Looking back on 2019 – Part 2: My personal Top 9
Every year the ‘Top 9’ make the rounds on Instagram. In my last post, I showed you those Top 9 and a little background to each of the images.
For this post, I have chosen my personal top 9 posts from this year. My choices are based less on the images themselves but more about the events, encounters and experiences they represent. I hope you enjoy my personal highlights and key learnings from 2019.
Progress can be invisible
Looking at the work of people I admire can feel intimidating. All I can see is how much better they are and where I need to learn more. But we are all on our own journey and getting better at something takes time and happens in such tiny increments that it can be invisible. I keep reminding myself to not compare me to my ‘idols’ but to a former version of myself.
The first post I chose shows a sketchnote from 2009 and one from 2019. I can see that a lot of progress happened in those 10 years. We all start somewhere and we keep changing and progressing :)
The versatility of sketching
Earlier this year I got asked by a reader of my Yoganotes book if it was possible to do something similar for western riding. I don’t know much about riding, but I was up for the challenge to try sketching ‘Horsenotes’ :D
She sent me a video of western riding guru explaining a technique and I set out to sketch stick-horses and stick-riders to explain the moves.
What I love about sketching is that it is so versatile and that we can visualise almost anything we are interested in. Picking up a pen and starting to visualise opens up so many possibilities.
Becoming a shop-owner
On the first of January 2019 I launched my own online shop. It is a lovely feeling to create things that are born out of my own interests and passions and see that other people like them enough to want to buy them.
I spent a lot of time and energy this year on my shop. From shipping to customer service to marketing and creating new products. What started as a tiny side project many years ago when I self-published my first sketchnotes book with conference sketchnotes as a print-on-demand book has slowly turned into an important part of what I do to earn a living. I have tons of ideas for more things I want to make and I am excited to make them come true in 2020.
The Yoganotes book shown in the post I chose was a key product to give me the confidence to really throw myself into this adventure.
The joy of improvisation
I discovered ActionTheater, a form of improvisation based in physical theatre, over 10 years ago. I accidentally stumbled upon a workshop and I immediately felt at home with this way of playing and creating in the moment.
There are so many parallels between the visual work I do and the physical improvisation practice and I have learned a lot from improvising that I apply to the way I work and teach.
This summer I had the opportunity to guide a Vizthink Berlin meetup with the topic of ‘Visual Improvisation’. I really enjoyed to share my love for ‘making it up as you go along’ and play with a group of people, both with our bodies in the room as well as with pens on paper.
The post shows some of the cards I sketched to talk a bit about why I love improvisation at the beginning of the meetup.
Love letters & loving letters
My almost life-long love for drawing letters has been truly re-energized in May when the first edition of Berlin Letters took place. At the festival a #100daysoflettering project was started and I participated (although I didn’t make it to 100 posts….yet) and used the opportunity to start a series of posts that I wanted to make for a while:
I follow many wonderful illustrators on instagram and I wanted to pay homage to my favourite artists by creating letterings inspired by their illustration style and write a little love letter explaining why and what exactly I love about their work. I call this series #iloveyourwork and it’s been so much fun to draw inspiration from their work and come up with letter styles that incorporate my favourite stylistic details.
The post above is my tribute to Helen Dardik (@helen_dardik) whose colourful and happy style is a feast for the eyes.
International Sketchnotes Camp
I got invited to give one of the keynotes at the 3rd International Sketchnotes Camp (ISC) that was held in Paris this year. It was a beautiful event full of friendly and passionate sketchnoters.
On day two I had the honour to lead a session for the whole group of about 180 attendees where we played with some visual improvisation exercises. We sent dots for a walk in an imaginary park, made animal noises and created random stories together. There was a special energy in the room, probably best described as playful joy :)))
You can find my full recap from the 2 1/2 days in this blog post.
Next year the ISC is going to take place in Belgium and I’m looking forward to being there again.
Deep diving into teaching
This year I taught over 20 workshops all around the world (and some of them here in Berlin, yay!). I worked with designers, engineers, product people, researchers, librarians, teachers, high school pupils, managers, administrators, yogis, facilitators, coaches and many more.
I experimented with new formats, developed an in-depth 2-day format, created more focussed material about structuring thoughts to map them visually. I worked with smaller groups to give more room to individual feedback, played with storytelling and refined my overall teaching style.
I learned a lot from the questions and discussions with all the super motivated participants. Teaching workshops is energizing and draining at the same time but it pushes me to keep developing my thinking and practice. Thank you to everybody who contributed to this learning journey this year.
Conferences & communities
Attending and speaking at conferences has been part of my work for quite a few years now. I love meeting people from all over the world at these events, getting a glimpse into different (design) communities, making connections and sometimes even developing friendships with people I keep meeting at different events over the years. I also enjoy switching roles and being in the audience, listening to talks and learning new things. It’s nice to recharge, to be inspired and, yes, it’s also a fun opportunity to keep practicing my sketchnoting skills.
My favourite conferences this year were CanUX in Ottawa and Beyond Tellerrand Berlin, especially for the lovely community vibe, UX London for the stellar mix of talks and hand-on workshops and Berlin Letters for the sheer visual joy and inspiration.
Thank you to the amazing people behind these conferences who put lots of energy, time, money and love into creating such fantastic spaces to learn, meet and exchange!
Building friendships
Years ago, I worked on a project with an amazing designer for a few months. We got along really well. I loved working with him. I enjoyed our chats about design and our jokes about everything else.
Then he moved half-way round the globe to live in the sun and by the sea (who could fault him for that). I moved as well, I travelled and eventually settled in a new place. I started working on my own and I missed good designery chats.
I sent him an email to ask if he was up for chatting about our work in a regular video call. He was. We’ve been talking for an hour every other week for over two years now.
We talk about design. We talk about work. But we also talk about personal stuff now (sometimes the lines are blurry anyway). We have built a solid friendship.
He has a little son who also joins our calls sometimes. The first thing he says when he sees me is: “Can you draw me a picture?”. The pig above is from one of our recent calls.
Thank you, Buzz. ♥
And what is 2020 going to bring?
This is a great question and don’t have a detailed answer yet, but my big wish is to spend more time doing my own projects, creating more products that will help you on your sketching journey, or some of them just bring a smile to your face (ideally both!).
I am going to take some time off to make my huge laundry list of ideas into a rough plan and I’ll create some serious reminders to myself to ‘say no’ to a lot of client requests so my own projects have the time, room and energy to flourish in 2020.
I’m excited and slightly scared, but I guess that’s a good mix.
What’s your big wish for the coming year?
If you would like to see my Top 9 most liked posts on Instagram, have a look part 1 of this blog post.