Despite the fact that I draw on a weekly basis, I went to the Shut Up & Draw: A Non-Artist Way to Think Visually panel on Monday, and wanted to share some of the main points of this inspirational and informative talk. The panelists, Sunni Brown, Jessica Hagy, and Dan Roam, are all heavy-weights on visual note-taking, and have books to help educate about the subject on their respective sites/channels. I highly encourage you to check out their work by clicking on their names above.

In the panel, these three offered some excellent points on the power of using visuals to communicate complex business ideas, since visual note-taking is a fast way of recording important information for easy access later. Here are some of my thoughts, but I’ll leave room for the 4 pages of sketchnotes below to do most of the talking:

1. Visual notetaking is for everyone. Jot down the important information, doodle some pictures that correspond to what you’re hearing, and most importantly – have fun!

2. Our brain power for visual recognition is high (65%+), so visual ideas have the ability to spread far quickly and retain the basic concepts for easy re-consumption later.

3. Lastly, check out the diagram on the 4th page below titled Visual Grammar. It’s a great tool that Dan walked the audience through – a crash-course on how to visually break down ideas using the analogy of sentence structure.

If you want to browse more sketchnotes, here are a few others that were doodling at sxsw 2012: Sketchnote Army, Austin Kleon, Mike Rohde, Craighton Berman, and Paul Soupiset.