Sketchnote Your Creative Year! (2024)

Document your creative year with a sketchnote to summarize 2024. This is a favorite personal, annual, year-end sketchnote challenge.

Dec 19, 2024

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

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.”

An End-of-Year Sketchnote for 2024

Note: I don’t typically post this until the final week of the year because I don’t want to miss these weeks of December by spending time working on wrapping up the year too early. But I know many people like to have these things in sight ahead of time.

It’s that time of year! We are into the final weeks of the year, and the remaining days of 2024 are unfolding (or slipping away, depending on how fast your world is spinning).

These last few weeks always go more quickly than I anticipate, a combination of family, reality, and juggling the realities of endless work and not enough time off. I always hope to fit in year-end reflection questions, 2024 creative life planning questions, word of the year (WOTY) thinking, and my year-end sketchnote as the year winds down. (These posts will all be coming.)

Some of this reflection and documentation 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 softly bridging and blending the years this way. This is a reminder of the continuity and fluidity between the years, the subtle shifting of days and numbers.

We all have different realities. You might be able to wrap things up in 2024 and then start fresh with your planning and WOTY in 2025. Some people have already chosen their word for next year. Some people manage a really orderly progression of looking back and then looking forward 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. Nothing has to be done or accomplished before January one. 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 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 process creates an illustrated summary of the year. It can be really beautiful in its own way. Mine are typically jam-packed and chaotic. These yearly sketchnotes often encapsulate an energy (and level of productivity) that I 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 don’t know yet what my schedule will look like this year. There has been a lot of change this year and a lot of uncertainty and a lot of overwhelm, but there has also been a lot of art and a lot of writing.

It is sometimes easy to forget all of the things you did along the way, especially when other life events happen and make it seem like that was the sum total of the year. Stopping and looking back and tracking through some of the projects you did and some of the things you tried just helps round out that picture of what your creative life looked like in the year. Then you can go from there, making decisions about the new year and other things you want to do or try or make room for.

I try to draw every day. I work in my illustrated journal every day. I write every day. I know I do a lot, but sometimes I get caught up in what I don’t finish or what I don’t do. I get caught up wanting to do more. We are often very self-critical about whether we are doing enough or making the most of our time and energy. This visual look at the year helps me see all that I do manage, create, bring forth, and share.

Of the two year-end reflections I do, one list-based and one drawn/lettered, 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!

Tip: The end-of-year questions for 2024 can help you gather the “fodder” you need to start building your year-at-a-glance sketchnote review.

Year-end Sketchnotes from prior years:

Sketchnote 2017 — Sketchnote of a creative year. A. Cowen, 2017

Sketchnote 2018 — Sketchnote of a creative year. A. Cowen, 2019

Sketchnote of a creative year. A. Cowen, 2020. — Sketchnote of a creative year. A. Cowen, 2020

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

I don’t know what my 2024 Year-End Sketchnote will look like. (I haven’t started even making a list.) What I do know is that without the annual sketchnote project, I probably wouldn’t take the time to pull together this illustrated 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:

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 you may find especially helpful and/or 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)