Blog - Verbal to Visual

The book Sustainable Ambition by Kathy Oneto resting on a large hand-drawn sketchnote featuring visual thinking diagrams from the book, with a black Sakura Permapaque marker beside it.

Sustainable Ambition by Kathy Oneto – A Visual Summary

A visual book summary of Sustainable Ambition by Kathy Oneto. Here’s a sentence I didn’t know I needed to hear: You can be a deeply ambitious person and be done …

A three-panel image of Doug Neill in a gray sweatshirt at a white desk. In the left panel, he holds up a pen and looks at the camera. In the middle panel, he leans over the desk sketching on paper surrounded by hand-drawn visual notes. In the right panel, he holds up a small card with the hand-lettered words "Environment Design for Visual Thinkers.

When Your Brain Has Too Many Tabs Open

Do you ever feel like your mind is running on seven different tracks at once? Multiple thoughts competing for attention, all running in parallel. It’s exhausting. And it’s hard to …

Improving Cornell Notes with Sketchnoting Techniques

Today we’re going to explore how to merge two different note-taking processes — the Cornell Method and sketchnoting. Let’s get into it. The Standard Cornell Method Let’s start with what …

Three of My Favorite Visual Thinking Tools

One of the questions I get asked most often is what tools I use for my visual thinking work. So I thought I’d share three of my favorites — a …

Bilateral Asymmetry in Visual Design

Here’s the cover of the March 2nd, 2026 New Yorker. I think it’s a cool example of a visual thinking technique that you might be able to apply to your …

Drawing Basics for Sketchnoters

One of the videos that I’ve made here that has received the most engagement is called You Can’t Draw. I Don’t Believe You. Within that video, I outline my overall …

April 2026 Visual Thinking Events

Happy April! I wanted to let you know about the events taking place inside of Verbal to Visual this month. If you’re already a member, mark your calendar for these …

Two hands hold open a small sketchbook with a pen beside it. The top page (upside down) features a sketch of a Pacific Crest Trail sign post surrounded by trees, with text about spending most of the day hiking south away from Mount Jefferson and toward Three Finger Jack. The bottom page shows a detailed ink drawing of Mount Jefferson as seen from South Cinder Peak, with the mountain's jagged peaks rendered in fine line work, dated DN 8-14-13.

The Value of Visual Journals – Sketchbook Tour (Part 2)

Anyone else have a bunch of filled notebooks on a shelf or in a box, but you don’t know what’s inside them? That’s my situation with a stack of Moleskine …

Doug Neill holding up a pink sticky note in his right hand and a fanned-out stack of white index cards in his left hand, presenting them toward the camera. He is wearing a dark blue button-up shirt in a home office setting with bookshelves visible in the soft-focus background.

The Building Blocks of Deep Thinking

When you’re learning something new or working through a tricky problem, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the complexity of the topic and the number of details that you have …

The Messy Middle of Visual Thinking

There’s a moment in every visual thinking project where the ideas are all sitting in front of you — on index cards, in underlined passages, scribbled in the margins — …