This is a graphic recording I did based off of the podcast: Best of Design Matters: Edwin Schlossberg. 

Before I could create my final graphic recording, I had to learn about sketchnoting and graphic recording. To start, I created two documents, one with three different font examples (that being a regular font, bold font, and a display font), and one with different icons based off of different categories and words. 

I learned about the visual alphabet, and spent time practicing that, and created a visual library. 

I then did a spaced practice, where over the course of two and a half days, I did 5 different drawings where I practiced something, and then tried something new. I focused a lot on what I thought would be useful to creating visually appealing sketchnotes, and what I thought would be useful to add to a reference sheet. 

I created a sketchnote reference sheet, with a variety of different icons and other aspects that I could add to the sketchnotes I choose to create. I tried to make sure I hit every category I thought would be helpful to creating an effective sketchnote. 

To practice creating a sketchnote, I created one based around how to play tennis. I used a more popcorn style layout, and tried to add as many visualizations as I could. For this project, I wanted to be brief with my wording, so that I could practice portraying information mostly using illustrations. 

I then did my first every graphic recording! I listened to an article by McKinsley Quarterly titled The Business Value of Design. In this recording, I used a column-style layout, and began experimenting with my personal sketchnoting style. I used a lot more words than I did icons, as I struggled with getting the information down fast enough through drawing icons. 

From there, I evaluated my strengths and what I wanted to improve on in terms of sketchnoting, and ultimately decided that I wanted to try my hand at graphic recording again. I felt like overall I could create strong visuals, and that I had an established style in terms of sketchnoting, but I was slow with actually creating the visualizations so I felt that doing a graphic recording of a podcast would allow me to utilize my strengths while helping me improve on what I struggled with. 

I created a plan of what I wanted to do, deciding to create a recording from an episode of Debbie Milman’s Design Matters podcast, where she interviews different designers. In the episode I chose, she interviews Edwin Schlossberg, where he discusses his artwork and his firm ESI Design. After all of that preparation, I was able to create my final project.