Visual Summary or Visual Notes?

Recently, a client asked me to graphic record a day long event with multiple speakers back-to-back.  We reviewed the agenda together and discussed having me take detailed visual notes of each of the 16 presentations.  Since the agenda had three primary bucket areas that all of the speakers would at some point touch on, though, we decided that creating a single Visual Summary would add more value to the day.  The main objective of the finished art was to use it as a marketing piece to share with stakeholders, which was also a great reason to create a single poster image highlighting the big themes.

Visual Summary for Monterey Bay Economic Partnership

Other examples of when to consider a Visual Summary:

When every speaker has a slide deck that will be shared with attendees after the event.  In this case, a single Visual Summary makes a wonderful addition to the slide decks in a post-event follow up.  The Summary will have all of the high level takeaways in one image, and the slides are available to take a deeper dive into the content.

Celebratory events with multiple activities happening at once.  A Visual Summary will include imagery and key words from each activity, along with key messaging from leadership.  This makes a wonderful keepsake for attendees to receive in their inbox after the event, or print posters and snail mail them as special gifts for speakers.

Vision Map for Canal Alliance, live onsite at their Community Visioning Session

Why Choose?
Your graphic recorder can create Visual Notes live during the event and use the content from those to create a Visual Summary after the event.  This way you'll have content from each individual session and a single graphic of the entire event for people to review at a higher level, and it makes a great marketing piece to use throughout the year.

The next time you hire a graphic recorder, consider asking them whether a Visual Summary makes sense for your agenda.