Have you always admired those aesthetic Instagram- and Tumblr-worthy notes? Do you wish you could make notes like that—impeccably neat with a bit of artistic flair? You’ve come to the right place!
Out of boredom of the long days spent at home with no school, I decided to start a “studygram” account about a week ago. In case you’re new to this, it basically means an Instagram account where I post my study notes and study tips—all things studying, which is my greatest passion (don’t laugh, I’m serious). Initially, I hoped that sharing my notes and tips can inspire and motivate fellow students, especially juniors who are taking major exams like the A-Levels.
I’ve gotten comments like “omg your notes are so pretty”, and I began reflecting on why I even bother to make my notes look nice and neat in the first place. I have come up with the following list of reasons:
- I am a perfectionist and I always try to make my notes as neat as possible. There is a sense of satisfaction in doing this.
- Having aesthetic-looking notes actually motivates me to study because these notes then become much more fun to create and pleasing to look at during revision.
- Neatness and highlighting with colours help me to remember and retain information better as I am a visual learner, which means that I memorise by the position and appearance of words and diagrams on a page.
- Writing out my own notes (as opposed to just reading the textbook / lecture book) helps me to consolidate, summarise and remember better, since the process of writing is slower and less passive than reading. Writing notes helps to reinforce my focus.
- I love studying (okay this was just a filler).
Having said that, I know not everyone has the same learning style. It is with deepest admiration that I regard my friends who can simply read the textbooks and score As. I can’t do that. So, at the end of the day, it is up to you to choose the right way to learn and retain information. Through a few rounds of experimentation, I’m sure you’ll find the best method that works for you, which may or may not be aesthetic notes.
But it you’re like me and want to make your notes look better and more memorable, here is my comprehensive guide (from personal experience)!
At risk of sounding materialistic, I’m going to say that stationery is an important part of the note-making process. Using an ugly notebook with low-quality paper that causes the ink to smudge and bleed will soon dampen your enthusiasm. On the contrary, writing on smooth, nice paper is an addictive feeling and also helps improve your handwriting.
In the early days, I loved Typo notebooks because of their artistic covers. They were also kind of trending at that time. Initially, I received them as birthday gifts (I would never have bought such expensive notebooks for myself) and decided that I would use them so they wouldn’t go to waste.
Over time, though, the trend seemed to shift towards MUJI and loose leaf paper, so I jumped on the bandwagon. I soon became a convert and abandoned my Typo notebooks. Loose leaf paper is so much versatile, since you can start on a new topic without finishing the previous one. You can also go back to rewrite notes for previous topics and rearrange them in binders.
Here is my final verdict for the best brands and supplies (but to be honest I haven’t tried many others). Disclaimer: The list below includes my personal preferences only!
Paper
I used to use MUJI grid paper, but somehow the ones that I bought later didn’t seem to be as good and the ink from my brush pens and some of my newer highlighters would bleed through the page.
I switched to using Kokuyo Campus loose leaf paper. Personally I prefer 6mm or 7mm ruled as my handwriting is quite small, but it comes in different sizes (A5, B5, A4) and designs (ruled, grid, blank), with different line thicknesses to choose from. The thickness of the lines will depend on the size of your handwriting. I used to like the look of grid paper because 1) they’re aesthetic, and 2) they’re helpful for drawing tables and diagrams. But the grid lines can be quite close together (usually 5mm), so it may not be suitable for people with larger handwriting (unless you leave lines in between).
The Campus paper is really high quality—it is super smooth and bleed-proof, which is why it has triumphed over MUJI loose leaf paper in my heart, despite being more expensive. The only tiny issue I have with it is that it is slightly more prone to smudging as the ink seems to stay on the surface for a while, so you just have to be a little more careful not to slide your hand across freshly written words.
Sometimes, when I get bored of loose leaf paper, I also use plain white A4 paper. The downside is that it’s harder to write in a straight line, so I’ll place another paper horizontally as a guide. The final effect can be quite elegant.
Pens
Pens can be of any brand, I feel, as long as it fits your writing style. I use a Pilot G2 0.38mm black pen, which has an extra fine tip that suits my tiny handwriting. Pilot G2 doesn’t seem to be a very popular choice nowadays, and some people find that it has too much resistance. For me, the resistance is a plus point because it gives me greater control, especially since I also draw diagrams with my pen. It also has the added bonus of a strong tip that (usually) doesn’t die when I drop it because I ALWAYS drop my pens, and I hate it when it happens just after I insert a new refill. Hence, using Pilot G2 pens saves me some cost of buying refills.
Binders
My personal advice is this: don’t buy expensive binders from MUJI or Popular! They are not worth the price, except maybe during the annual Popular BookFest. My best binders were bought online from Taobao at an affordable price (about 5 SGD for two binders, including 100 pages of B5 loose leaf paper). They are sturdy and thicker than those that I bought from Popular BookFest, with refillable straps, which I found suitable as the sheer volume of my notes meant that overflowing was very likely to happen with thinner binders. Getting one binder for each subject should be sufficient. (For me, that meant one each for Biology, Chemistry and China Studies, my most notes-intensive JC subjects. Maybe two for Biology, if you’re an avid notetaker like me.)
Highlighters
In the distant past, I used STABILO neon highlighters. Getting my first set of five Zebra Mildliners at the age of fourteen or fifteen, using my own savings from my weekly allowance, was a momentous shift. I entered a whole new world of pastel colours. It was love at first sight. (Please forgive this stationery geek.) I found the colours much more aesthetic and pleasing to the eye than the bright neon of conventional highlighters. Most people would agree with my ardent support for Mildliners, but at the end of the day, it’s your choice to find something that suits you.
If you can’t stand your own handwriting, chances are, you will lose the motivation to write notes quite quickly. Truthfully, not only does having nice handwriting help you create amazing notes for yourself, but it will also please your markers, especially for essay-intensive subjects. During the return of exam papers, our GP teachers had a habit of showing us pictures of scripts with atrocious handwriting, just to impress upon us the hours of torture they have to endure when marking our essays. If the teacher can’t decipher your handwriting, all that amazing content you wrote will go to waste. Therefore, practising your handwriting is killing two birds with one stone.
Some people will stare at this point with great incredulity. How can my handwriting be improved when it’s just like that all the time? All right, let me tell you something: my handwriting used to be ugly too, and as with all things, it only got better with PRACTICE.
The process works like this:
- Identify a handwriting style that you like. This can be your friend’s handwriting, or your teacher’s, or someone from Instagram or Tumblr. Find a style that suits you and your personality—something you want to emulate.
- Begin by noticing the particular characteristics of that style. For example, are the letters rounded or sharp? Are they narrow or wide? Are they slanted or upright? Are they exaggerated or consistent? How are particular letters written (e.g. do the ‘g’ and ‘y’ have a loop)? These questions may seem too obsessed with detail, but in the beginning stages of changing your handwriting, you have to make it very intentional.
- Practise writing in that style. Whenever you write, keep that style in mind and try to write in a way that corresponds to that style. At the start, this would likely mean a slower writing speed, so do it when you have more time, such as the holidays (definitely not right before exams). Personally, I don’t really see a need for “handwriting practice sheets” because they are a bit rigid, unless you really struggle with handwriting and are particularly fond of a style that has a practice sheet.
The key to success is to keep at it and be consistent. Even if your handwriting starts looking weird and even uglier than before, don’t give up. Keep trying until you find the balance and it comes naturally to you.
In my opinion, my handwriting is not of an ultra-neat and font-like quality. I don’t bother trying to make it “perfect” because I find that it takes way too much time and I write to slowly. Because I write so much (my notes are far more detailed than most people’s), I need to strike a balance between neatness and speed. Which means that I have to be strategic about how I write.
In the past, my letters used to be completely disconnected from one another, but as I progressed into JC, I realised that such a style was becoming impossible to maintain without spending way too much writing notes. So, I adopted an “in-between” handwriting, with slight connections between some of my letters, so that I could write more quickly. When doing worksheets, I am usually less concerned about the quality of my handwriting. In exams, my handwriting would be considered downright atrocious in comparison to my best handwriting, because I know that getting my answers onto the page in a legible manner is much more important than nice handwriting.
But since we’re talking about making aesthetic notes here, the emphasis on nice handwriting can be slightly stronger, since you’ll want to refer back to your notes on several occasions. Ultimately, I recommend aiming for effectiveness and efficiency, which entails finding a balance between productivity and visual appeal.
Handwriting is only one part of your style. The next step is to ask yourself how you want your notes to look in general. Do you prefer a minimalistic black-and-white style, or a colourful rainbow style? Having these answers in mind right from the outset will help you maintain consistency throughout your notes and avoid hating your notes later.
Titles and Headings
Titles and headings are the best components of handwritten notes that you can embellish and imbue with a distinctive sense of style. Here are some ideas:
A note about lettering
Honestly, brush lettering was never my thing. I used to make “functional” notes that required minimal effort. My headings were simply larger versions of my normal handwriting. However, I later became inspired by a friend who used brush pens to write her headings and I thought it was SO COOL. Thus began my love affair with lettering and brush pens. With an aching heart (because of the price), I bought myself a black Tombow dual tip brush pen.
My first attempts at lettering were absolutely disastrous. If I show you what my titles looked like back then, you would either laugh or gasp in horror.
Here they are:
Honestly, the first time you use a brush pen, you will probably hold it wrongly and apply equal pressure, like normal writing, which makes the effect all wrong (that was me at first). The thing about brush pens is that you have to tilt them at different angles and apply different amounts of pressure to achieve a desired effect. This takes A LOT of practice, like adopting a new style of handwriting. I did it for all my notes and birthday cards for more than a year before I could achieve a satisfactory and consistent style.
You will also realise that some letters are written differently, such as “r” and “z”, which will take some getting used to. I struggled most with “r”. Besides, I found the turning of my brush pen extremely challenging and the tip of my first one was quickly frayed from incorrect usage.
For those of you who find the soft tip of brush pens difficult to navigate, I have a few helpful suggestions:
- Use hard tip brush pens instead. Popular brands include the Pentel Fude Touch (which I use) and the Tombow Fudenosuke. Hard tip brush pens are much easier to control than soft tip ones and suitable for beginners. The only downside is that there is a limit to the size of your lettering, which will end up smaller than if you used a soft tip brush pen.
- Try doing faux calligraphy instead. That means using a normal pen to write out letters in cursive, and then thickening the downstrokes. They can be really aesthetic and fun to create.
Of course, such “fanciness” is optional. I’ve seen some styles that are really minimalistic but super neat and therapeutic to read. For me, lettering was more of a hobby, I didn’t do it just for the sake of sprucing up my notes. The good thing about learning it is that it has so many “applications”—you can use it for greeting cards, gifts, quotes, bullet journaling or even make your own script font! There’s so much potential for hand lettering to improve the aesthetics of almost any item or project.
Timely disclaimer: I am NOT an expert at hand lettering, I just stick to one style that works for me. There are tons of studygram accounts out there whose styles may appeal more to you, and ultimately, you should find your own unique style.
Point form is my favourite way to organise information because it’s neat and effective. Devise your own hierarchical system! My personal favourites are dot, dash and arrow. Copying out entire paragraphs can make your notes look unnecessarily convoluted and ineffective for revision, while bullet points give them a much cleaner look.
Don’t allow your notes to become a boring deluge of words. Break it up with diagrams! Obviously this is more applicable for science subjects, but I would say that a doodle or two won’t hurt as well if it gives you a visual cue to aid memory.
Tables are a great way to present summaries and comparisons.
Flowcharts are useful for processes, steps and relationships between different concepts.
Even graphs can aid your understanding.
Do I use mind maps? No. I know mind maps are a popular studying tool, but I personally evade it because I find it a bit too messy and not informative enough (too summarised). I prefer my notes to be in “chronological order”, presented in a clear and logical manner. Mind maps, I feel, may only be useful when you are revising and want to test yourself, or try to link different topics.
Which set of notes do you prefer?
My personal preference is the one on the left. It looks cleaner, clearer and less cluttered. Over time, I have endorsed the practice of using only one or two closely related colours for each topic. There are a few advantages of this approach:
- Using a single colour scheme improves coherence and readability. It is neater and less messy compared to a multi-coloured version.
- The look of it is more elegant.
- Using one colour for each topic actually helps me with memory and recall. As mentioned earlier, I am a visual learner. (Fun fact: I actually associate different objects, people and letters with a specific colour). In the exam, when I encounter a question, I can usually identify immediately which topic it is testing me on. Then, my brain starts to sieve through all the huge collection of information I have stuffed into it for the exam. It already associates this topic with a particular colour, so it can find it very quickly.
Admittedly, this method may not work for everyone. Still, aesthetic notes do require some colour coordination. More than a year ago, I bought a set of Zebra Mildliners with ten different colours. I then paired them up, so I got five colour schemes to work with. This was an expansion from my previous habit of three different colours, as the number of topics increased. In each colour pair, I usually use the bolder or more vivid colour for the most important points and terminology and the lighter one for other points.
For Biology, I colour-coded my notes by Core Ideas, using one colour for each of the four Core Ideas, and the last one for both Extension Topics. For Chemistry, I switched a colour for every topic in the order that we learned them. I even used brush pens with corresponding colours for the headings. If you’re a fan of colours like me, find a way that works for you!
I think some people don’t highlight their notes because they only include what is absolutely necessary and if they start highlighting, they will end up with a fully coloured page. Or maybe they prefer the “only highlight headings” aesthetic. For me, I don’t highlight when I write my notes for the first time. Instead, I highlight while re-reading and revising, so it serves the purpose of memory fortification.
- Step 1: Start with the right materials – the basics
- Step 2: Practise your handwriting
- Step 3: Establish your own style
- Step 4: Write in point form and draw diagrams
- Step 5: Highlight and colour code your notes
In reality, my notes are not as nice as what you see on my Instagram page (@zqstudies); the photos I post are all carefully chosen from the best pages of my notes and heavily edited and cleaned to make the paper and background look whiter than they actually are. Pragmatically speaking, there is no need to aim for perfection, especially on a tight study schedule with a hundred different topics to revise.
Besides, aesthetic notes are NOT the be-all and end-all of effective studying. In fact, they are only a bonus. Don’t be fooled into thinking that people who take aesthetics photos of their notes and post them online are perfect straight-As students. In fact, most geniuses probably don’t even need to write notes since everything is already in their brain. Such effort is more of a “feel-good” kind of thing to motivate yourself.
A final word of caution: I did not do well in my exams by depending solely on my notes. In fact, I did lots of practice papers and practice questions, which is honestly the most useful part of revision. Don’t feel compelled to make aesthetic notes if you think you’ll end up wasting too much time. Focus on the learning and the understanding—which is what matters in the end!
