✍️ Big Ideas. Illustrated Live.
Visual Notes
by
Virginia Montgomery
Big Bright Visuals is a boutique Graphic Facilitation company based in Austin and Houston, TX that provides live Visual Note-taking services to clients across North America. With over 15+ years of professional experience in Graphic Facilitation (also known as Visual Notes or Graphic Recording), artist Virginia Montgomery partners with diverse organizations from regional nonprofits to global Fortune 500 companies to create visuals that engage audiences and make ideas memorable.
Live Illustration for Meetings, Events & Conferences, both In-person & Online!
Online Events
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Visual Notes are drawn live and digitally on an iPad.
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Post-event, you can share your digital Visual Notes across social media or use the images in your next .PDF of event learnings.
The digital images are yours to keep, print, and display as custom art to remember your digital event.
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Email hello@bigbrightvisuals.com for rates or a free digital drawing demo.
In-Person Events
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Big Bright Visuals’ in-person Visual Notes create a dynamic live art experience with a big impact. This 100% analog process is rendered in front of a live audience.
In one day, Virginia can draw up to 5 Visual Notes boards representing 6 hours of unique meeting content.
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This classic ink-on-foam core process of Visual Storytelling is perfect for amplifying insights at conferences, trade shows, team retreats, strategic planning meetings, co-creation sessions, and brainstorming events. It provides a big pop of color and creativity to any meeting environment.
During your event, your Visual Notes boards can be displayed in your meeting room as re-cap tools. Or you can exhibit your finished boards in your convention center’s lobby to re-engage conference attendees with top insights again and again. At any conference, a Visual Notes “board tower” creates an excellent photo-op for attendees and brings a big “wow” factor to an event.
Post-event, all boards images are documented, digitalized, and delivered to you as a high-resolution digital images. You can share your digital Visual Notes across social media or use the images in your next internal .PDF to re-cap your event.
Both your digital images and your physical boards and yours to keep, share, and display as custom art to remember your event.
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For in-person events, we offer traditional analog “ink-on-board” Graphic Facilitation, where we draw with Neuland Markers upon big sheets of 40” x 60” foamcore board.
As another option, we can also draw digitally on an iPad if you prefer to go all-digital at your in-person event
“Virginia Montgomery's Graphic Facilitation was the highlight of our team offsite. She took the team's inputs and incorporated them masterfully so that we have a permanent artifact of everyone's great contributions. She was professional and adaptable as our program evolved throughout the day.
— Abraham Sorock, LeadersAtlas, 2025
What’s Graphic Facilitation?
(Also known as Visual Note-taking or Graphic Recording)
Live Visual Note-taking is a live illustration service for meetings, workshops, conferences, keynote presentations, and strategic planning sessions. As people speak, ideas are transformed into vibrant, hand-drawn visuals in real time—making complex conversations easier to understand, remember, and share. Whether you're hosting a leadership retreat, innovation workshop, conference, or community event, live visual note-taking helps your audience see the big picture.
How does it work?
Working live throughout your event, artist Virginia Montgomery listens deeply, identifies key themes, and synthesizes conversations into one cohesive visual story. Best of all? No notes are needed, because Virginia works on-the-fly to rapidly turn words into pictures. Because with over 15 years of professional experience in visual storytelling, design thinking, and graphic facilitation, Virginia creates large-scale illustrated murals that evolve alongside the discussion.
What’s the value?
When people can see ideas, they remember them.
Participants love watching the artwork grow throughout the day, often gathering around to ask questions, snap photos, and discover how their own ideas connect to the larger conversation.
After the event, you'll receive a high-resolution digital version of the finished artwork—a lasting resource that can be shared with attendees, included in reports, displayed in the workplace, or revisited long after the event has ended. Missed the meeting? Just look at the Visual Notes.
Clients who ❤ Visual Notes
Q&A
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What: Visual Notes are strategic hand-drawn illustrations designed to amplify insights from meetings, presentations, and workshops.
How: Visual Notes are created live and in-real-time by a trained Graphic Facilitator who uses design-thinking theory and visual storytelling methods to break-down complex themes into digestible key points.
Why: Visual Notes are memory retention tools that boost audience engagement and learning.
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As a professional Graphic Facilitator, I am trained to listen and translate all ideas. Think of me as your "visual language" translator. I translate key ideas from "verbal language” into a "visual language” of text, color, and imagery.
With 15+ years of experience working across North America, I’ve created Visual Notes for Fortune 500 companies spanning different industries such as healthcare, hospitality, technology, agriculture, politics, and consumer goods. My client list includes Ogilvy, Slack, IBM, The Community First Foundation, FLYN Consulting, Teen Vogue, Pepsi, and The United Nations among others.
Curious if I can draw subject matter from your unique sector? Let’s chat!
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Virginia Montgomery’s Visual Notes bring clarity to meetings and enhance memory retention. Visual Notes break-down themes from complex presentations into digestible graphics. Each single Visual Notes "board" can be quickly read for key insights. Can't remember yesterday's Zoom meeting? Or last year's keynote address? Check the Visual Notes!
Visual Notes also make a big impact. Want your ideas to stand out at your next event? Virginia Montgomery’s Visual Notes are big, bright and colorful. They are drawn large-scale and make content POP at events. Virginia’s notes attract and engage event attendees at public conferences, private co-creation sessions, interactive ad-boards, and virtual sessions.
Visual Notes expand your reach. Want to share your ideas with the world? Visual Notes are perfect for digital sharing to increase community participation.
And finally, Visual Notes make events memorable.
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Yes! The real skillset behind Visual Note-taking is deep listening. As an experienced Graphic Facilitator of 15+ years, I can simultaneously listen, think, and draw at the same time. My well-honed Graphic Facilitation skillset enables me to rapidly process, draw, and create dynamic Visual Notes “on-the-fly.” Think of me as a skilled improvisational Jazz musician, except I work “visually” with inkmarkers instead of musical instruments.
As a skilled scribe, I keep pace with multiple speakers presenting on a panel talk. I also keep pace with brainstorming sessions where colleagues share ideas in rapid-fire succession. I move fast! And, all ideas, regardless of subject matter or who says them, can be translated into dynamic Visual Notes.
In my many years of working in live creative meetings, I’ve learned that you never know when, where, or how someone will share a brilliant idea with the group. So, I’m always ready to draw “on-the-fly” to ensure every brilliant idea gets drawn out.
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As a young creative professional, I was trained in-house by a boutique New York City creative agency in the mid-2000’s. The decade (2008-2019) that I spent working inside Manhattan’s fast-paced advertising culture helped me become the pressure-tested scribe that I am today.
I have over 15+ years of experience working for clients spanning retail, energy, healthcare, technology, hospitality, and education. I have worked at events big and small; I’ve worked in front of audiences of thousands at public conferences like TED Talks and I have also worked inside intimate brainstorming sessions discussing sensitive subjects between healthcare professionals and patients. Collectively, my well-honed experiences as a live Visual Storyteller enable me to adapt and translate any conversation anywhere to dynamic Visual Notes.
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Visual Note-taking, also called Graphic Facilitation, is a specialized creative service that first started at a Silicon Valley consulting agency in the 1970’s. To learn more about the origins of Graphic Facilitation, check out Wikipedia here.
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Yes! I provide note-taking services virtually and in-person. For in-person meetings, I scribe with special non-toxic, ink-based markers on large-sized (ie. 40"x60") white foamcore boards. For virtual events, I scribe on an iPad using the software ProCreate.
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Yes! There is no AI involved in my visual note-taking process. All of my illustrations are original drawings that are created free-hand, from start to finish by me, Virginia Montgomery.
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Big Bright Visuals operates locally in Austin and Houston, TX. And, I also travel across the USA to provide live visual note-taking services onsite. I am happy to travel to your event wherever it is from California to Florida.
For over 15+ years, I’ve travelled across North America to scribe at public and private events in cities such as Miami, Atlanta, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Denver, San Francisco, and Seattle.
As long as your in-person event is accessible by train, plane, car, or boat, I can be there to draw for you!
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My project rates follow an adaptive model that takes into account event type, event location, and non-profit status. Email me at hello@bigbrightvisuals.com for a custom quote.
Virginia Montgomery, Artist hello@bigbrightvisuals.com
Big Bright Visuals is a visual note-taking company based in Austin and Houston, TX that provides services across the USA.
