The Center for Graphic Facilitation

T. Boone Pickens Scribes Future of US Energy

Click here or image to launch the video.

T. Boone Pickens uses live drawing of the facts and concepts behind potential future energy plans for the US is worth watching in its entirety. I have a hard time coming up with a better example of how to create a series of simple pictures to explain a complex concept.

~ From the blog of Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures:

TED2008 The BigViz Animation

Watch a three-minute movie of the TED2008 BIGVIZ sketches, created by Autodesk animator and compositor Keith Chamberlain, with music scored by TEDster Michael Montes.

The images created by Kevin Richards and David Sibbet during the TED2008 are set to music and animated using gorgeous complexity modeling. The hundreds of individual sketches are transformed into rivers of data, DNA strands, and galaxies of ideas.

Watch a behind-the-scenes view with Sibbet that illuminates the integration of hand-rendered art, Wacom tablets, and the multi-touch wall. Unbelievable, really.

You can download the TED2008-BigViz Book and see more here.

The Cartoon Lounge

Graphic facilitator and intermittent cartoonist for The New Yorker Magazine, Drew Dernavich, announces the launch of The Cartoon Lounge, a blog--or "blorg" according to contributor Zach Kanin--for non-New Yorker content.

clipped from www.newyorker.com Let’s make this clear. This is not The New Yorker magazine. To get a cartoon published in the magazine, we must submit dozens of original ideas every week. The cartoon editor rejects the overwhelming majority of them, and the ones that survive must still make it past the editor and the publisher, and are subject to further fact checking, copy editing, and layout considerations. Getting something uploaded on this blog will be different. For instance, one of us will be eating lunch on top of our computer keyboard, and we’ll set down that half-eaten chicken quesadilla a little too hard, and—BAM!—instant blog post. It will work something like that. And not just weekly, but daily. So, it’s the same cartoonists, but a different process.

Fast Draw: Gus the Gas

From Deidre Crowley:

While watching the "Sunday Morning" news program this morning, I was shocked to see Mitch Butler and Josh Landis, the "Fast Draw". At interest to me: that these techniques are being used to support the evening news. Here is just one link and you can find many others through Googling Fast Draw, Josh Landis and Mitch Butler.

clipped from www.cbsnews.com 'Gus The Gas' Posted by Josh Landis and Mitch Butler | 1 As the price of crude oil keeps jumping, so has the amount of finger-pointing at factors in the seemingly relentless rise. What's behind it? Have the law of supply and demand and other usual economic forces given way to speculators bidding up the price for personal gain?

Mark Pinto's Sketchy Mind

Cleveland-based graphic facilitator Mark Pinto has launched a blog packed with images and thoughts on the profession of idea image-making: SketchyBiz.

Pinto posts on humility, e-marketing, sustainability and biomimicry.

On the Road with Tony Blair

Graphic facilitator Sita Magnuson has been traveling the world, scribing as she goes.

She has scribed for groups in New Dehli, Bangkok. She has scribed for leaders such as Harmid Karzai in Kabul, and most recently, Tony Blair at the Economic World Forum collaborative workspace in Egypt--which made Time Magazine on-line!

Visit Sita's blog for more travel adventures.

clipped from www.time.com Illustrated Man During a seminar that Blair gave at the World Economic Forum in Sharm El Sheihk, his words (and those of other speakers at the event) were rendered on a white board as he spoke. The comment "You are crazy to try" was made to the former Prime Minister in regard to his effort to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

Australia 2020

Graphic facilitator Gavin Blake writes us of his exciting collaboration with other facilitators and scribes at a national summit in Australia's capital, Canberra.

The objective was for the 1000 participants to generate big ideas over a range of 10 topics including Governance, Productivity and Creativity in Australia. All of the ideas will make up our vision for Australia in 2020.

It was a blast meeting music god Peter Garrett, now Minister for the Arts (not sure if you guys know the band Midnight Oil, but I’m a huuuge fan) and Australia’s 100 foremost creative minds.

Yes, there were a few celebrities there (Hugh Jackman below) but, there was some serious intent and genuinely insightful ideas thrown around the room.

I’m very chuffed this video with our drawing of the journey of the day made it into the news. Stoked. Here are some more photos of us having a ball.

New Bigger Picture Newsletter

From graphic facilitator Ole Qvist-Sørensen of Bigger Picture in Denmark:

This is Bigger Picture’s first newsletter. I am really proud and hope you will find the content relevant and inspiring. You have not signed up for this “newsletter”, but because we are all in the same network and share interest I think it will be of interest. Please – if you have ideas, questions, feedback, comments and ideas, please send them. We plan to send out newsletters 3-4 times a year.

"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

Time Lapse Mural Creation High Speed Art

Watch graphic facilitator Steph Crowley create a 35-foot mural over 5 days in high speed--inspirational music included!