the smallest of details. It was also re-assuring to hear how Anglepoise and Sir Kenneth Grange were thinking of the environmental impacts long before it was trendy (or even climate change was in the news). 

The Design Museum had an exhibition on Kenneth Grange entitled Making Britain Modern a few years ago and you can still buy the exhibition catalogue on Amazon. 

Sketchnote thoughts: I went back to a more traditional colour palette (for me) and captured a lot more text than normal but I filled up the notepad perhaps about 20 minutes before the end of the talk. The talk over-ran but I wasn't sure whether to commit to a new page as I didn't know how much longer it would go. I feel like the use of the coloured pen was a lot more successful than last attempt so I may continue with this in the future. 

[yahnyinlondon]

Computing with Quantum Cats, John Gribbin @ RIGB

If you are trying to understand something complicated, like quantum computing, spending your day looking after someone who can't walk, talk or control their bowels isn't exactly great brain training. Throw in some jetlag from travelling back from Australia on Sunday with said small person and you can perhaps understand why some of tonight's talk on Computing with Quantum Cats at the RIGB went slightly over my head.

I should add that this wasn't at all the fault of John Gribbin, who gave a brilliant overview on computing history, based on his most recent book of the same name. If you've not heard of John Gribbin, he is one of the most renowned and prolific science writers in Britain today. John has written numerous books of which he is most well known for In Search of Schrodinger's Cat. 

This talk was a little left field for me but it dove-tailed nicely with the Coursera course I'm doing entitled Internet History, Technology and Security. I did start doing sketchnotes for the lectures but there is a lot of material so I'm not sure I'm going to have time to do it all. 

Tonight's sketchnote seemed very sparse, I didn't include much colour and there wasn't as much to illustrate so it is very text based. I did experiment with added colour notes in red pen which I will try to do more of in the future. In the future, for talks which promote books, I'm going to try and illustrate the book cover in the title. I had a print-out from Amazon with me but I only had 15 minutes or so before the talk started. The small one only had a short nap this afternoon which cut short my research time!

[yahnyinlondon]

Drawing The Story @ Southbank Centre

I recently attended Drawing The Story at the Southbank Centre, which was part of the London Literature Festival 2013. There were a load of great events on but I'm limited by budget and time in terms of what events I can get to. 

The event didn't focus on the mechanics of actually drawing a graphic novel as much as I would have liked but there was a lovely introduction by the chair, Paul Gravett, who has written a book called 1001 Comic Books: You Must Read Before You Die which sounds like it would have been great fun to research. 

The panellists (Mary Talbot who wrote Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, Glyn Dillon who wrote The Nao of Brown and Stephen Collins who wrote The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil) were all very interesting and I had to steer myself away from the stall selling their graphic novels. Unfortunately I am trying not to buy any more books until I finish reading some.

As far as the sketchnote goes, it was quite an interesting one. I found it hard to illustrate the concepts they talked about so instead I captured the panellists and the books themselves. I'm not sure it is one of my better sketchnotes but it was good to practice drawing people which I generally find quite difficult. 

[yahnyinlondon]

Damien Hirst Curator's Talk @ TATE

The final talk from the BBH (Well done me for getting through the backlog during nap times!) and this time from the Damien Hirst Curator's Talk at Tate Modern. The talk was given by Ann Gallagher (whose name I spelt with an 'e' on the sketchnote - Doh!), who was the lead curator for the exhibition. Although the (very popular) exhibition has since finished, you can still buy the exhibition catalogue on Amazon or you can watch a walkthrough of the exhibition on YouTube

It was unusual to sketchnote at an "Art talk" for a change. I don't often get a chance to do as most of these style talks are done in the gallery, on the move in front of the works, which isn't conducive to making notes. 

[yahnyinlondon]

The Righteous Mind @ RIGB

Another talk from the BBH of last year, again from the RIGB. This time, it was Jonathan Haidt speaking on The Righteous Mind. Most of the material was drawn from his book -- The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion -- which had just been released.

He had some interesting points about being conservative which I found a little hard to digest being a liberal, Guardian reading, sandal wearing, yoghurt weaving hippie Londoner but it is always nice to be challenged. I was really happy with the sketchnote too, particularly the colour combination and the title illustration. 

[yahnyinlondon]

The Science of Reputation @ RIGB

This is another event from my BBH (Big Baby Hiatus) backlog which I've just gotten around to uploading. Last year, I attended a fabulous event on The Science of Reputation with John Whitfield at the RIGB. It was based on his book, People Will Talk. 

Reputation - both good and bad -- plays a huge part in online communities, not just in terms of people using the website but also how the people working on the website promote and police it. It is a hugely fascinating area which will only become more prominent as communities continue to move online. 

[yahnyinlondon]

Falling Upwards, Richard Holmes @ RIGB

Went to a brilliant talk at one of my favourite venues -- The Royal Institution -- tonight to see Professor Richard Holmes talk about his new book, Falling Upwards. I should add this is the biographer Richard Holmes, not the military historian (who passed away in 2011).  

Falling Upwards is a book on the history of balloon flight, in particular, the many strange and wonderful characters who pioneered this early form of flight. Richard gave us a glimpse of some of these enigmatic characters, including Adelir Antonio de Carli, who perished after his attempt at cluster ballooning to raise money for charity went horribly wrong.  

I have very little interest in flight or ballooning but am now very keen on reading this book. May even suggest it to my book club for next month!

[yahnyinlondon]

Alan Fletcher's Colophon @ St Bride

A few week's ago, I attended a talk titled "Alan Fletcher's Colophon" held at St Bride Foundation. If you haven't heard of St Bride, it is a library which covers printing and graphic arts (a particularly fabulous resource for graphic design students, how I wish I'd studied here!).

Daniel Chehade was approached by the daughter of Alan Fletcher to set up a studio of Alan's work, to develop and share the archive of work. The talk mostly focused on his Monografica book set and some of the ideas, techniques and materials he used. 

In terms of the sketchnote itself, I broke from my traditional 1/2 colour palette plus grey and went all out. I think it makes it seem very busy and I found the crosshatching to be very dark in the header. My notehand seems to be a bit more angular which I love. 

[yahnyinlondon]

Get Tough or Stay Broke / Interesting Talks

I went to a talk on financial planning today. I feel proper grown up (although having a mortgage and being responsible for a whole other person certainly helps). Most of it what Lina Bourdon said in her "Get Tough or Stay Broke" talk wasn't news but it certainly helps going over it again, especially when the speaker is so funny and engaging. 

Sketchnote is below, I've tried to lighten it up this time, which made it feel a bit clearer. I was getting into the habit of adding in too much post talk and I wanted to get away from that. It moves it more into illustration territory that way. 

[yahnyinlondon]

Is Democracy good for the World?

Another Interesting Talk tonight and it certainly lived up to its name. Professor Todd Landman spoke on whether Democracy is good for the world. The answer was a rather optimistic yes, although I wish I had been able to capture more of why that was. 

Someone asked me recently whether I find it hard when the speaker waffles, generally I don't as the salient points they make really sing out. It is much harder when you are trying to capture everything because the talk is so rich with information. This talk was packed to the gills with interesting facts and anecdotes, I captured too much at the start, when I should have focused on some of the summarising statements towards the end. 

If you are interested in reading more about democracy, Professor Todd Landman has a book coming out on Human Rights and Democracy: The Precarious Triumph of Ideals which I've just added to my wishlist. Update: Apparently the book will be available for free via Open Access when it comes out in September. 

[yahnyinlondon]

Wired for Culture @ RIGB

This is an oldie from the BBH (Big Baby Hiatus of 2012). This was a talk at the Royal Institution (RIGB) entitled Wired for Culture by Professor Mark Pagel. He was promoting two books which were released this year which are Wired for Culture: The Natural History of Human Cooperation and Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind. Note: Am not sure why there are two books with very similar titles, they were published around a week apart. 

Audio archive of the event (Player at the bottom of page).