The Center for Graphic Facilitation

Drawing Idioms

One of the most potent tools in the graphic facilitator's toolkit is that visual turn of language that packs serious cultural meaning in a surreal phrase: The Idiom. 

In its loosest sense, the word idiom¹ is often used as a synonym for dialect or idiolect--that unique combination of words, phrases and inflections used by a specific induvidual.² 

In its more scholarly and narrow sense, an idiom or idiomatic expression refers to a construction or expression in one language that cannot be matched or directly translated word-for-word in another language.³

This NPR Morning Edition piece, An Enchanting Tour Through a World of Idioms, features an interview with author Jag Bhalla on his new book I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears, a compendium of worldwide idioms. 

There is a great slideshow of idiomatic illustrations by New Yorker contributor Julia Suits that illustrates idioms that, perhaps to English-speakers, may seem to be bizarre idiomatic phrases. 

Problem Solving 101: A Simple Book for Smart People.

When I was a bachelor living in Chicago, my mom called one evening: "Your brother has a question for you."

She put 8-year-old Josh on the phone, who was curious if I still owned that 200-foot climbing rope. "Why? What's your plan?"

He was trying to solve a unique problem: How to connect a long rope from the 75-ft pine tree in our yard to the roof of the house in order to slide down it as a zip line.

(NOTE: Josh has been to the emergency room more than anyone else in our sprawling, adventurous family!)

Point being:

1. "Problem-solving kids" are great,
2. They need some skills and models to help'em, 
3. And society needs lots more of them!

Book: All You Need is a Good Idea

Jay Heyman is an idea guy. His book on the topic, All You Need is a Good Idea!: How to Create Marketing Messages that Actually Get Results, pulls back the curtain on the idea creation process to reveal why a "good" idea is so much more valuable than a "great" idea. (Hint: Perfection kills!)

As part of Paul Williams' Idea Sandbox virtual book tour, I had the opportunity to read about Jay Heyman's experiences and playful opinions on the world of ideas.

That experience comes in the form of the New York advertising and marketing world. As principal of a creative marketing firm, Heyman's daily work involves the very raw, emotional, and oft times maddening process of developing ideas. He describes what life is like working through those chaotic, collaborative relationships that underpin the ideation process itself.

Client case studies are pulled from his direct experience with people who struggled to distill the essence of what they offer to the world (what Jay codenames your "Phufkel") and the resulting creative journey for which Jay and his team served as happy guides. He also bravely shares those instances in which the idea went down in flames!

Jay's writing is extremely engaging and personable, capturing the voice of a warm, avuncular personality with real world experience. (This ain't HBO's Mad Men series!)

For any business or practitioner, Jay has solid, understandable advice with scores of simple questions to ask yourself or your clients. He shows us how to cut through the clutter of the strategic planning and branding process to form lasting relationships with customers.

Like many of you, I am usually reading anywhere from two to 10 books simultaneously. 

Consequently, many of my questions for Jay were inspired by other authors writing in this field of idea generation and marketing, especially those writers exploring the disruptive innovations of social networking and fragmentation of media markets: Clay Shirky, Chip and Dan Heath, Valdis Krebs, Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin. 

Read on for Jay's insightful responses.

"Back of the Napkin" Gets Inside Your Brain

Alright. Enough already. Of all the people I have been jealous of, Dan Roam is gunning for the top of the list:

1. Dan wrote the book I always wanted to dang it!
2. Dan has got endorsements from Business 2.0 gurus also named Dan--Pink & Heath!
3. Dan has a swank Flash-animated website and way-clever blog!
4. Dan lives in San Francisco!

Mostly, I resent the fact that Dan has been able to do the impossible:

Dan describes why visual learning is the best way to work with others to make stuff happen in a way that we can actually understand!

Keep reading for a brief book review and fun interview with the author who talks about the influence of Einstein, his fighter pilot dad, Optimizers vs. Disruptors, and the heroes of the Russian space program.

I was invited to participate in this Virtual Book Tour by Paul Williams, the wild child behind Idea Sandbox. Here are the other bloggers who interviewed and reviewed Napkin:

Principled Innovation Blog
Jeff De Cagna

Design Crush
Kelly Beall

The Paddlewheel
Chris McCrory

Pureplay
Keith Bohanna

Blurb: As reviewed by Kevin Kelly

Kevin is a film buff, Senior Maverick for WIRED, photographer and self-proclaimed Geek Dad. With and without kids, he has traveled the globe (Afghanistan, Vietnam, China, Europe); he has launched publications (The Whole Earth Catalog, Wired); and, he continues to redefine how we think about technology and biology (Out of Control,  Encyclopedia of Life, The Long Now Foundation ). And, in case you haven't guessed, he's one of my heroes. He is also an avid self-publisher of personal projects. Check out his reviews of the various on-line in the blooming print-on-demand market.

clipped from www.kk.org My recommendation for the best personal color book printer is Blurb. Blurb produces color books very similar to the iPhoto books you can order from Apple. Using iPhoto Books is slightly easier than using Blurb's software, particularly if all your photos happen to already be in iPhoto, but it works well enough. The idea is that you can drag images (photos or illustrations) into template book pages, add text or captions where you want to, then hit a button and have the finished book mailed to you. (all these systems work with PCs and Macs) The results from both Apple and Blurb are marvelous. In fact, these books are astounding. That's because they both use the same back-room engine, the HP Indigo 5000 (as do the other color book makers like Snapfish and MyPublisher). The Indigio is essentially a high-speed, high-quality liquid-toner printer that will print your photo book several pages across. Blurb Photobook $19 base price Available from Blurb Blurb's How to Make a Book

 

Rapid Viz: A New Method for the Rapid Visualization of Ideas

Rapid Viz: A New Method for the Rapid Visualization of Ideas
This is a wonderful resource for learning the basics of quickly representing ideas, products, people, trees, buildings, cars, spaces, places,... you name it!

Amazon review: "Like his other books, this book is very well illustrated, conceptually & graphically. It's primary focus is introduction of a Rapid Visualisation Process, which one can learn easily & then use readily to capture thoughts in visual forms on paper. It is packed with ideas, games, puzzles & exercises to guide the reader. It is written for the novice in mind. It provides a step by step approach to the practical strategies of seeing, thinking, & drawing.  I must say: It is really great stuff to get you moving with visual thinking!" --Lee Say Keng

The Business Side of Creativity

For excellent advice on the business of the business of creativity, there is no better place to turn than... CreativeBusiness.com!

Cameron Foote is founder and editor and has forty years of industry experience including stints at small and large agencies, as creative director for a Fortune 500 firm, and running his own business.

His books,The Business Side of Creativity and The Creative Business Guide to Running a Graphic Design Business, are the industry's most authoritative, and best-selling business bibles. Nearly 40,000 copies have been sold.

On the site, there are literally hundreds of articles for sale that cover every aspect of being a creative professional, from accounting to  marketing to hiring/firing staff.

Handwritten Inspiration

At this week's IFVP Conference, there was quite a bit of exploration of handwriting and manual typography.

There was a bit of a divide between those who (rightfully) reverently adhere to the time-honored discipline of typography, and those of us who's ideals of lettering came from R. Crumb, Bugs Bunny, Schoolhouse Rock, Calvin and Hobbes, and The Electric Company.

This book does a great job bridging the gap.

[As reviewed on Amazon]

Heller and Ilic's book, Handwritten: Expressive Lettering in the Digital Age, is a collection of exemplary work in the world of graphic design in which the "handwritten" has been implemented in the artists' works.

Examples range from magazine covers, traditional advertisements, film festival posters, album covers, book covers and other media/art. There is a wide range of styles covered, and though there is not a lot of text that accompanies each featured piece, the descriptions of the work are insightful to how (in the opinion of the authors) the text/design work, and in what ways. For instance, the authors comment on one poster which used a childish scrawl saying, "Scrawl is most effective when located with a generous helping of negative space, as is portrayed elegantly in this poster etc.etc."
Though you might not agree with their observations, you will most definitely get something valuable out of your disagreement, wether it is a better sense of your own visions and style/likes/dislikes.

All in all, this book is worth the money.  It is bound to inspired you to break out a pencil and your sketchbook again. 

Presidential Doodles

From Yahoo News:

Presidential Doodles, just released by Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, collects the random sketches and drawings of Hoover and most of his fellow commanders in chief, from Hoover's elaborate shapes and swirls to the isolated squiggles of Abraham Lincoln. The book expands upon an issue of Cabinet Magazine, a quarterly of "Arts & Culture" that featured the jottings of eight presidents.

"Just as our dreams and little Freudian slips can mean something about us, doodles can be indicative of the person and issues and things that he is dealing with," says Cabinet editor-in-chief Sina Najafi.

Personalities emerge at a glance: John Adams' hard, straight lines and precise geometrical patterns; Theodore Roosevelt's rugged sketch of two dogs staring across a campfire; Dwight Eisenhower's plain, practical illustrations; Ronald Reagan's childlike portraits, including of himself in a cowboy hat.

President Kennedy, known for separating his life into compartments, would enclose words and numbers inside circles and boxes. Events long after his death give one doodle an unintended chill: A small circle with the numbers "9-11" contained within. Just to the lower left on the page, the word "conspiracy" is underlined.

[thanks to Leah Silverman]

Permanent Innovation by Langdon Morris

New book from Langdon Morris of InnovationLabs LLC.

Innovation is the process of creating new ideas and turning them into new business value.   

Permanent Innovation is the process of doing it continuously, by developing an organizational culture that embraces innovation as a core value, practices innovation as a core methodology, and produces innovation as a consistent output.

The notion of permanent innovation may at first be startling, in that the concept of permanence implies stability and the absence of change, while the concept of innovation implies constancy of change and novelty.

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