Category Archives: VizThink08

VizThink ’09



My husband and I collaborated on a T-shirt design this week, inspired by our plans to attend the VizThink conference later this month. We wanted to show an aspect of why visual thinking is valuable, and exciting to us. We’ll be wearing our long-sleeve Ts at VizThink, and they’re available on CafePress at http://www.cafepress.com/visualthinking/.

The VizThink conference starts in just two weeks, on Feb. 22. It’s two-and-a-half days with some of the world’s leading practitioners of visual thinking and visual communication. Last year’s facilitators included two people – Nancy Duarte and Cliff Atkinson – who, through their work and recently published books, are changing the experience of millions of people who spend much of their time in meetings, by teaching new ways to conceive and design presentations. Dan Roam, another facilitator, shared concepts from his (at the time) soon-to-be-published book, The Back of the Napkin. This book was named one of the top 5 business books of 2008 by Amazon and several business publications. Many of last year’s greats will be returning, and there will be new people with new ideas. It’s sure to be very stimulating for anyone interested in effective visual communication, an increasingly important business skill. (Click on the VizThink08 label to see my posts on last year’s event.)

Visual summaries


I’ve been reviewing my notes and summarizing my learning from the VizThink conference. I find mind maps useful for this, and for referring to later, though they lack the hand-drawn images that my composition book notes contain. This image contains summaries of all 8 sessions I attended in the two days (two general and two breakout sessions each day), which is actually readable when printed on two pages. I’ve also put each session in a mind map of its own.

A couple of other VizThink attendees have also done interesting summaries. My husband did his in a nice one-page visual format

and posted it on his blog, VisualThinkScape.

And graphic facilitator Brandy Agerbeck took her visual notes on index cards, and posted them to the conference wiki. Here’s her photo of her cards and markers

and here’s her wiki page, with her cards from each session.

Trying new things

One of the first events in the VizThink conference was a very quick “learn to draw” session with Dave Gray, CEO of Xplane. He had us draw some very basic shapes, then taught us to “take the stick figure to the next level”. People instinctively start with the head, but he recommends drawing the head last.

  1. Start with the body, which communicates the action
  2. Draw the legs next
  3. Then the arms
  4. Finally, the head

Dave sees this kind of drawing not as art, but as a means to communicate, and encourages everyone to try it. His argument runs:

Every 5 year-old can draw
You were once a 5 year-old
Therefore, you can draw.

It doesn’t have to look just like the real thing for someone else to understand it, so you don’t have to be an artist to use drawing to communicate.

Here is his popular 2005 blog post on how to draw a stick figure. In this one, he starts with the body, as above, but draws the head second. And here is his 2007 post on how to draw a stick dog. This uses the body first, head last process. I think his thinking on the best order has evolved over the past couple years.

I drew this picture on my laptop, using the touchpad and a new program I tried at the conference, Alias SketchBook Pro (now Autodesk SketchBook Pro). It was designed to be used with a tablet PC and works well for artists who use a Wacom interactive display or tablet. It has a number of drawing tools like pencil, ballpoint pen, marker, chisel tip, brush, and airbrush, and a unique semi-circular menu that sits in the lower left or lower right corner of your screen. I’ve only begun to explore it, but it looks fun and powerful!

Bob Horn at VizThink ’08


Nancy Duarte and Cliff Atkinson interviewed Bob Horn about his work during the first general session of the conference.

Nancy described his book, Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century as “an encyclopedia of visual language and visual thinking” and said it was a big influence on her. (See my earlier blog post on the recent republication of this book.) Bob claims that visual language is a new language being born, an international auxiliary language. He defines it as the “tight integration of words and visual elements”. He uses a familiar and simple example of this tight integration, the “one way” sign:

Neither the words alone, nor the arrow alone, convey the meaning. You need both.

Much of his work lately has been in the form of large murals, which can convey both an overview, or big picture view, and details. He says these can help us “think bigger thoughts” about the complex problems we face, because they provide a way of “keeping the entire strategic context in front of us”. He thinks that “large murals should invite people to make their own patterns, associations, and objections.” Ideally, they provide information which allows us to form thoughtful opinions, and make reasoned decisions, considering the multitude of factors and perspectives involved.

Here is the leftmost one-quarter of a large timeline mural on management of nuclear waste in England:

Bob pointed out that murals can convey emotion as well as information.

I attended Bob’s breakout session. Here is the session description. My mind map notes from the breakout session are at http://wiki.vizthink.com/BobHornBreakout