Think Ink Studios

XPLANE's Did You Know 4.0

New from XPLANE - updated from 2.0 

Did You Know?: The 2009 Inauguration Edition

XPLANE just released this new video that visually explores 23 little known facts about this upcoming and other past Inaugurations. 

I Love Sketch

I Love Sketch is a new 3D curve sketching program.  

ILoveSketch from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo.

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

Electing a US President in Plain English

This is a another great video from Common Craft.
This is an example of a explanation that is deceptively simple; great storytelling and visualization techniques!

Visual Periodic Table

This is a really nice example from Visual Literacy that illustrates how to organize a large number of reference points. Click on the photo below to go to the site; then hover on any of the elements and an example of that graphic will pop-up. Nice organization and visual graphic!

Find examples of additional visual maps here

Here are the links that correspond to all the images in the graphic.

Innovation and Business Models

This is from a post on Communication Nation - Alexander Osterwalder offers some tools on how to innovate your business model and why it matters. It's a good example of a presentation that although is 100+ slides, is easy to flip through, holds your attention and tells a good story. Here is a link to Alex's blog

Business Model Innovation Matters

View SlideShare presentation (tags: osterwalder alex alexander telco)

A Wise Tree In The Grove

I was intrigued by a posting on David Sibbet's blog of The Grove Consultants. He eloquently recapped a recent Facilitation Mastery session that he led where participants learn the Grove's methodology and the four flows. Having a meditation practice of my own I was drawn to this exercise on working with the flow of attention (see below) and his metaphor that likened personal growth to the growth rings on a tree. I really like that metaphor and believe we are always adding to our edges or rings through our experiences.

From his posting Working the Flow of Attention
Since attention is fundamental, we threaded reflective process throughout. If you think of attention as a flashlight (metaphor again), then it can be broad or narrow beam. It can also be turned inward or outward. A facilitator needs to not only be aware of his or her own awareness but also imagine what people in the group are attending to. So how does a person develop mastery in being aware of attention?

Our big exercise day one was having people create large personal portraits of themselves inside an outline of their bodies drawn by a partner. These portraits were “current state” pictures looking at four aspects of ourselves (these questions were derived from thinking about the four flows). The question we asked of ourselves are the following:

1. What inspires you?
2. What nurtures you?
3. What intrigues you?
4. What are you committed to?
5. What gifts are you bringing to this workshop?

The graphic below was David's answer. Answers to question #1 are along the top. Question #2 answers are along the left side. Question #3 answers are along the bottom. Questions #4 answers are on the rights side. And Question #5 answers are inside his body outline.

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.