Sketchnoting: your visual vocabulary in thirty symbols

First, the objection

I cannot draw is beside the point. Sketchnoting is not drawing: it is a system of symbols, exactly like writing.

You need five basic shapes, the dot, the line, the circle, the square, the triangle, and their combinations. Nothing else.

A house is a square plus a triangle. A person is a circle plus some strokes. A lightbulb is a circle plus a small rectangle. A cloud is made of overlapping circles.

The six families of pictograms

People and relationships: stick figure, group, head in profile, handshake, speech bubble. Ideas and thinking: lightbulb, question mark, exclamation mark, brain, cog. Time: clock, calendar, hourglass, circular arrow for recurrence. Direction and flow: straight arrow, curved arrow, diverging arrow, converging arrow, loop. Measurement and outcome: bar chart, rising curve, target with an arrow, trophy, scales.