The Center for Graphic Facilitation

How Adobe uses Adobe: Developing new ways to collaborate

The secret to being a successful Chief Information Officer is simple: 

1. Always know what your people are working on, and...
2. Eat your own dogfood.

As a management and development team, Adobe is creating new ways to collaborate, both in terms of internal projects and in the products they are offering the world.  

In this video interview, Gerri Martin-Flickinger, CIO of Adobe, speaks to ZDNet Editor in Chief, Larry Dignan about her top priorities at the graphics software maker. 

She describes an emerging world of collaboration that graphic recorders and facilitators need to understand and adapt their services to...quickly!

VizThink Podcast: Learning is Not Enough

Listen to podcast

This is a very sane and clear description of the mindset and language that a visual practitioner needs in order to address the needs of their clients--specifically, solving their problems.

From VizThink :

Often, learning is not enough. It’s not enough to watch a great podcast or go to a great conference and learn new things, try new techniques, or even meet interesting people. The natural high that comes from learning and attending an event can fade quickly, that is, if you don’t do something about it. Have you ever got back from a class, webinar, or conference filled with ideas, yet your colleagues don’t get it? They look at you funny and then keep going about their work. Then the daily demands and pressures of work click in and quickly the natural high has dissipated and the learning has been forgotten.

Well it doesn’t have to be that way! In this 17 minute, 54 second, we talk with Lance Dublin, change management and implementation guru, about how to take those ideas and put them to work (even with people who weren’t there) when you get back home or to the office.

VizThink '08

David Gray, founder of Xplane, demonstrates in this simple slide show why any business-oriented visual-thinking person would want to go to this annual conference created, er... for them! 

| View | Upload your own

SEE: Communication Nation: Why go to VizThink?

ALSO: Check out David's Infography Manifesto.

Moo? Moo, Who?!

Moo is a Web 2.0 service takes content from other web and print apps (iLife, Flickr, Bebo) and mashed the content together with on-demand printing. Both the site and the products are very savvy and design oriented. Great for creating rich, artistic, post-event deliverables for participants.

from Liquid Treat...

Survey for GFs: What's Your Role?

This month, we are continuing the conversation that was inspired by our January survey question as to how easy or difficult it is to describe graphic facilitation.

This month, we want to know what role you play with your client.

1. Are you working with executives as a strategist?
2. Are you a consultant on a particular subject or industry who uses graphic facilitation as a tool?
3. Are you looked to as a facilitator who guides a group through a process?
4. Do you serve as a visual communicator turning ideas into images?
5. Are you primarily an illustrator creating images that tell a story?
6. Or a you an artist, bringing your personal vision to life through any means necessary?

We realize that the answer may be "all of the above"! Please feel free to comment and leave as rich a response as you wish.

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.

IFVP 2006: Jan Adkins, Illustrator

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Jan Adkins is an illustrator, museum designer, educator and expert in the profession as an artist.

For nine years he was the associate art director at National Geographic Magazine, explaining the space shuttle, lasers, submarines, Soviet rockets, satellites, nuclear physics, marine archaeology, forest fires, volcanoes and the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Directing a team of researchers and doing original field research himself, he unraveled some of the most interesting topics ever addressed by Geographic during its golden age. Jan's job, according to his editor-in-chief Bill Garrett, "was like getting a doctorate every third month."

He has written scripts and treatments for the Discovery Channel, NOVA, and the BBC, and narrative voiceover for interactive corporate training programs. He taught editorial illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design for several years, and taught illustration and graphic design at Maryland Institute, College of Art, in Baltimore. He’s associated with several exhibit design firms and frequently consults on exhibits for zoos, art museums, science and natural history museums. 

Pain, Rejection and the Agony of Drew

Rejection hurts. But in the art "bidnes" it is a way of life.

Don't believe me? Ask Drew Dernavich.

His woodblock print-style cartoons appear regularly in the Boston Globe and The New Yorker. It's an artists dream!

Or is it?

Drew estimates that only one out of 20 of his cartoons make it to print... and astoundly good batting average, by the way.

He describes the experience for an article in the Boston Globe celebrating the forth coming book of rejected cartoons, titled "The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker" (Simon Spotlight Entertainment).

Where to Go on Your Summer Vacation--Conferences!

A short list of upcoming design conferences from the American Institute of Graphic Art (AIGA):

     

Aspen Design Summit 2006 June 20–23, 2006 Aspen, Colorado The Aspen Design Summit is a forum of design-minded people from around the world making positive, measurable impacts on social and cultural concerns.   More...

 

 

       

Icograda Design Week in Seattle July 9–15, 2006 Seattle, Washington Icograda Design Week in Seattle is an international forum for discussion about the role of design in the face of incredible change in the world. It will address how designers can contribute to a healthy world economy while being mindful of the cultural, environmental and political impact of design.   More...

 

 

       

Image, Space, Object 3: Above Brand August 10–13, 2006 Denver, Colorado At Image, Space, Object 3 (ISO3), small teams of participants and studio mentors work together to create multi-dimensional environments, human interactions and brand strategies.   More...

 

 

       

Gain Business and Design Conference 2006 October 26–28, 2006 New York, New York The Gain Conference will demonstrate the value of designing as a strategic process that adds substantial value to business and organizations.   More...

 

   

   

AIGA Design Conference 2007 Fall 2007 With a backdrop of western sunsets and breathtaking views, the 2007 AIGA Design Conference will offer an exciting program, featuring engaging design and thought leaders.   More...

Doodling My Life Away - Pen, Paper and Plentitude

The principal of my High School was a large, serious man named Mr. Snodgrass.

And, no, I am not making that up. As I was nearing graduation, Mr. Snodgrass tried to give me some helpful advice. "Perhaps," he said with gravitas, "you should go into Accounting. You know, to have something to fall back on if this whole art thing doesn't work out."

I think about this suggestion at odd times--once while scribing at the Pentagon in a vault/room five stories below ground; once while a CEO of a Fortune 50 company asks what business school I graduated from; and, once this week, while presenting to a graduate level class at the Carnegie Mellon Heinz School of Business.

The irony is that, professionally speaking, I am still doing what I did at age seventeen. Back in the Reagan 1980s, I was scribbling quotes from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life in the end pages of my English Lit book. These days, I'm doodling while people struggle with complex issues facing their organizations and the world at large.

During the lecture to the CMU students (using my trusty Neuland walls, of course!), I asked the group how they felt the school should teach Entrepreneurship, especially in the growing field of "social enterprise".