Sketchnote Your Creative Year!

Document your creative year with a sketchnote to summarize 2023. Year-End Sketchnote Challenge

This post is part of a year-end/New Year set that includes year-end reflection, a year-end sketchnote, and planning questions for the new year.

An End-of-Year Sketchnote for 2023

It’s that time of year! We are into the final week, and the remaining days of 2023 are unfolding (or slipping away, depending on how fast your world is spinning).

This week always goes more quickly than I anticipate, a combination of family, reality, and juggling some work hours and not enough time off. I always hope to fit in year-end reflection questions, 2024 creative life planning questions (coming soon), word of the year (WOTY) thinking, and my year-end sketchnote as the year winds down.

Some of this reflection and snapshot work spills over into the new year, meaning I don’t feel I have to have everything tidied up, all the straggling threads woven in and neatly tied off, the bow on top, when the ball drops on New Year’s Eve.

My end-of-year and new year often overlap and mingle in the opening weeks, and I’m okay with bridging the years this way.

We all have different realities. You might be able to wrap things up in 2023 and then start fresh with your planning and WOTY in 2024. Some people manage all of it before the year starts. You do you. But please know that there is no shame in letting these things unfold over the days and weeks. There is no race. There are no medals handed out for how quickly you process your year or how extensively you plan for the coming year.

However you do it, in whatever order or sequence, and using whatever prompts have the most resonance for you, I encourage you to take some time to reflect on your creative year.

My advocation of an End-of-Year Sketchnote was, initially, a group challenge in the Creativity Matters Podcast community. While I still don’t do as much sketchnoting as I want, I consider sketchnoting to be an integral part of my #illustrateyourweek illustrated journal project and process.

I love doing the end-of-year sketchnote as it gives me a really visual and focused look at the whole year.

What is an End-of-Year Sketchnote?

The idea is simple: sketchnote the highlights of your creative year.

This creates an illustrated summary of the year. It can be really beautiful in its own way. Mine are typically jam-packed, chaotic, and somehow encapsulate an energy (and level of productivity) that I often don’t even realize in the day-to-day. I see it in the bird’s eye view of the end-of-year sketchnote. This energy runs throughout my year, a creative undercurrent that I especially value, an undercurrent that gives meaning, balance, structure, and fulfillment to my days. When you focus on the day-to-day, it’s easy sometimes to lose the big picture. The sketchnote record of the year helps bring that into focus.

I draw every day. I work in my illustrated journal every day. I do a lot of other things, too. Sometimes I get caught up in what I don’t finish or what I don’t do. This visual look at the year helps me see all that I do manage, creative, bring forth, and share.

Of the two year-end reflections I do, the year-end sketchnote is the one I enjoy most and find most valuable and meaningful later. This visual process of looking back and organizing the year helps me see, at a glance, where I focused my creative energies, and how things went “by the numbers.”

I encourage you to do your own year-end sketchnote! (A sketchnote selfie is also a wonderful project. But in the December/January timeframe, doing a year-end review or a planning-goal-based sketchnote for the new year can be an excellent and fun way to experiment with sketchnotes and create a meaningful and fun visual summary of your creative work.)

Tip: The end-of-year questions for 2023 can help you gather the “fodder” you need to start building your sketchnote review.

Year-end Sketchnotes from prior years:

Sketchnote of a creative year. A. Cowen, 2017

Sketchnote of a creative year. A. Cowen, 2019

Sketchnote of a creative year. A. Cowen, 2020

Sketchnote of a creative year. A. Cowen, 2022.

I don’t know what my 2023 Year-End Sketchnote will look like. (I haven’t started even making a list. What I do know is that without the sketchnote project, I probably wouldn’t take the time to get this big-picture look. I’m always glad, later, to have this yearly visual snapshot.

I hope you consider doing your own year-end sketchnote!

Inspiration from the Podcast

If you are curious about sketchnoting, you may find these old episodes of the Creativity Matters Podcast inspiring:

• Episode 261: Sketchnote Selfie

• Episode 251: Sketchnote

• Episode 434: Year Over Year

You may find that sketchnoting with a personal lens leads you into illustrated journaling, too. If so, you may enjoy Illustrate Your Week, a flexible, personal, weekly illustrated journaling project (for which I post weekly prompts).

Explore More

A few books I consider inspiring in this context:

• Sketchnote Handbook (Mike Rohde)

• Observe, Collect, Draw! (Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec)

• Dear Data (Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec)

• Doodle Revolution (Sunni Brown)

• The Art of Visual Notetaking: An interactive guide to visual communication and sketchnoting (Emily Mills)

Excited? Inspired to summarize your year in a new way? Let me know!

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