The Center for Graphic Facilitation

Neuroscience Sheds New Light on Creativity

from Fast Company article by Gregory Berns:

The brain is fundamentally a lazy piece of meat. It doesn't want to waste energy. That's why there is a striking lack of imagination in most people's visualization of a beach sunset. It's an iconic image, so your brain simply takes the path of least resistance and reactivates neurons that have been optimized to process this sort of scene. If you imagine something that you have never actually seen, like a Pluto sunset, the possibilities for creative thinking become much greater because the brain can no longer rely on connections shaped by past experience." READ FULL ARTICLE >>

Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain

In working with many diverse groups of people, coming together to solve complex problems, I am absolutely flummoxed by this paradox: young minds struggle with complex, inter-related problems, while "more mature" minds struggle to learn new concepts.

Rather than throw both brains out with the bathwater (what a badly mixed metaphor!) how best do we design collaborative projects and discussions that accommodate all brains, whether wily, worldly or wise?

clipped from www.nytimes.com illustration by Yarek Waszul When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong. Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit. The studies are analyzed in a new edition of a neurology book, “Progress in Brain Research.” For example, in studies where subjects are asked to read passages that are interrupted with unexpected words or phrases, adults 60 and older work much more slowly than college students. Although the students plow through the texts at a consistent speed regardless of what the out-of-place words mean, older people slow down even more when the words are related to the topic at hand. That indicates that they are not just stumbling over the extra information, but  are taking it in and processing it.

Meeting on the Right Side of the Brain

We've been preaching it for years, but I guess it is now news:

Creative work environments improve creative thinking!

Congrats to Leslie Marquard and Catalyst Ranch on leading the piece. Thanks for bringing "right-brained thinking" to a "left-brained" world. (Actually, working in creative environments and using multiple learning modalities inspires whole-brain thinking.)

clipped from www.nytimes.com Steve Kagan for The New York Times By ELAINE GLUSAC | Published: April 30, 2008 WHEN Leslie Marquard, an executive coach, holds strategy sessions for consulting firms or university administrators, she ushers her buttoned-up clientele into rooms full of Pogo sticks, ethnic art, hammocks, vintage furniture and a pillow “harem.” “They are surprised and also endeared by it,” said Ms. Marquard, a co-founder of Marble Leadership Partners in Chicago. The “it” she referred to is Catalyst Ranch, an independent alternative meeting space in a former sausage factory near the Loop  in Chicago. “They’ll say, ‘That table looks just like one I grew up with.’ It subconsciously releases the mind.”

 

"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

Making Art Work

clipped from www.catalystranch.com

Article by ALLISON RIGGIO | Contributing Writer | Chicago Journal

It may be years since most white-collar businesspeople went to art class, but a new corporate training philosophy might change the way Chicago does business.

The West Loop’s Catalyst Ranch teamed up with the Art Institute to develop an arts-based corporate train­ing philosophy unlike any other.

Aptly named Art-Work, the program utiliz­es the museum’s artwork as a medium for teaching communication and other business-related skills.

Master Your Beliefs, Master Your Emotions

Ever wish that you could reverse the unrelenting hands of time and take back something you said that really hurt someone's feelings?

Perhaps you find yourself yearning to react a bit more professionally and less emotionally in tense situations at work?

Or you may simply want to strangle someone over a stray comment or sideways glance?

Well then, if you are searching to become master of your emotions, start with this insightful article from the Neuland monthly newsletter, written by Steve Davis, master facilitator (and Chuck Norris look-alike!).

What are emotions and what is emotional mastery?
Emotions are often described as energy in motion. They become problems only when we judge them as wrong, bad, or inappropriate. When we let our emotions run us, we miss the message that they carry. When we repress them for fear of what they might cause us to do, they simply lie in wait to emerge with a vengeance later on. Emotional mastery is the ability to process our emotions so that we receive their message and use their energy for appropriate action. Read Full article>>

You can subscribe to Steve Davis' free weekly ezine for group leaders at www.MasterFacilitatorJournal.com and check out his virtual university, packed with information for group leaders and participants at www.FacilitatorU.com.

Folk Art Letter Forms

As graphic facilitators and illustrators, the history of lettering is a vast museum there for us to pillage. The front door is unlocked and the rewards are infinite!

Here are a couple of examples of letter-looters and the whimsical results of their creative process:

Ray Fenwick is an illustrator, artist, letterer and letterpress printer living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His full-time day job is as manager for a soon-to-be-open letterpress printshop, so he wakes up early to work on Hall of Best Knowledge, an award-winning typographic comic. He makes all kinds of things, but to be honest, most of them include lettering in some way. His work has appeared in numerous exhibitions, and will soon be seen in Steven Heller's Old Type/new Type.

Yee-Haw Industries has been covering America with unique, art-like products since 1996. Partners Kevin Bradley & Julie Belcher opened up shop from a back-40 barn in Corbin, Kentucky, with salvaged, antique equipment previously put to rust. Their vibrant, folk art, wood cut prints of country music's classic stars, such as Hank Williams, Sr. and Loretta Lynn, caught eyes and told stories. Handmade posters featured stranger-than-fiction characters, like ass-whooping grocer Cas Walker and daredevil icon Evel Kenevil. Soon, modern music acts, including Steve Earle, Buddy Guy, Trey Anastasio, Lucinda Williams and Southern Culture on the Skids began commissioning promotional posters and album art.

In the early 1990s, renowned graphic designer Paula Scher began painting small, opinionated maps—colorful depictions of continents and regions, covered from top to bottom by a scrawl of words. Within a few years, the maps grew larger and more elaborate. “I began painting these things sort of in a silly way,” Scher, a partner at the Pentagram design firm, said in a recent conversation. “And I think at one point I realized they would be amazing big. And I wondered if I could even do it. If I could actually paint these things on such a grand scale, what would happen?”

See a beautiful video by Flash innovator, Hillman Curtis, of Scher describing her creative process and love of letter forms.

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).

Biology of Creativity

From Studio 360, broadcast Friday, June 30, 2006

Kurt Andersen looks deep in the brain to find the human impulse to be creative: madness, mirror neurons, creative genius and animal artists.

A must listen for those of us struggling to understand what happens when the brain lights up with the creative process and tips over into mad genius.

This podcast explores Eduard Munch, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, The Creating Brain, the biological roots of empathy, animal artists and what deep in our brains when we look at art.

> Show outline and links
> Listen to the show

The Hidden Secrets of the Creative Mind

This issue of Time offers great research and reference to send to colleagues and clients on the need to incorporate creativity into their work environment and working styles. Great pieces on the dangers of multi-tasking, preventing Alzheimer's, the use of Ritalin for treating ADHA, and more on the secrets of the creative mind.

The Hidden Secrets of the Creative Mind
Innovation requires no special thought processes, says an expert. Creative people just work harder at it.

What is creativity? Where does it come from?

The workings of the creative mind have been subjected to intense scrutiny over the past 25 years by an army of researchers in psychology, sociology, anthropology and neuroscience.

But no one has a better overview of this mysterious mental process than Washington University psychologist R. Keith Sawyer, author of the new book Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation (Oxford; 336 pages). He's working on a version for the lay reader, due out in 2007 from Basic Books. In an interview with Francine Russo, Sawyer shares some of his findings and suggests ways in which we can enhance our creativity not just in art, science or business but in everyday life.

Posted on Time.com | Sunday, Jan. 08, 2006