A Guide to Graphic Recording Styles
- Julia Bakay
- Nov 5, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: May 3
Graphic Recording styles can be customized in the colors of your choice, and we can tweak the fonts, shapes, and overall visual tone to align perfectly with your brand identity. Whether you're drawn to clean minimalism, playful doodles, or bold visual storytelling, there's a style to suit every message and audience.
I love developing and experimenting with new styles, so don’t hesitate to share your ideas—no matter how unusual they might be! In this post, I’ll walk you through some of the most popular approaches and show how they can be tailored to fit different events and brands.
Minimalist Graphic Recording Style
People style: simple stick-figures
The best approach to Graphic Recording if you're looking to capture as much content as possible!
These little illustrations allow for speedy real-time drawing, so you can enjoy watching it as it evolves
These visuals don't have to take up much space either, so there's more space to capture text!
This Graphic Recording style allows for monochrome capturing if you're looking for something simpler; we can pick a few of your brand colours (as seen above) and use them for the color palette
Because all characters are the same - and non-representative of any race, gender, age, etc. - this approach is inclusive in a simple way
It allows for a humorous, witty way of capturing - for example, I can combine random objects or give them personalities!
Graphic Recording with Small Colorful Illustrations
People style: more diverse little figures, in color
The next Graphic Recording style is a slightly more elaborate and colorful alternative to the previous one.
We'll likely pick a few more colors from your brand palette to work in this style as we'll need all basic colors (red, yellow, blue, green), and various skin and hair tones
Perhaps the main difference is that unlike the stick figures, here each figure has some characteristics added. If portraying diversity is important to your message, this could be the way to go!
Each idea can get a little illustration, which makes for a nice, organized and balanced canvas
This cartoon-like and playful Graphic Recording approach allows for more humor and creativity!
Sketchnoting in a Cartoon Style
People style: stronger characters, more zoomed in to express emotions
Good old cartoons...
we can use a wide range of colors or work in a limited palette like in the image below
This approach is less concerned with the flow of the conversation, but lends itself really well for a dynamic collage of the key ideas!
Cartoons allow for more playful and witty illustrations (than the following categories)
Monochrome Cartoon Style 
Artistic + Cartoonish Style 4. Elegant Linework Graphic Recording
People style: linework and some shading and highlights where it helps
If stick figures or cartoons don't feel right for your work or event, this elegant style will serve it well
This dynamic and classy approach works really well with most topics. If you're not sure where the conversation will lead, this is a safe one to go for
We can keep the colors to a minimum - all we need is one of your brand colours to base it on!
Here's another example where I relied on lines only for live illustration!
Silhouette-based Graphic Recording
People style: people's silhouettes only
Quite similar to the above, but relying consistently on silhouettes - this Graphic Recording style is also brilliant for most conversations.
Silhouettes are my personal favorites as they are so simple yet expressive
Above all, when it comes to a visual map like this one, silhouettes help to make your visual map tidy and cohesive!
We can play with these silhouettes, adding shading and textures for a more artistic look!
There's not that much room for humor, as the illustrations don't have face expressions. However, it also means that the graphic stays more sophisticated
Artistic Big-Picture Graphic Recording
Usually more time for complete, elaborate people illustrations
While Graphic Recording in this style, I get to lean into the overarching metaphors and artistic touches.
It's made possible by the fact that I'm not looking to capture as many notes, and I'm not insisting on creating tiny illustrations to accompany each idea (like in most styles listed before). I take a step back and look for the bigger ideas and how they interact.
Or we can just keep the 'note-taking' at an incredibly high level! The following Visual Notes were created by taking a few key sentences from the conversation and bringing them together in an attractive and engaging piece that helps to tell the story.
Though some of the styles above are better when it comes to capturing a topic in detail, something like this image will be better at drawing people in from outside the industry! With vivid colors and keeping the capturing at a high level, this style could also work best on social media if that's a purpose of the Visual Note-taking.
Ambient Graphic Recording
People style: I strongly recommend silhouettes for these type of conversations
The sky is the limit when it comes to Live Visual Notes and here are a few examples of something new emerging during a conversation. If there's a truly powerful or sensitive conversation to capture, feel free to request this approach. I will 'read the room' and I think we'll all be surprised to see what emerges!
What else is possible? Now that you've explored this break down of the styles available, I hope you'll enjoy browsing more examples and learning about the process!
