Thanks to Nancy White of Full Circle who did a fantastic job blogging the 2007 International Forum of Visual Practitioners conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Words By Daniel Brook | Illustrations By Ted McGrath clipped from www.goodmagazine.com As heartening as it is to see universal health care back on the national agenda, it’s puzzling that when the presidential candidates talk about their health-care proposals, they only talk about poor kids and Wal-Mart workers. This doesn’t square with my experience of the health-care crisis. I know plenty of people who are sweating health-care coverage. None of them are poor kids. And they don’t work at Wal-Mart. The people I know who are worried sick about coverage work for themselves, many in creative fields. Most of these freelancers and entrepreneurs are in the cross hairs of our health-care crisis—and you wouldn’t know it from watching the presidential campaign. “I know plenty of people who are sweating health-care coverage. None of them are poor kids.” As a freelance writer, I buy my...
The browser-based software for graphic facilitators was profiled by MeetingSource (http://www.meetingsource.com), a website for meeting planners to search for tools, destinations, facilities, and industry events. clipped from travmar.com “Everybody remembers how they felt during the meeting, but the actual content is often lost,” said Peter Durand, Alphachimp Studio of Pittsburgh. "I said in frustration that there has to be an easy way to use browser based software to document what is going on at events and capture the inspiration.” Enter Jason Simmons at gradientlabs.com of Pittsburgh, a software developer with experience in building online applications. The result is MissingLink. This browser-based software allows you to manage events; organize breakout teams; track participant profile information; and upload content like images, files, white boards, flip charts, audio-visual and even video. “We were not able to find anything like this," Durand said, "so we have been building...
This conference has a great roster of visual thinkers, including David Sibbet of Grove, Scott McCloud, Bob Horn, David Gray of Xplane, and more. clipped from www.vizthink.com Our goal at VizThink is to bring together a broad cross section of the visual thinking community. We're bringing content from each of the visual arts disciplines together to create a unique mix of content. Here's just a small sampling of some of the topics you'll find at VizThink '08: Moving beyond bullet points...using storytelling for presentations Aligning individuals using visualization Visualization in 3D? When does it matter Facilitation using photographs Designing compelling and effective information graphics Virtual worlds: future or fad Creating a global visual language Organizing your world with visuals Using visuals for powerful presentations Storytelling through comics and graphic novels Visual techniques for analyzing data Visualization principles for software design Facilitation through live sketching...
Kevin Kelly's recommendation for the best personal color book printer is Blurb. Blurb produces color books very similar to the iPhoto books you can order from Apple. Using iPhoto Books is slightly easier than using Blurb's software, particularly if all your photos happen to already be in iPhoto, but it works well enough. The idea is that you can drag images (photos or illustrations) into template book pages, add text or captions where you want to, then hit a button and have the finished book mailed to you. (all these systems work with PCs and Macs)
clipped from www.kk.org Leave it to the Japanese to create a brush pen. This pocketable pen has a super fine brush tip of actual bristles, perfect for tiny Kanji characters, or of course, doodling in your journal, or sketching in your Moleskine. While it's hugely popular with comic book folks and cartoonists, artists of all stripes have picked one up for their paper work. The feel is incredibly tactile and lovely. It works like a fountain pen, with replaceable rich ink cartridges. Once capped it doesn't leak as far as I can tell. (There's a moment of panic when you first assemble it since the instructions are 100% in Japanese, but just insert the ball-bearing end of the ink capsule into the tip.) You can purchase other color inks as well. Pentel Pocket Brush Pen $18 Available from Wet Paint Artists' Materials
More on the most universal of art forms. clipped from www.kk.org Comic books, comics, graphic novels, or whatever you call them are not a genre, they're a medium. Wolk emphasizes this from the outset of this vivid examination of the form and many of the geniuses and misfits of the American mainstream and avante-garde. Always frank, always insightful, Wolk, a former comic book store clerk, covers a lot of ground: pregnant moments, metacomics, parallel Earths, disposable Sunday strips, and, of course, how the world of comics can be "annoyingly male." The first half of the book tackles history along with an overall assessment of what comics mean and how to read them. There are great bits about what makes a "superreader" and how the form blossomed despite the economics of limited shelf space. The second half is a series of precise essays on specific...
With brilliant graphics, Scott McCloud combines the most profound insights from his two previous books, Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics. But in this book he raises your understanding of graphic communication further by making every lesson utterly practical and useful for both novice and expert. I can't imagine anyone ever doing a comic manual better. ~ Kevin Kelly
Deconstructing Graphic Facilitation is an introductory workshop that teaches the skills necessary to facilitate a group through the use of a shared visual workspace.
Though he uses concepts from cartooning, Mark Pinto doesn't consider himself really a cartoonist. As a Graphic Facilitator, he uses graphics as a communication device to turn dialog and conversation that takes place in a group setting, usually to capture some important decision, strategy, or concept.