Indicating A Document Has Been Drawn On

Question

Imagine layed out in front of you is a large board with little white pieces of paper representing the cover pages of system files on them. You are shown a title, and a modification date. How might one indicate that said file contains not only text, but drawings. Specifically, annotations and highlighted sections?

In my current implementation, I show the same white page, but with it's upper right corner colored yellow, which I'm starting to feel doesn't accurately represent that the document contains annotations.

My initial thought would be to put a bookmark image in place of the yellow corner, but I felt that would be overly-confusing and the wrong symbol for a document containing annotations.

Answer 1

How about using something as simple as this to denote an annotation

Answer 2

How about using a paper clip representing an attachment? Maybe there could be other attachments as well in the document such as an excel table or a video and not only a drawing?

Answer 3

1. If the resolution allows it, you could add a sticky note to the document as a small icon. This way the user can understand that there's some kind of note for the document. (If the user touches/clicks document you could enlarge it to show more information about it e.g. that there are annotations.)

2. Rather than "only" coloring, you could just fold the corner to indicate some sort of change to the document.

Which ever resolution you choose, you should think about who uses your application. It's a difference, if they use it occasionally or daily. For occasional users it's more important that the icons or metaphors are self-evident and easy to understand in contrast to "power users" who use this application daily.