Where we start
Session 4 ended with a stopwatch. You gave one page to a colleague who had not been in the meeting, asked "where did he say the batch size?", and counted the seconds. That count is the number that decides whether a page is a work artefact or a private one. A page where all twelve of the founder's ideas survived on a good modular skeleton can still take a stranger forty seconds, because every word on it is the same size, the same thickness and the same colour, and the eye has nowhere to land. The fix is weight, not more words. The words already survived; session 3 counted them. The layout already places them; session 4 drew it. Tonight is the last thing between your page and somebody else's desk.
★ What you walk out with tonight. One page, the one from session 4, re-lettered at three visibly different weights with exactly one accent, and a colleague's second timing on the back of it that is under thirty seconds. Nothing added, nothing removed; only heavier, lighter, and one thing amber.
Three neighbours, so you land in the right place. The advanced lettering ladder, serif, slab serif, script, condensed, extended and 3D at Workbook pages 180 to 190, is calligraphy and stays with Rohde's Workbook. Colour theory is one accent pen here, not a session. And turning a finding into a deck that changes a decision is learn-visual-storytelling-with-phoebe. The subject tonight is narrower than any of those: a page a specific colleague can read in under thirty seconds without you standing next to them.
Three weights, one accent
6 min liveA stranger reads a page in an order, and the order is decided by weight before it is decided by position. The biggest, darkest thing is read first; the boxed things next; the small things only if the reader is looking for one. Give a page three visibly different weights and the stranger's eye has a route. Give it one weight and the stranger has to read everything to find anything.
LiveHierarchy is what a stranger reads first4 min▶
Rohde's Handbook gives hierarchy three pages, 133 to 135, and the idea fits in one sentence: a page needs a title, a handful of handles and the detail, at three visibly different weights, so the eye lands on the title, then on the handles, then only on the detail it actually wants. That is the reading route a stranger takes whether you planned it or not. If the page has no weights, the stranger builds the route by reading every word, and that is where forty seconds goes.
- The title is read first and it is read by everyone, so it is the largest thing on the page and there is one of it. "Autumn roast, 1 Oct" tells a colleague which meeting this was before they have found anything else.
- The handles are read second, and they are read as a set: the eye sweeps them in reading order, looking for the one it wants. Twelve heavy capitals on a grid can be swept in a few seconds. Twelve lowercase words the same size as their detail cannot, because the eye cannot tell a handle from a note.
- The detail is read last, and only under the handle the reader chose. It is small on purpose. Small says "you do not have to read this", and a page where nothing says that is a page where everything has to be read.
Weight is three things, and any of them will do the job: size, thickness and box. A bigger word, a heavier word, or a word in a box all read as "this is above the rest". Three levels is the budget. A fourth level is a decision the reader cannot make at a glance, and a page that tries to rank twelve things by twelve weights has ranked nothing.
Self-studyOne rung of the lettering ladder, and why only one4 min▶
Rohde's lettering ladder, Handbook pages 166 to 171, runs five rungs: single-line, two-line, triple-line, block and drop shadow. Single-line is ordinary handwriting, one stroke per letter. Two-line is the same letter drawn as an outline, two parallel strokes with white inside, so the word reads heavier without being bigger. Triple-line adds a third stroke, block fills the outline solid, and drop shadow puts a dark offset behind the block so the letters seem to stand off the page.
For a page a colleague reads, two rungs are enough: two-line for the handles and single-line for the detail. That alone gives the page two of its three weights, and the title gets the third by being larger. Block and shadow are the art end of the scale. They look wonderful on a page made afterwards, and at speaking pace each one costs seconds per word, which is the batch size going past again. Session 3 already put the price on that trade, and the price did not change because the drawing is letters rather than icons.
The CHI 2021 study of 103 sketchnotes gives the critic's words for the same thing. Its six design-space dimensions are conciseness, structure, illustration, unity, personification and realism, and three of them describe hierarchy from the outside: conciseness is the small detail staying small, structure is the handles reading as a set, and unity is the same weight meaning the same thing everywhere on the page. When a colleague's page feels heavy and you cannot say why, it is nearly always unity: a handle here in two-line, a handle there in block, and the reader cannot tell which of the two is meant to matter more.
A Daybreak product lead brought her session 4 page, a clean twelve-cell grid with every idea in place, and handed it to a colleague from the roastery with one question: "who owns the checklist?" Forty-one seconds. Every cell was the same lowercase handwriting at the same size, and he read the grid cell by cell until he reached the last one. She re-lettered the same page that evening: title larger, handles in two-line capitals, detail small, and one amber box around OWNER. Not one word changed. The same colleague, the next morning, found it in six.
Containers, connectors, dividers, bullets
5 min liveWeight tells a reader what to look at. A second, smaller family of marks tells them how the things they are looking at relate: which belong together, which depends on which, where one topic ends and the next begins. None of these is a drawing. Each is one stroke, or two, and each stands in for a sentence the reader no longer has to read.
LiveSix marks that do the reader's sorting3 min▶
Two people who built the practice from different directions arrived at nearly the same short list. Rohde's visual elements, Handbook pages 174 to 175, are arrows, bullets, connectors, containers, dividers and signatures. Sunni Brown's six "basix" in her 2011 article are lettering, bullets, frames, connectors, faces and figures, shadows and shading. The lists overlap on bullets, on frames or containers, and on connectors, and that overlap is the core. Faces and figures are the art end; the signature is yours; shadows are the top rung of a ladder you are only taking one step up.
What matters about the core is that each mark carries a sentence. A container around three cells says "these belong together" without anyone writing it. A connector between two boxes says "this touches that". An arrow says "this depends on that", and the direction is the dependency. A divider says "new topic". A bullet says "one of several". A frame around the title says "start here". Six marks, six sentences the reader does not have to read, and the sorting a reader would otherwise do in their head is already done on the page.
| Mark | Says | Replaces |
|---|---|---|
| Container | These belong together | "Price, new subs and finance are all the money side" |
| Connector | This touches that | "The sleeve copy and the FAQ have to say the same thing" |
| Arrow | This depends on that | "Nothing prints until legal has signed the origin claim" |
| Divider | New topic | "That was the beans; now the comms" |
| Bullet | One of several | "There are three things under photos: the shoot, the sleeve, the page" |
| Title frame | Start here | "This page is the autumn roast talk on the first of October" |
Self-studyThe accent pen has one job3 min▶
The second pen is a hierarchy tool, not a decoration. Its job is to mark the one thing on the page a reader must find first: the decision, the owner, the date that moved, the single dependency everything else waits on. On the founder's page that is OWNER, because the plea at minute eight was the only thing on the page nobody had yet agreed to, and it is the one cell a colleague will come back for. The accent goes there and nowhere else.
The rule is one accent because two accents is a choice the reader has to make, and a page where everything has an accent has no accent. Colour is a weight like size or thickness, and it is the loudest of the three, which is why it is the one that stops working soonest. Doug Neill gives colour a whole module of his Verbal to Visual course (module 5 on his course page), and for a page made afterwards that depth is earned. For working notes made while somebody is talking, one accent on one thing is the whole of it, and the pen stays capped until you know what that thing is.
If you cannot say what the one thing is, the page is telling you something: either the meeting had no decision in it, which is worth writing at the bottom, or you have not yet worked out what the reader will come back for. Either way the accent waits. A page with three weights and no accent is still readable. A page with three accents has gone backwards to one weight, in colour.
One line for the title and up to a dozen for the handles is the whole top of the hierarchy, and it should fit in a few seconds of reading. Anything you wanted to type and could not fit in three words is detail: it goes small, under its handle, and the reader will find it if they want it. If two of your handles say nearly the same thing, they are one handle, and the page has just got lighter.
The thirty-second scan
4 min liveThere is one test of whether a page is readable by someone else, and it is not looking at the page. It is handing the page to the someone else. A colleague, a page they have never seen, one question, and a watch. The number that comes back is the only measurement of hierarchy that exists, and it is cheap enough to run every week.
LiveHand it over and count2 min▶
The test has four parts and none of them is you. A colleague who was not in the meeting. A page they have never seen. One question with one answer on the page, such as "where is the bit about pricing?" or "who owns the checklist?" And a watch, started when the page lands in their hands and stopped when their finger lands on the answer. Under thirty seconds and the page is a work artefact: it can go in a shared folder and do the meeting's job without you. Over thirty and it is a private note, which is fine, as long as nobody is relying on it.
When the number is too high, the only variable to move is weight. The words already survived; session 3's bench counted twelve of twelve in a hundred and ten of them, and adding words to a slow page makes it slower. The layout already places them; session 4 chose the grid from the agenda, and the colleague's problem was never that PRICE was in the wrong cell. What was left is that PRICE looked exactly like "held" underneath it and exactly like every other cell. Title larger, handles two-line, detail small, one accent. Then hand it back and count again.
Self-studyWhat the reader is not owed3 min▶
The reader is owed three things: a title, so they know what meeting this was; the handles, so they can find the topic; and one accent, so they find the thing that matters first. That is the whole contract, and the page can meet it in a few seconds of the reader's time.
The reader is not owed your icons being pretty. A coffee bean drawn badly next to GUJI does the same work as one drawn well, and the colleague is looking at the word. They are not owed your abbreviations being expanded, if the abbreviation is one the team uses; "subs" is a handle at Daybreak and a mystery anywhere else, and the page is for Daybreak. They are not owed the speaker's jokes, the run-up to each point, or the order things were said in, unless the order was the point and session 4 chose a path for it. A page that tries to be readable by everyone puts all of that back on, and becomes a transcript again with nicer lettering.
So the standard is not "readable by anyone". It is readable by the specific colleague who will need it: the person who will ask about pricing on Thursday, or who is going to be handed the checklist. Picture them before you choose the accent, and letter the page for them. The 41, 14 and 6 on the figure above are one Daybreak team's stopwatch on one page, run three times as the page changed. They show the shape of what weight does to a reader. They are not a measured claim from any study, and no study of this kind has been fetched or is cited here.
Re-letter it and time it
★ 22 min · everyone capturesYou brought the session 4 page and the seconds a colleague took on it. Tonight that page gets re-lettered, not redrawn: every word stays, every cell stays, and the only things that change are how heavy each word is and which one thing gets the accent. Then it goes to a neighbour who has never seen it, with one question and a watch.
Pick the page you timed. The session 4 page, with the colleague's seconds on the back. Read it once as a stranger would: where does your own eye land first? If the answer is "nowhere in particular", that is the forty seconds, and it is about to change. Put a fresh sheet next to it if the original is in ink.
Mark three weights in pencil. Next to every word on the page write one small letter: T for the title, H for a handle, d for detail. There should be one T, roughly one H per cell, and everything else is d. If you find yourself wanting a fourth letter, you have found a handle pretending to be a title or detail pretending to be a handle; pick.
Two-line the handles. Re-letter every H word as two-line capitals: draw each letter as an outline, two parallel strokes with white inside, the same height in every cell. The title gets written once, larger than anything else, single-line is fine at that size. Every d word is rewritten small, single-line, under its handle. Same three treatments in all twelve cells, no exceptions.
Add one accent. Uncap the second pen only now. Ask "what will the reader come back for?" and put the accent on that one thing: a box around the handle, or the cell filled. On the founder's page it is OWNER. On yours it is whatever the meeting left undecided or whatever one person will be chased about. One. Cap the pen.
Swap and time. Hand the page to a neighbour who has not seen it, ask one question whose answer is on the page, and count seconds until their finger lands. Write the number on the back under the first one. Then swap roles. If you were the reader, say out loud where your eye went first, second and third; that route is the page's hierarchy, whether or not it was the one intended.
Pencil the letters before the pen moves. T, H, d next to every word. The sorting is the thinking; the re-lettering afterwards is mechanical, and mechanical is what you want while somebody is timing you.
Title once, at the top, the largest thing on the page. Meeting, date, four words at most. A colleague reads it before they read anything else, so it earns its size, and it is the only thing that does.
Handles in two-line capitals, all the same height. Same height is what makes them read as a set the eye can sweep. One taller handle is a claim that it matters more, and unless you mean that, do not make it.
Detail small, under the handle, one line. A number, a name, a date. If a detail needs two lines, it is either two details or it is a handle you have not promoted.
Choose the accent before uncapping the pen. Say out loud what the reader will come back for. If you cannot say it in one breath, the accent waits, and the page goes to the neighbour with three weights and no colour.
Time it, and write both numbers on the back. Before and after, same page, same kind of question. The pair is the evidence that weight did the work, because nothing else on the page moved.
Nothing on the page changed except weight. That is the point of doing it on the session 4 page rather than a new one. The twelve ideas were already there and the grid already held them, and a colleague still took forty seconds. Whatever the second number says, it was bought with size, thickness, a box and one colour, and not one added word. If you ever find yourself writing more to make a page clearer, stop: the reader did not need more; they needed to know what to skip.
Before session 6
25 min- Re-letter one real page from this week and time a colleague before and after. A meeting you actually sat in, captured on a skeleton chosen in advance. Hand it over as it is, one question, count. Re-letter at three weights with one accent, hand it to a different colleague, same kind of question, count again. Write both numbers on the back.
- Find one page you made where the accent was used more than once, and remove all but one. Photocopy or redraw if it is in ink. Decide which of the accented things the reader would come back for, keep that one, and demote the rest to two-line handles. Notice whether the page got clearer or lost something; the answer is nearly always the first.
- Write the three levels for a talk you will attend, before it starts. The title in under five words; the handles you expect, one per line, under three words each, from the agenda alone. Take the list into the talk. Afterwards, mark which handles arrived, which did not, and which the speaker added.
- Book a real twenty-minute talk or meeting for session 6. Not a rehearsal, not a neighbour reading an agenda: a real one, with a real speaker, that somebody who was not there will need to know about. Session 6 captures it live with everything from sessions 1 to 5 and then sends the page to that somebody, so the somebody has to exist.
Three questions
Clear all three and session 5 gets stamped in your passport.
1 · A colleague takes forty seconds to find "who owns the checklist" on a page where all twelve ideas survived on a clean grid. What do you change?
The forty seconds is a page with no reading route: every word the same size, thickness and colour, so the eye reads cell by cell. Session 3 counted the words and session 4 placed them; both halves are done, and adding words or icons makes the scan longer. Three visibly different weights and one accent give the eye a route, and the same colleague finds the same cell in seconds.
2 · Rohde's lettering ladder has five rungs. Why take only one step up it for a page a colleague reads?
Two-line lettering makes a word read heavier without making it bigger, which is exactly one weight above single-line detail; the title supplies the third weight by size alone. Block and drop shadow look wonderful on a page drawn afterwards and cost seconds per word while somebody is talking, the same trade session 3 priced for icons. One rung buys the hierarchy; the rest buys art, in ideas.
3 · A page comes back with the accent pen used on five of its twelve cells. What does that page have?
The second pen is a weight, the loudest of the three, and its whole value is that it appears once. Five accented cells leave the reader choosing among five, which is the sorting the page was supposed to do for them. If you cannot name the one thing the reader will come back for, the pen stays capped and the page ships with three weights and no colour, which is still readable.
What this session teaches, and where it came from
Every fact on this page, and its verification tier, is recorded in the course's source map.
Session 5 cheat sheet · pin this
Everything so far was rehearsal: the founder's nine minutes, replayed five ways. Session 6 is one real twenty-minute talk, the one you booked, captured live with everything from sessions 1 to 5 at once, and then the one-page recap that leaves your desk and lands in a stakeholder's inbox. That last step is the only outcome anyone keeps doing, because it is the one that saves somebody else a meeting. Bring the booking, both pens, and the page with two numbers on the back.