Think Ink Studios

The Back of the Napkin Goes to Washington

Dan Roam gave a workshop to the heads of staff for Senators from the Democratic side. His post shows a great working example of his principles from his book The Back of the Napkin. He condenses a lot of heavy data comparing eight years of the Clinton Administration with eight years of the George W Bush administration into graphics that are easy to understand and that anyone could produce.
Consider this next time you have to present any boring company data!

See the full post with many more graphics here

Nancy Duarte on Presentations

Nancy Duarte, principal of Duarte Design and one of the guru’s behind Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth presentation, took over 135 people through her advice & thoughts on how to create powerful presentations on Vizthink.

Everyone is tired of the same old lifeless PowerPoint presentations. Nancy focuses on telling the story, some tips and tricks, and then there is a Q&A period. I love one of her tips - leave you bullets in your gun!

Click here to see the webinar.

She also has a new book, Slide:ology, that will be available on Amazon soon.

Dan Roam on AtGoogleTalks

This is Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin, on AtGoogleTalks.
See previous posts for more info on Dan's book and approach to visual thinking.

Garr Reynolds at Google - Presentation Zen

I spotted this on Dave Gray's blog Communication Nation.
Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen, presents at Google.

Here is Lawrence Lessig's presentation at TED.

Garr also mentions that he starts the creative process in analog mode by first creating the story on paper.
Here is a tool from Cliff Atkinson to create storyboards in PPT.

Dan Roam on Fox Business

Here's the Happy Hour segment from Fox Business with Dan Roam.
He has a simple explanation of Microsoft's strategy to buy Yahoo.

You can download the The 10 1/2 Commandments of Visual Thinking: The "Lost Chapter" from The Back of the Napkin here at ChangeThis

Also see previous posts:
Dan Roam's Napking Sketches on Fast Company
The Back of the Napkin

A Cat, Elephant and a Monkey

The cartooning and caricature class is coming to a close this week. It has been a wonderful experience.
Here are my final cartoons.

A really good how-to book for anyone wanting to get started is Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Cartooning but Were Afraid to Draw - by Christopher Hart . He does a great job explaining the basics of character construction for both humans and animals.

The Adventures of Johnny Bunko

Here is a really cool video book trailer on Dan Pink's latest manga-style career guide, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko.

Johnny Bunko trailer from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.

Dan Roam's Napkin Sketches on Fast Company

In this month's issue of the magazine, Fast Company's article The Napkin Sketch shows several examples of Dan Roam's clients napkin sketches from Peet's Coffee & Tea, Infosys Consulting, Wal-Mart and Microsoft. Also see additional posts on Roam's book, The Back of the Napkin, in the March archive.

Peet's Coffee & Tea - Corporate Mission, Vision & Values

Infosys Consulting - Business Model

Wal-Mart - Sustainability

Microsoft - Financial Analysis

The Back of the Napkin

Dan Roam's new book The Back of The Napkin is a hit. All in a style that is quick and enjoyable to read, Roam offers great practical advice that you can put to use immediately to solve problems and sell ideas with pictures ! He introduces a powerful system that eases the removal of the barriers and fears associated with visual thinking. I've really enjoyed this book.

Additional resources you may find useful:

A 53 minute podcast from the Principled Innovation Blog

Back of the Napkin Book Overview on Vizthink

A 59 minute podcast from Vizthink Podcast is broken into 3 segments.

Peter Durand's interview from the Center for Graphic Facilitation is also very good

The Back of the Napkin site and blog

More Napkin Sketch Examples on BusinessWeek

A Whole New Mind At Work - Interview on Jariscope

In an earlier post I wrote about Dan Pink's new book, A Whole New Mind, and included big picture mural to summarize the main points in the book. Jari Chevalier posted a comment that she was going to interview Pink in an upcoming podcast at Jariscope. Here is the Living Hero Podcast in which they discuss:
• The increasing value of right brain skills and capacities
• The global forces giving rise to A Whole New Mind
• The one cognitive skill common among corporate star performers
• Reckoning with unfulfillment
• Dan’s own creative process and methods
• The Adventures of Johnny Bunko

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