BLOG ARCHIVES

VISUAL NOTE-TAKING

Notes in pictures and words.

ON MIND-MAPPING IN THE STATESMAN

Monday, July 19th, 2010

Statesman on mind-mapping

I forgot to blog this: back in June, The Austin American-Statesman quoted me in an article on mind-mapping and ran one of my maps.

Read the article: “Mind-mapping gets the ideas flowing

TEDXPENNQUARTER NOTES + DRAWINGS

Monday, July 19th, 2010

The great folks who organized TEDxPennQuarter out at The Newseum in Washington, D.C. not only had me out to give a talk of my own (which I’ll post soon), they asked if I’d take some visual notes for them as well. So I did my best — I missed a few speakers, since I had to get into makeup and prepare for my own talk.

I decided to revisit the sticky notes, like I did for TEDxAustin. Here I am showing them off onstage:

Austin Kleon at TEDxPennQuarter
photo by Flickr user Sexy Fitsum

D.C., by the way, was a total blast. Thanks to my friends for showing me around their awesome town.

A few more notes below–you can see the whole set on Flickr.

TEDxPennQuarter David Armano

TEDxPennQuarter Chris McDougall

TEDxPennQuarter Chris Bernard

TEDxPennQuarter Derek Brown

You can see the rest in the full set on Flickr.

VISUAL NOTE-TAKING 101 SXSW PANEL

Monday, May 10th, 2010

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Visual Note-Taking 101 from SXSW 2010

View more webinars from Austin Kleon.

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Back in March, my friends Mike RohdeSunni BrownDave Gray and I presented a panel to a packed house at the SXSW Interactive conference here in Austin, Texas. Last week, they posted a podcast of the session without visuals – so I spent some time syncing our slides to the audio.

Watch it above, or see the whole thing here: Visual Note-Taking 101 from SXSW 2010.

Watch a short YouTube video of my faces exercise:

And learn more about visual note-taking:

The coolest artifacts from the panel are the amazing Scout Books that Pinball Publishing had printed for us: read all about them.

I squirreled away a couple of them before we ran out — leave a comment below telling me why you want one okay those were making me feel too guilty that I only have four: how about a link to the coolest thing you’ve seen this week and I’ll pick four winners. Contest ends Monday, May 17th. (Be sure to include your e-mail — it won’t be published.)

JOHN PORCELLINO AT DOMY BOOKS

Sunday, April 4th, 2010

John Porcellino talking at Domy Books

Daniel Stafford shooting John Porcellino talking at Domy Books

Last night one of my favorite cartoonists, John Porcellino, gave a talk at Domy Books here in town. So nice to finally meet him. That fella with the camera is Daniel Stafford, who is shooting a documentary about John’s work.

If you’re unfamiliar with John and King-Cat, I’m constantly posting his stuff on my Tumblr, and John is blogging now!

MY SXSW 2010

Sunday, March 28th, 2010

My SXSW 2010 - Pre-Game: Me and Meg and James watched COMMANDO and drank PBR and ate cookies
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TEDxAUSTIN ON STICKY NOTES

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

[ Watch a high-quality HD version on Vimeo ]

I was invited to draw TEDxAustin this weekend. I was skeptical about an event that was so secretive about its contents beforehand, but it far exceeded my expectations. It was well-planned, well-executed, and had a stellar lineup of speakers. I bumped into lots of great people and had some good conversations. Kudos to the team, and thanks to my buddy Sunni Brown for the invite!

The theme of the day was “Play Big,” so I decided to do something special: I drew the background stage and the studio in my sketchbook, then drew the speakers on sticky notes. I wasn’t sure what I was going to with all the drawings, and then the idea of making a video popped into my head. The video was shot with my Aiptek HD camcorder and cobbled together in QuickTime Pro on my slow-as-molasses Mac Mini. Watch the results. (Be sure to click HD!)

Favorites? As someone who hates answering the question, “What do you do?,” Steven Tomlinson’s talk about keeping all your interests in play really hit home. I also loved Carrie Contey’s talk on the power of the pause. John Philip Santos had some terrific images in his talk on genealogical genetics. Both the musical acts, Ruby Jane and John Pointer, were really impressive.

If written notes are your thing, John Lebkowsky has some great ones.

Here’s a photo that Shane Guiter took of me during a break (annotations mine):

See scans of all the sticky note drawings after the jump or on Flickr.

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NOVA/PBS: WHAT ARE DREAMS?

Monday, November 16th, 2009

what-are-dreams-by-austin-kleon
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The folks at PBS asked me to be a guest blogger for their “Remotely Connected” blog. I blogged about the upcoming NOVA episode, “What Are Dreams?”

Read my post at the Remotely Connected blog, or below:

“I like to sleep so I can tune in and see what’s happening in that big show. People say we sleep a third of our lives away, why I’d rather dream than sit around bleakly with bores in “real” life. My dreams…are fantastically real movies of what’s actually going on anyway. Other dream-record keepers include all the poets I know.”

- Jack Kerouac

Like all artists since the beginning of time, I’ve looked to dreams for inspiration.

I started writing down my dreams as a teenager, after I got my hands on Jack Kerouac’s Book of Dreams–dreams he collected by scribbling in his notebook the minute he woke from sleep.

Later on in college, I studied just enough psychology to learn that the creative process mirrors the dreaming process. As the film director David Mamet says in his book On Directing Film, “The dream and the film are the juxtaposition of images in order to answer a question.” Not only can the dream provide us with material, but the process of dreaming itself can provide us with inspiration towards a process of working.

Any artist will tell you that when the work is going really well, it’s as if you’re taking dictation. The characters speak because they want to speak. The act of art-making is an attempt to fall into a kind of dream state. We do this by abandoning the linear and the logical for the non-linear and the free-associative. This is when creativity happens.

After watching this NOVA episode, I pulled out my pen and crayons and attempted to digest what I had seen through drawing–juxtaposing images in space. It was not unlike dreaming, watching the images come out of my hand…

SAM HURT LECTURE

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

sam hurt

The cartoonist Sam Hurt (Eyebeam) gave a lecture on “Telling Stories in Pictures and Words” before the Crumb/Mouly/Spiegelman event last night.

sam hurt lecture

sam hurt lecture

RIP! A REMIX MANIFESTO

Saturday, August 8th, 2009

RIP a remix manifesto
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Yet another movie I drew at SXSW 2009 is streaming online for free: RIP! A REMIX MANIFESTO, a documentary about Girl Talk, fair use, and remix culture. Head over to Pitchfork.TV this week to watch it.

45365

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

45365 - SXSW Film 2009
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If you read this before the end of tonight, you can watch 45365—the best movie I saw at SXSW 2009—for free online at Hulu.

A couple of brothers from Sidney, Ohio (really nice guys, too) made a documentary about their small hometown. I grew up not far from Sidney, and I can tell you it’s the most honest and moving portrait of home that I’ve seen.

These are a couple sketches I made during the movie and the Q&A a few months back.

The Ross Brothers - SXSW Film 2009
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