The Center for Graphic Facilitation

ChangeViz Comic 01

(via Xplane)

Geek Interpreter Guy comes to the rescue and saves Mr. Projecto's change initiative from the brink of disaster. This comic introduces ChangeViz, a group facilitation approach that uses Visual Thinking and Gamestorming processes to support Change Management.

IDEO's Deep Dive Diagramed

See time-lapse of Keith Bendis creating this diagram of IDEO's famed Deep Dive Process described in this classic 1999 NBC Nightline video:

RSA Animate: Steven Pinker on Language as a Window into Human Nature

Why are bribes, requests, seductions, innuendos, and threats so often veiled?

Especially when, presumably, both parties know what they mean? (ex. "Would you like to come upstairs and see my etchings?"

Author and psychology professor Steven Pinker explores our use of "veiled language" through famous scenes in pop culture, including Fargo, When Harry Met Sally, and The Sopranos.

In this next installment of the insanely popular RSA Animate series, Cognitive Media continues to surprise, delight, and illuminate.

Our cultural use of linguistic conundrums are explained by combining master draughtsman skills, witty visual themes, and brilliant site gags inspired by the likes of Mad Magazine, James Thurber, and R. Crumb.

Remember, when the muscley, gangster-looking guy is not giving a compliment when he says: "Nice store you got here... it'd be a shame if something bad happened to it!" 

More at: http://www.youtube.com/user/theRSAorg

Posted via email from The Center for Graphic Facilitation

Labor Day Inspiration: Free and Cool (vol. 4)

(via doodlersanonymous.com)

It's free. It's cool. It's 36 pages of Magic.

And as always, the latest issue of the Free and Cool zine is exclusively available right here for download.

This issue features a whole slew of artists you'll want to meet: Aphte, Conor Keller, Anton Weflö, Maxime Francout, Rmk, Fafé, Fanny Claude, Florentin Bodet, Club Muscles, Corey Thompson, Anke Weckmann, Mathieu Lambert, Rand Renfrow, Aurélie Grand, Tristan Pernet, Jesse Robinson Williams, Connor Annal, Yohan Sacré, Bosque Studio, Antoine Orand.

Download your free copy, and then join them on Facebook.

Why Scribing Works: Tom Wujec on 3 ways the brain creates meaning

This is probably the most concise, well illustrated explanation of what happens in the brain will we watch graphic facilitation in action!

From TED 2009: Information designer Tom Wujec talks through three areas of the brain that help us understand words, images, feelings, connections. In this short talk from TEDU, he asks: How can we best engage our brains to help us better understand big ideas?

‘I Love Charts’ from Sid the Science Kid

It's good to see PBS is teaching strong values to grow up with with Sid the Science Kid and this lovely chart song (below). A chart is a handy dandy scientific tool...it gives you information that you can see with your eyes...a chart that you visualize...you get the picture... so do I... Best kid song ever.

From FlowingData.com

The Hive Group: Visualizing the Stimulus Honeycomb

This interactive "honeycomb" diagram by The Hive Group was generated from publicly available data on the breakdown of the Federal stumulus package. 

(Thanks to M.Frisse who blogs on health IT and policy at http://www.markfrisse.com/policy/)

NPR's Marketplace Whiteboard

Another manifestation of the latest trend in experts + whiteboards + video, NPR's Marketplace senior editor, Paddy Hirsh, explains complex economic trands, terms and causes of the current crisis--as if you wanted to hear more!

Toxic assets from Marketplace on Vimeo.

Toxic assets

If you've been following the problems encountered by the banks, you've probably come across the phrase "toxic assets." They've poisoned banks' balance sheets and brought them to the brink of failure. But what is a toxic asset, exactly? 

See other easy-to-understand explainations:

• The credit crisis as Antarctic expedition
• Why 'Fallout' for the financial crisis? 
• Untangling credit default swaps
• A look inside hedge funds 
• Leveraging and deleveraging 

Subscribe to the Whiteboard video podcast in iTunes

Add the Whiteboard widget to your site. 

Approximately once a week, a new Marketplace Whiteboard video will be released. As these videos are released, they are added to the this Marketplace Whiteboard video widget. 

World's Best Napkin Dad

(Spotted on Dan Roam's Back of the Napkin blog)

Many years ago, then unemployed art director Marty Coleman started to draw simple pictures on the napkins that he included in his daughters' school lunch bags.

Marty put these visual haiku-like sketches everyday throughout jr. high and high school a 5 year period. He found that these disposable miniature artworks not only made his daughters happy with a daily surprise, creating them also helped him get through the hard times.

In December of 2008 Time Magazine published a napkin he drew commemorating the election of Barack Obama!

Read about how this daily gift built a wonderful relationship with his girls that survived a painful divorce and physical separation.

Now you can now get a daily napkin by going to The Napkin Dad Daily blog. Look for the 'subscribe' link on the left. Check out the growing collection of Marty's drawings on his Flickr set.

Picturing the Panic on the Back of a Napkin

Check out this fun cross-section of attempts to explain the economic wormhole and how it ripped the fabric of our financial universe! From Dan Roam:

Several visual lessons in what went wrong with Wall Street
The last many weeks have been a field day for people around the world to unleash their inner stick figure. As everyone from market analysts on Wall Street to truck drivers on Main Street struggles to describe what is happening in the global economy, we see more "solving problems with pictures" than at any time in memory.

Of the dozens of clips and links that people have sent me, here are my four favorites so far. (Warning: some of these are longer than they need to be, some more superficial, and some more crude, but all are worth the few minutes they take to watch.) Think of this as a fifteen minute crash course in global economics, presentation design, and visual thinking -- all at the same time.

Also check out Xplane's animated Subprime Explaination.