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Mike Rohde is a designer and an author, but he's probably best known for illustrating the 37signals books. Mike is now building his own products: The Sketchnote Handbook, and the Sketchnote Workbook.
Show Notes
Mike Rohde is a designer and an author, but he’s probably best known for illustrating the 37signals books: Rework and Remote. Mike is now building his own products: The Sketchnote Handbook, and the Sketchnote Workbook. Both are unique books, which also include video. Mike has a secret agenda: to get more people drawing again.
Show notes
- XOXO Festival
- “Let’s make some stuff”
- Mike Rohde’s homepage
- Mike Rohde on Twitter
- Buy Mike’s first book: The Sketchnote Handbook
- Buy Mike’s new book: The Sketchnote Workbook
- Subscribe to Mike’s newsletter
- Documentary: Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Note from Justin
This interview is a smaller segment of a full-interview with Mike, available on Product People Club. Go to productpeople.club, and sign up for the waiting list. Screenshots are up now!
Want to help the show? If you could go to iTunes leave a nice review that would be superb. Also: if you’re listening on Stitcher, please leave a review on there!
Music: Lethal Force by Striker, visit them at striker-metal.com
Creators and Guests
What is Product People?
A podcast focused on great products and the people who make them
Hey, this is Justin Jackson and you are listening to Product People. Happy Thursday, everybody. I am back with another episode. This week, we're talking with Mike Rhode. He's the guy that illustrated all of the 37 Signals books.
Speaker 1:Now they're Base Camp, but remember, Rework and Remote, all of those great illustrations, those are Mike Rhode's. We talk about his new books, which basically are teaching people how to draw and how to do sketching the way he does it. So stay tuned for that. Haven't had an episode in a while. I've been, away.
Speaker 1:I was in Portland for the XOXO conference, which is a really interesting, unique conference. It's both a festival and, you know, the typical speakers during the day. I came away feeling really inspired actually to specifically to make more stuff. And I wrote about that on my blog, justinjackson. Ca.
Speaker 1:If you go there, you'll see a blog post called Make More Stuff. And, yeah, I just felt inspired to be around all these people that were building really interesting things and some of whom were just excited to be creating things, not necessarily creating things for money, which was refreshing. Anyway, that's enough from me. Let's get to this conversation with Mike Rhode. You're gonna love it.
Speaker 1:Hey. It's Justin Jackson here, and I am with mister Mike Rhode. How's it going, Mike?
Speaker 2:Hey. It's going pretty good.
Speaker 1:Now, Mike, you are a designer and an author, but I think a lot of people would know your name because you were the illustrator for Rework and Remote. Yep. And now you've got a few of your own books, which we're gonna talk about pretty soon here. You've got the Sketchnote Handbook and the brand new book, the Sketchnote Workbook. First of all, how did how did you end up getting connected with those guys at Thirty Seven Signals?
Speaker 1:How did that happen?
Speaker 2:Well, that was a long term, process. It began with me actually sketchnoting one of their, early events that they put on. They put on, I think, three or four events with Kudal partners who they, at the time, had space with and called the seed conferences. I went to the first one. I paid for it, and I just wanted to try had just just discovered the sketchnoting thing, which we could talk about what it is, And I wanted to test it out.
Speaker 2:So I was doing all these conferences and just trying it out and experimenting and put my stuff up on Flickr. And they found it and posted a post on their blog, which was really instrumental in making sketchnoting more visible to people, especially in the tech community. And then we just became friends because they like the way I interpreted their thinking. And when the time came for them to do illustrations in the book, I was a natural choice because I used their products. I understood them, and they could see my work.
Speaker 2:Right? They had seen me actually interpret their ideas before. So it was a a natural fit and not too much of a risk. I mean, certainly could have been a risk, but, that's how it happened. We just kept on working together.
Speaker 2:And one day, Jason emailed me and said, hey. You wanna illustrate our book? And I said, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's that's awesome. And and what, let's talk about sketchnoting. What is sketchnoting?
Speaker 2:Well, the the quest the quickest way I I like to describe sketchnoting is basically notes plus. So it's like the notes you take now, and you're just adding things to it. In this case, drawings or lettering or icons or separators. And all that does is help provide structure. It gives emphasis because you know it's important that your documents aren't just all gray writing.
Speaker 2:It gets kind of boring after a while. When you can spice it up with a drawing of an idea you're having or emphasizing the headlines with typography or marking things with icons that repeat so that you can see patterns. That's really what's all about. It's just a way of thinking and capturing your thinking visually.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And if you look at, if you look at these workbooks, you sent me a copy of the of the the workbook. And when you take a look at these these notes that you do from events and things, they're it's completely different than than reading, you know, like, normal notes that you might take in a class or at a conference. It's it actually kinda comes alive. You can maybe even remember the the, you know, the nuances of what the speaker was talking about when you read them over again.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think that's really key. And, you know, as good as it is for other people to see and as fun as it is for other people to see, I always say that the sketchnotes are first for you and then for others. That is good on a couple of levels. One, because you were there and you have connections with the notes you take more directly.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. But on the other hand, I think it's important that you kinda kinda do them for yourself, and it makes it a fun experience. Other people can look at them and certainly draw value, but I think it's most valuable for you as the creator because it means something more to you. But it's fun to do. I mean, it's when you once you do them and they're a lot of fun, you wanna do them more.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of addicting a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And how did you know? Because now you have you have two books. For the first one, how did you know that this would make a good book?
Speaker 2:I had no idea. It was I had my friend Von Glischka, who I had Thai food dinner with. He and his wife and my wife and I were out in Portland actually for a Don Miller storyline conference. And I met him for dinner. And he was like, dude, you gotta write a book about Sketchstone.
Speaker 2:I'm like, okay. And my friend Patrick Groan had been bugging me for years, like, oh,
Speaker 1:you gotta write a book. Gotta write a book.
Speaker 2:And then he said, you know what? I'm gonna I'm gonna talk to my editor right now. And he, like, on his way home, like, dropped us off at our hotel. And on his way home, he emailed Nikki, who's now my editor. Like, you gotta you gotta sign this guy.
Speaker 2:He's got this great idea, and he introduced me. And it just sort of went from there. We did a proposal. And then the book, they made an offer. And then we did the first book, but I had we had really no clue.
Speaker 2:We just sort of did what we thought was right. I think they felt like I had enough platform and people that were following me that it made sense to take a risk on me. And I'm sure it was probably kind of a risky proposition because not only did we take on this unusual area, which really had no one had ever written about it. There had been some visual thinking writing around, you know, Dave Gray had written some things, and Austin Kleon, my friend Austin Kleon had released some some stuff that was along those lines before me. So there was a little bit of precedence.
Speaker 2:And, of course, Dan Rome's books did really well. So there was sort of like, we think there might be something here. And they gave it a shot. And we really went in a different direction because Peachpit Press, who's my publisher, they typically do textbooks. So, I mean, it's, like, how to use Photoshop and photography and sort of these things that often rely on technology, goes obsolete, and then you've gotta do second and third and fourth editions just to keep it current.
Speaker 2:And they really like the idea of this principled thing that was sort of evergreen. Right? It never really went out of style. You could use it on paper or iPads or whatever might come. So that was positive.
Speaker 2:But then we sort of pushed him in in an interesting direction because we went two color. So the book's all two color, and it's got rounded corners. And we tried some funky stuff on the cover to make it smooth and feel a little different. The paper stock's heavier. It's a cream paper stock so that like, everything about it is kinda weird for a tech press, but they, the book really sold well, and that's part of the reason why I got the second book, the workbook, to expand on the concept and spread it in some different directions.
Speaker 1:So Yeah. Now a lot of the people I talk to are self publishers. They they self publish the book themselves. They do it all themselves. It's interesting to talk to you and and hear about your perspective.
Speaker 1:So how has the the traditional or more traditional publishing process being been for you?
Speaker 2:I've actually enjoyed it quite a bit. You know, I went into making a book knowing that I wasn't gonna make a million dollars at it, although there's still time, you know. I mean, there's still the books are still selling. They've been translated in a couple of languages. So I think the thing that I liked about having a publisher, in particular this publisher, was the flexibility that they had and their their ideas of being creative around the the concept of the book and thinking of it as an experience.
Speaker 2:Right? I have a literary agent that sort of laid out for me the two kinds of book publishing you can do. One is trade press, which is like the stuff you see at airports, and then tech press, which is like peach pit and some other some other ones, O'Reilly, they do more technical stuff. Mhmm. And they sort of break into two groups.
Speaker 2:And then, of course, there's educational, which is like a whole another thing. But, one of the downsides of doing like a trade press book that you'd see in a airport is you gotta fit into their rigid style. Right? It's really structured, and I would have had to do lots of text, they would have been more text than images. And if you see my book, it's mostly images and then supporting text.
Speaker 2:So it's a different model completely. Yeah. You know, Peachpit was super open, and a lot of it had to do with my acquisitions editor, Nikki McDonald, who was really creative and thinking of ways that we could do something different. Like she envisioned the book that she wanted and sort of saw me being able to produce it and then help me to do it. So I've been I've had a really great experience with Peach Pit, and I think they provided lots of opportunities.
Speaker 2:Maybe because they're a smaller I mean, they're an arm of Pearson, so that's a huge company. But they're sort of this sort of a little bit of a scrappy independent in some ways. So I think they're more willing to take risks and try things than a bigger company would sort of force you into their mold. So I really I've I've liked the experience. You know, having that distribution and being able to get into places is really nice.
Speaker 2:Being able to send review copies to anybody in anywhere in the world that I want to as long as I've got their address and in the case of international phone number is pretty cool too. So when people ask for review copies, I could just say, sure. Some of your stuff, some of info. And, you know, within a couple weeks, there's a book on their door step and it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:So Oh, that is cool. Yeah. That's a big difference between the self publishing model.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because you don't have any of that infrastructure there.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I think the other thing is, they they provide all the support as far as all the purchasing stuff so I don't have to handle that. Know the thing that you trade off of course is you're getting a smaller percentage, a much smaller percentage, but you're also not taking on the burden or the risk I guess. So I mean it's that trade off and you know I'm not saying I'm always going to be doing it traditionally. I'm I'm I've been kicking around ideas for doing independent stuff, and, it just hasn't the timing hasn't worked out just right yet.
Speaker 2:But I think there's definitely a place for that and doing some experimenting around. Not even necessarily books could be videos, or I've talked about doing some kind of a club or it's all kinds of ideas that could be done. I just wanna take my time and make sure I choose the right one and do it well. I think that's sort of my signature is trying to find the right thing and do it well rather than just do everything, and it's not always easy to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. I I think that's helpful, actually. And even the idea of finding a really good editor.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, it sounds like your editor was really helpful in crafting the book. And, I I think that's one of the challenges people that are writing the books by book by themselves have is that they have to they're often by themselves, you know, in their cold basement Yeah. Trying to figure this thing out. But if you can have someone saying to you, no. This is the book I wanna read.
Speaker 1:That I could see how helpful that would be.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I you know, the thing the other thing I've learned is couple things. How powerful a good team is. Like, if you build a really good team, like, there's nothing like it. Like, so the guy that I've got shooting the video so not only, does you when you order the book, you get the book, but there's a code in the back for two hours and forty minutes of video in the workbook.
Speaker 2:And, my buddy, Brian Arca, shot all of it. He uses a Canon five d mark two. He loves storytelling with video. And, we had we had an opportunity to do some really interesting stuff with it, like all on location shooting. Lots of, shots of me drawing and then talking about what I'm doing so you have a sense of, like, what I'm thinking so you can pick up on it.
Speaker 2:And they were really open to that. They pretty much let us do that. And I had a team that I put together a guy that did the soundtrack and another friend who is really good at writing scripts. So I just gave him the manuscripts, he'd, like, turned it into these great scripts. And then we together, Brian and I, worked through it, and then we would just shoot it.
Speaker 2:And he is really great at knowing what he wanted and then producing a video out of it. So, know, along the way, the developmental editors, which I'm learning that there's more than one kind of editor now. So there's the acquisitions editor, the one that brings it in. And then there's a developmental editor, and that's a person that sort of takes it from that point. And it can be they can blend it, of course.
Speaker 2:They take it from the next point, and they sort of shape the product from the perspective of a neutral buyer. So you might be very excited about it and have these ideas and they will tell you, well, you know, that's a really great idea. But have you thought about this? And then you've you can, of course, push back a little bit and say, well, you know, I really want to do this. And they'll, you know, they'll understand that.
Speaker 2:But they try and make give you a realistic view and and help you shape it in a good way. And then there's copy editors, they're the ones in my case at the end who go through and just make sure you have things spelled right and the grammar's right and all that sort of that final check. So, it's pretty interesting. And you know, there's some editors do all those things and, in some other places they're divided up. So, it's it's a really interesting model and I love my editors and if they told me to do stuff, I pretty much just did it.
Speaker 2:Like there were only a few cases where I pushed back a little bit because I knew that they had my best in mind and they want to have a great product and I trust that they are independent sources that are looking at what I'm trying to achieve, especially as we got going and seeing what I wanted to achieve and knowing where I was heading. And then when you have a really good team, they just really help you shape it in a way that you couldn't have done on your own. So it's a huge, huge advantage if you can find a good partner that's an editor. So
Speaker 1:Yeah. Now the the hardest part some people say the hardest part isn't writing the book. It's marketing the book. So what kinds of things have you done to let people know about the book and, you know, spread the word and market it?
Speaker 2:Well, I would say I think they're equally hard. I'm a little bit of a unique case because not only did I write the book, but, I sketched the whole thing out, and then I illustrated most of it and then managed all the I had lots of people in the book. So I managed all those submissions and got permissions. And I'm an old print designer, so I actually did all the print design production all the way up to handing the files off to the printer. So so it's a little more unusual for me.
Speaker 2:So for me, it felt like both are tough, but they're just tough in different ways. And they're both fun in different ways. Right? Like, shaping the product is sort of one half of it. And then when you get to go promote it, I it's kind of fun to think about.
Speaker 2:Like, how could I reach out to people in an interesting way that's and, you know, I think of it like, I don't have a lot of budget. You know, my publisher doesn't give me a ton of money. They can give me opportunities to maybe write articles or do some promotion on their site, but it's, you know, that's got some limits. So I need to be active in seeking reviewers and getting review copies to them and answering questions on Twitter and just sort of letting things emerge and then going with the flow. Like this time, I noticed a lot of people were taking pictures of the book when it arrived.
Speaker 2:So when I would ever see whenever I would see that, I would retweet it on Twitter and and just let other people see that. And that was really powerful because I think it's sort of a fun thing for people to be noticed for having decided to pick it and just a fun you know, it's everybody wins there. Yeah. There was a funny situation on the on the handbook where there was a guy on Twitter that asked, and he included my handle and said, yeah. Heard about this handbook.
Speaker 2:Is it worth getting? And I thought it was interesting that he included me, but I thought for a minute, thought, well, I could answer this. And, of course, I'm a biased, you know, author because I wrote the thing. So what else am I gonna say? But, yes, you should buy it.
Speaker 2:So my thought was, what would happen if I just retweeted it and see what happened? So I did. And, like, eight or nine people, like, pounced on him immediately said, it's awesome. Go buy it. And he, like after after the ninth person or something, he's like, okay.
Speaker 2:Back off. I'm gonna buy it. I'll buy it. So, you know, it's a lot of it has to do with building a community, and that has been taking place longer than the book. So that was in process before the book came along.
Speaker 2:So, you know, all the talk you hear about building your platform is really true. I think it's fun when you've got a platform of people that are expecting it. Yeah. And, you know, the other thing that's a little different that I learned from Austin Kleon was promoting the book as I made it. He's done some of that, like he was as he would research, he would post stuff and write his thinking.
Speaker 2:I had a little different tack because the book is pretty visual. I took pictures of sketching and drawing and building the book all the way through the process, and people really seem to dig it like they would see things unfolding and getting closer to finish, and they would just get really excited about the book coming. That was just the unique benefit of having a very visual book. Yeah. And so and then I would take all those posts and I would sorta gather them up and make blog posts.
Speaker 2:And I sort of did a blog post process for both books. It was really really popular. People like being alerted to like where I was in the process and I was super honest about stuff that was going on. I mean, in in this book, for instance, my wife had emergency back surgery like right in the middle of it and we had to put the whole thing on hold for like three weeks and get her back surgery and get her recovery up and you know there was a period of time where I wasn't sure what I finished this book and I felt like you know everything was sort of coming apart and we just kept on going. I was pretty honest about it on the blog and people were really supportive and helpful.
Speaker 2:And so I that was you know, it's interesting how it sort of came back to me in that way of having this community that was supporting me and that you know, there's there's huge benefits to having that community and I learn about it every day. It's really fun to have a supportive community.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. And one thing I've been thinking about a lot is that it actually takes people, a lot of impressions or a lot of touch points on a product before they actually decide to buy. And I think one thing that sharing your process does is it it gives them this constant reminder. And so by the time you announce the book, it's not like they're coming to it cold.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:They've already they've already thought about it seven times, and that that can be so helpful, especially when people are making purchasing decisions.
Speaker 2:You know,
Speaker 1:the it's a decision to take that credit card out of the wallet, go to Amazon or whatever. Mhmm. Most of the time, people don't, like, just hear about something and buy it that same moment. It takes some moments before that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And people forget about that too. I mean, they forget the 20 other times they heard about it, and now they've decided to do it. I've observed that in my myself too like software I've been using and I just decided to buy it one day or you know it's an interesting process and that's it's weird for me as a sort of a marketer like man, do I really want to tweet this again? I just tweeted this like yesterday, but it's like, yeah, but it's like a huge flowing river like you're lucky if somebody sees that bottle floating by.
Speaker 2:Right? Yeah. Maybe they'll see like a couple of bottles floating by but having a captive audience like you say where you show a process and that sort of came from. So I've been a designer for a long time and my process evolved, especially in the last ten or so years where I started including my clients in the process of doing their work. A lot of it involves sketching from websites to logos to icons to now illustrations.
Speaker 2:That was the process I use for rework with Jason and David. Know, I did pencil sketches out that we wrote out like what they were thinking and they maybe about half they knew what they wanted and half they had no clue and depended on me to come up with interesting ideas. So we just sat down, sort of wrote out what we needed, and I just started sketching and posting ideas up on Basecamp for them to see. And that process, that interactive process of sketching and refining and and solving the problem even in pencil has been really powerful. So I could see the power that had in a small group like in, you know, client work, which is maybe one to 10 people or something.
Speaker 2:And I was curious to see if that would apply further, and it seemed like it did. It was a combination of Austin and what he's doing on Tumblr, and then just sort of experimenting with this idea of making a blog post journey so you could actually follow it. It worked really well with the with the Sketchnote handbook, which nobody knew about. So I mean I almost needed that to gain some attraction and you know tried to do things like I would shoot pictures and then put them on Instagram and then use Instagram's ability to put it on Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr and Flickr as a nice pipeline. So I would only put it in one place and it would appear in all these other places.
Speaker 2:That really helped a lot. So it's I think a lot of it is just sort of experimenting. Look at what that could be interesting and try it and then just sort of observe it and see how it's working for you. And that seems like the process that works pretty well for me.
Speaker 1:What a lot of people want to know is how do you build a community? How did you build that Sketchnote army that you have?
Speaker 2:That's an interesting question. I think if I look back, the Sketchnote army website came a little bit later. So I had been posting a lot of my own stuff, and I'm a Midwesterner. So there's this tendency to feel like you're toot your own horn a little too much. And I felt like that when I was posting on my sketch notes, like, Kinda getting sick of my own stuff here.
Speaker 2:So there's other people that are doing this. How can we feature them? So I started doing things like I would retweet them or mention them on Twitter if I saw their stuff. And I thought, you know, would be really, really interesting to have one place to go if you wanted to see SketchNotes. There's not kinda not really a place to go.
Speaker 2:They could sort of find some on Flickr and some on Twitter and but they're like, you know, it's those raging streams. And trying to find something in the haystack is crazy. So I just had this idea. Well, I wonder if Sketchnote Army, it's sorta like it was from two perspectives. One was a place to showcase work, but the ability to send an army of sketch noters to a conference or an event and say hey let's all go send in this thing and do sketch noting together.
Speaker 2:I haven't realized that as much as the community but I just started posting other people's work and it was amazing how encouraging that was for people to see their work on a website. Like, it's like, you know, I'm just this guy with a WordPress site, posting your stuff. It's not that special. But, it's really cool for people that are not they're used to consuming and maybe not used to producing. That's a huge thing like that step from being a consumer to a producer.
Speaker 2:And it was really exciting to facilitate that and get them excited and get them moving to where then they started sharing their own stuff on their own and in some cases creating websites to share the stuff. So, yeah, it just was a slow process of recognizing other people. I think that was the key. Like, my stuff, if you search the archives at Sketch Note Army, my stuff doesn't appear too often. Once in a while, I'll mention books or other things, but typically, it's other people's work, and that's really the focus is building building it by recognizing other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And that's what makes your book somewhat interactive is this idea that you could learn something and start putting it into practice. But then there's this whole community of people doing it as well. And now there's also this, you know, precedent of people sharing what they've done even if they were never, you know, an illustrator before. Now all of a sudden, they're sharing these, you know, these notes with all these illustrations on them.
Speaker 1:That's interesting, that whole piece there.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think, I'm really encouraged. So, so my secret agenda behind all this stuff is really just to get people drawing because I think a lot of people have given up on drawing because maybe in middle school there was one kid that was really good or they got in trouble in school for doodling or whatever right and a lot of people have sort of let go of this visual tool it's a super powerful tool of visualization and it comes in many forms and we sort of often just leave it on the table like we're not using it and to encourage people to use it this seemed like a natural way to do it and it seemed like fun and I enjoyed it. So I thought, well, if I'm enjoying it, maybe other people would enjoy it too. And to see people who are not artists give it a go and give it a try was really fun to see them and they get so excited and they're so proud of the work as as they should be for giving it a shot and trying it and seeing that they actually can capture ideas visually.
Speaker 2:It may not be art, but that's okay. We're talking about ideas here. So I'm cool with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. You know, the other thing that comes to mind right now is a lot of people in the product people audience are thinking about what can they share? What could they create a product from? What do they know right now that, you know, they could turn into some sort of expertise or some sort of software or, you know, a book or something.
Speaker 1:And, you know, you've just gone through this journey. Is there something you learned along the way in terms of, you know, how an individual can answer that question?
Speaker 2:I think it's just sort of stepping outside yourself and being aware of what you do. So here's this little story is this all kind of started in some ways with my blog where I had this blog that I started. I actually had a a PalmPilot newsletter that had 10,000 subscribers back in the nineties and sold it. I just said No way. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I built it basically from my friends and family. We just I was just really fascinated by these Palm Pilots. And, I would write about new things or things you could do with it. It ended up being a newsletter where I'd write because everybody was doing reviews. It was kind of, in a way, boring, like, another review about that case or, like, it wasn't that interesting to me.
Speaker 2:And I thought the interesting thing for me is, like, you got this really powerful little computer in your pocket. You don't realize it. Like, how could you really, like, use the the address book or the notepad? Like, what kind of things could you use it for? Like, practical application stuff.
Speaker 2:And then the other part was I've always been kind of internationally minded. So having interviews with people around the world and their perspective of what how do the how do they look do people look at them funny when they use their palm or what things do they see? So that sort of started that whole publication mindset. And then after I sold it, I was still interested in publishing. I started doing this blog.
Speaker 2:But, know, at the time, I really didn't have a direction. I talked about a variety of stuff. And at some point, it was really interesting. I thought it'd be fun to share the process of how to design how I design a logo. And I honestly did it as a promotional thing, like, to get more logo design.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, this is my process, and hopefully, you'll see it. And what I found is people really were fascinated to see the behind the scenes process. And so I did a lot of that stuff. And I realized that people were interested in seeing the process.
Speaker 2:I think we we what seems normal to us is really fascinating for other people. Think about, Jiro's dreams of sushi. He's just this master who makes sushi, like and he probably thinks, well, you know, I make sushi. Like, dude, you know, it's you've put fish in this thing, and there's, of course, a craft to it. But we're really fascinated by watching this process since and drawing ideas from it.
Speaker 2:So I think if you sat and observed or even had someone else tell you the things that you do that are unique and special, you probably would find there's a lot of things that you know that you just don't realize have value for other people. And it's often the really mundane things that you don't think about. Like, here's another example. And doing the production of the Sketchnote Handbook, I could see that there were gonna be lots of text edits, and I didn't wanna handwrite all the text over again when there were changes. So I reached out, and a friend hooked me up with a type designer.
Speaker 2:Together, we built the Sketchnote typeface, which is another product that I have that started as a functional thing to make the book easier, but now as a typeface that people are using. It's in a bunch of products, you can you can purchase it. So, you know, something that seemed kinda mundane and very functional like a typeface to make my life easier turned out to be a typeface that other people like to use because it sort of has a Comic Sans feel without the cheesiness. So, you know, it's just a matter of being aware of what things that are unique to you and then trying them out. And, you know, some won't work and some will.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 1:That's, I love that idea is that, you know, you can just share some things that you're already working on. And a lot of that is kinda discovered through can be discovered through blogging if you're already sharing things and seeing what people respond to.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And, you know, podcasting too. So if you do a podcast, you know, I listen to some podcasts in particular, like, I've heard so John Gruber has a podcast he does, and I've heard some episodes where he was talking about ideas and then it ended up forming into a post for him or a long article. So where these ideas come, you don't always know, but you have to just know yourself. Like, some people, like, when they start talking, like, for me, a lot of times, I'll talk about an idea and then some revelation will come to me like, oh, I never I never thought about that.
Speaker 2:But it takes me, like, thinking out loud or sketching or, you know, just stepping outside of myself for a minute and, like, observing and often, like, questioning, especially if I'll say, well, this is just the way you do it now. I'll stop myself and say, well, why why why is that the way we do it? And sort of when I question, sometimes that leads to interesting, you know assumptions like I'm assuming things that maybe aren't true. So that's maybe another way to to observe and find them.
Speaker 1:Yeah I love that. Well that's probably a good place to end it Mike. Where can people find you on the World Wide Web?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm pretty active on Twitter, and I'm row design everywhere. So it's r o h d e s I g n. You can find me on on Twitter and Instagram Flickr, and my website is rodesign.com, r0hdesign.com. Sketchnote Army is one of my products. I do that with my friends, Morrow and Benebi, And that's at sketchnotearmy.com.
Speaker 2:And you can see other people's Sketchnote work. The place that maybe go is an archive called First Sketchnotes, and you can see people that give it a shot for the first time and then submit their entries. It's pretty cool. It's amazing to see what people do. So that's another great place to check out and that's probably good.
Speaker 2:You can find pretty much everything or ask me and reach out and say hello and if you want to review copy of the book, let me know.
Speaker 1:And should people buy the Sketchnote handbook first and then the workbook?
Speaker 2:You know, I've had that question asked of me before and I think they're kind of they were designed to stand alone. So in a nutshell, the handbook sets the stage for the idea. It talks about how I came to it in more detail, Sort of gives you answers for like, why would I wanna do this? How would I wanna do this? What are some ways to do it?
Speaker 2:It has lots of samples of work, and it's geared towards sketchnoting talks like in meetings or at conferences. So that's really the focus from a practical perspective. The workbook takes it in a different direction so it includes a chapter that has an introduction. So it's sort of a high level introduction and then it goes in a bunch of different directions. So talking about using it for planning or ideation or documenting processes or capturing experiences like food or travel or even movies and TV shows.
Speaker 2:And then finally, there's a chapter in there with some advanced techniques that I and friends have learned over a couple years that we share. And, of course, they both have video. The handbook's got seventy minutes, and the workbook has two hours and forty minutes. So it's definitely a combination experience and I think either one is fine. If you feel like you know what Sketch Notes are, you could maybe jump right to the workbook and you know you can always pick up the handbook later on too.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Well, the the handbook encouraged me to draw for the first time, I think, since high school.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:So I I really enjoyed it, actually. It was it was it was just fun to look at your process and look at these kind of guides and then be able to say, well, I could do that. I could try that a little bit. And it's really there's what I liked about it is there's no pressure. I was just like, I'm just gonna do this for myself and and try it.
Speaker 1:And then I ended up trying it at a few events, and then I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2:So Excellent.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'll post something on Sketchnote Army. We'll see.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It'd be great. We definitely submit. We love having all kinds of submissions. The quality is not important.
Speaker 2:It's about ideas, so we love it.
Speaker 1:Cool. Well, thanks so much. I really enjoyed talking to you today.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Justin. This has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you having me on.
Speaker 1:Alright. That's the show for this week. Thanks for showing up. If you haven't already, go and check out productpeople.club. You get access to the full interview.
Speaker 1:Often, it's in video. This one was just an audio interview, but you get the whole unedited interview. You can hear, you know, what we talked about before and what we talked about after. Plus, we have basically daily stand ups for solopreneurs, people building their own products. We have this community of people that are sharing, bouncing ideas off each other, giving each other accountability.
Speaker 1:And what it helps is it helps fight that isolation that a lot of us independent creators feel. So productpeople.club. You can see some of the things we've been shipping over at shipped.club. I'm Justin. You can follow me on Twitter miJustin.
Speaker 1:That's the letter m, the letter I, and Justin. And you can always sign up for my newsletter. I send a newsletter every week. Justinjackson. Canewsletter Alright, folks.
Speaker 1:I will see you again next week.
Speaker 2:And another thing you could do is check out my free email newsletter. I've been building that slowly. That's where people are getting the the updates about the book. And I'm looking at near the end of this year, the early next year to making that the first place to get information. A lot like Paul Jarvis.
Speaker 2:If you know Paul Jarvis, he posts that every week, and I wanna move in that direction. And then key ones will show up on the website. So I'm shifting my idea a little bit there. So if you, wanna sign up now, you'll be in position to get all that new stuff and and some new ideas and directions that I'm using there. So that'd be great.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I've been thinking about ways to make email newsletters more interesting. And one of the things I thought about was, you know, to do some sketchnoting. So instead of like, right now, what I do is I usually send a a blog post
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:That I'm writing.
Speaker 2:Yep. I've seen those.
Speaker 1:But instead of doing that, I could I could just sketchnote it, and that would be unlike anything else landing in people's inboxes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That would be interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah. There's yeah. There's a good idea there. Cool, man. Well, I'm glad we can make this happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Thanks for making it happen on short notice. It was really fun. And it's good to meet you. I'm a big fan.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm glad to yeah. I'm glad that you're you wanted to be on the show. I'm I'm I've actually haven't posted anything in the last two or three weeks. I've been so busy, so this is gonna be nice. I'll have something.
Speaker 1:I might even be able to get this out this Thursday.
Speaker 2:Awesome.