The Joy of Sathyanand's Yellow Visuals
Visual by Sathyanand
This interview is part of a weekly series that focuses on creators who live at the intersection of writing and art. The goal is to provide inspiration and practical tips for anyone looking to add more visuals to their work.
When I started paying attention to visual Twitter, Sathya and his iconic yellow visuals quickly became a routine and welcome part of my feed. People were eager to like and share his visual takes on quotes and concepts.
Like this:
And this:
Or visual threads distilling talks or books like this:
Sathya is relentlessly positive and incredibly consistent with putting out new and interesting visuals. He went from 600 Twitter followers in Jan of 2021, to almost 3,000 now at the end of April 2021. He also has a newsletter that is full of his and other people's visuals that you can find here.
All this growth using this yellow aesthetic culminated into a book released on Gumroad, which is 100 of Sathya's best visuals packaged nicely in one spot.
I was interested in sending Sathya some questions around how he developed his style and the tools that he uses. He delivered the goods, and I was delighted to learn he uses Canva to make all of his yellow visuals (which has a free version).
Sathya has recently been exploring the power of mind mapping, and because this site is dedicated to all things visual, we thought it would be fun to present the responses in the form of a mind map.
So please enjoy exploring the branches of creativity instilled within this mind map. For accessibility and links, below is a bullet point version as well.
Tell us about the creative projects you work on
I make visuals out of:
Quotes
Tweets
Interesting ideas/ concepts
3 major topics
Practical philosophy
Stoicism
Modern day self-help
Creativity & Learning
Creative struggle
Life-long learning
Visual thinking
Visual learning
Visual notetaking
Sketchnoting
Mindmapping
A bit of ADHD
How long have you been visually creative?
Oct 2019
Joined Twitter
Nov 15, 2020
First visual
Nov 23, 2020
Joined Daily Visual Community
Dec, 2020
500 Followers
Jan, 2021
My birthday
Feb 2, 2020
1000 Followers
Feb 2021
2000 Followers
March 2021
First podcast appearance
First session by HelloMeets
April 2021
April 11, 2021
'How to make Visuals' session
April 14, 2021
Published 'The Yellow Visuals' ebook
End of April
Hopefully will touch 3k followers
How did you decide on your unique style?
Started with mimicking
Jack Butcher's black background style
Didn't like dark background in a visual
Joined the Daily Visual community
Tried various forms
Black + White
Jack Butcher
White + Black
Yellow + Black
Sathya
Became the Yellow Fellow
I get icons from The Noun Project
Finalized based on feedback
What tools do you use for creation and publishing?
Is there one image you are particularly proud of?
3 visuals
Maybe this mind map :)
Are there any creators who work at the intersection of writing and art who inspire and motivate you?
Visuals
Jack Butcher’s Visualize Value
Craig Burgess’s Unobvious & Daily Visual community
Sketchnoting
Doug Neil, Verbal to Visual
Mind map
Hazel Wagner: TED Talk on ‘Want to Learn Better? Start Mind mapping’
What advice would you give anyone who wants to start (or continue) using visuals to grow an audience?
Experiment
Embrace yourself
Consistently create
And importantly, hold on!
You got this!
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