The Center for Graphic Facilitation

Book Review: ‘Generative Scribing” by Kelvy Bird

Generative Scribing by Kelvy Bird is truly beautiful and essential reading for anyone who works with other humans to visualize complex systems and generate useful dialog and insight.

I have known Kelvy since I started scribbling on whitewalls over 20 years ago. She has been an inspiration to many of us with her kind, thoughtful, self-deprecating, and soulful personality. 

Unlike the typical how-to doodle book, drawing manual or resource guide, Generative Scribing is written more in the spirit of the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh.

...or the German Bauhaus color theorist Joseph Albers.

...or perhaps, written by fellow Massachusetts Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. (spoiler alert: there is a beautiful scene involving Walden Pond during the 2017 solar eclipse.)

Kelvy succinctly lays out the brief history of scribing, which she has made publicly available online, and makes a generous nod to other friends and practitioners in the field.

Anyway, if you are in the world of group facilitation and visualizing ideas, get Kelvy's book for your bookshelf, backpack, or bedside.

(This is not a paid promotion, BTW. I am simply proud, honored and amazed by Kelvy's work.)

Kelvy and members of this international tribe—including Alfredo Carlo of Italy, Aaron Williamson of Toronto, Jayce Lee of Taiwan, Sophia Lang of California—are collaborating to teach generative scribing workshops.

They just delivered one in Portland, Oregan and had some majorly experienced scribes onsite interested in broadening their practice. Check out some photos on Sophia Lang's Instagram.

Congrats, Kelvy. (And thank you!)

– Peter Durand

Draw Your Big Idea: The Ultimate Creativity Tool for Turning Thoughts Into Action and Dreams Into Reality

It's Finally Here!

After more than a year of hard work and many drawings, drafts, and edits, ImageThink is excited to say that Draw Your Big Idea has made its way to the bookshelf!  

Drawing from years of experience as visual problem solvers for Fortune 50 companies, Draw Your Big Idea is packed with drawing exercises that will help entrepreneurs crystallize their visions, create actionable plans, and bring ideas out of the clouds and into reality.     

#DrawYourBigIdea 

Order a Copy Here 

Sunni Brown - Unlocking the power to think differently

 

Sunni Brown
Chief Infodoodler™
Sunni Brown, Ink

The Doodle Revolution is a prequel to Gamestorming  and also a global movement unto itself. It’s an entertaining and informative romp through applied visual language for non-artists, but it also aims to radically overturn our social (mis)perceptions about doodling. To doodle is not to waste time or to be distracted. Instead, doodling is a powerful technique people use around the world to help themselves THINK.

 

Discovery Doodles: How You Can Draw from Infancy to Industry

Discovery Doodles: How You Can Draw from Infancy to Industry

Book Launch & Signing
Thursday, October 17th 6:00pm - 8:30pm
At Catalyst Ranch in Chicago

Author, teacher and graphic facilitator Diane Durand, will guide us through doodling using principles from her new book.

Discovery Doodles: Sketchbook Basics (Volume 1)

The program will feature four art stations:

• Tools: Hands-on experience with different drawing materials
• Technology: Demonstrations on how to use whiteboards, flipcharts, iPads and Wacom tablets
• Tablets Training: Mini Drawing Lesson for Business & Education
• Transformation: Brainstorming session on how to use Doodles in everyday experiences.

Stay for a book signing after the program!

For More info: http://blog.catalystranch.com/chicago-happenings/#discoverydoodles

June Training with Dan Roam in London & Berlin

LONDON: June 13th at Novotel Paddington

BERLIN: June 18th at Hotel Concorde Berlin

Click here for more details.

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Gavin Blake's live scribe of "What's Mine Is Yours: Collaborative Consumption"

Gavin Blake recently collaborated with Rachel Botsman, author of What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption .

She read the book aloud and Gavin Graphic Recorded. It was truly an epic in terms of graphic recording. They read and drew for 14 or so hours over 2 days. The coloured Graphic Recording will soon be available on Gavin's site: www.feverpicture.com.au

Music by Michael Chin of Tokyo Love-in http://tokyolovein.tumblr.com/

Dan Roam: 1st Public "Back of the Napkin" Conference

Join Dan for his first public visual thinking conference. This is the complete two-day version of visual training that Dan has delivered at Microsoft,eBay, Boeing, Gap, Kraft, the US Navy, and theUnited States Senate.

$1,095. Register Here.
https://www.regonline.com/thebackofthenapkin_march2010
Kabuki Hotel, San Francisco

Attendees receive:

• Two full days of hands-on visual problem solving
• The Back of the Napkin Expanded Edition
• Unfolding the Napkin Workbook
• Personal whiteboard and drawing tools

For full details, visit The Back of the Napkin.com.
Dan's two new books available Dec. 30!


The Back of the Napkin Expanded Edition

• Larger format.
• Color.
• New & updated material.

Unfolding the Napkin: The Hands-On Method for Solving Complex Problems with Simple Pictures

• Completely new "how-to" visual method guide.
• Dozens of self-guided visual exercises.
• Introduces the 4 unwritten rules of visual thinking.

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.