Hybrid textual/visual notes with Obsidian Excalidraw

I just released a new video about hybrid notes with Excalidraw, and I'm quite eager to share it with you all because it's about the biggest recent change in the way I take notes.

I now use Obsidian Excalidraw to create notes that are a hybrid between text and visuals by default, using a feature that its developer calls "back of the sheet drawings". It's a way to have a text note that is simultaneously an Excalidraw drawing, blurring the lines between the two quite nicely.

The thumbnail isn't clickbait; I really did change all my templates to this new model, and I've been using them for a couple of months now.

Updated Patreon vault

And I updated the templates in the Patreon vault, too-- at least, all of them except for the writing ones. Since I used that vault while making the video, here are the things I changed:

• Updated many templates to include Excalidraw-specific frontmatter, an Excalidraw SVG embed, and Excalidraw text elements and drawing information to make notes more visual.

• Updated Obsidian Excalidraw plugin configuration settings to make it more in line with how I use it in my personal vault

• Added hotkeys specific to Excalidraw

• Added a "Fourth Font" option for Excalidraw: Lato Regular. Also added the `.tff` file to the vault and updated all Excalidraw templates to use it by default.

You can re-download the Patreon vault, as well as other perks, on this page. Sorry not to link to it directly-- I sometimes change the link, so it's easier to change it on the one perks page rather than in every post I've mentioned it in!

Patreon-exclusive video: Interview with Zsolt Viczián

Zsolt Viczián is the developer of the Obsidian Excalidraw and ExcaliBrain plugins, and I did a whole 30-minute interview with him when we met at the PKM Summit conference recently, only about 3 minutes of which actually made it into this video. 😅 There was so much more that we discussed there, including:

• Our experience at the PKM Summit, and trending topics during the conference

• What Zsolt was trying to do by creating a "back of the sheet" drawing feature in Obsidian Excalidraw

• The importance of multi-sensory input for notes

• How visual my vault is, and what types of things I usually make visual

  Enjoy! Have a great weekend! And thanks for supporting the work I do. I appreciate you all.