Art history class 1 summary

Dick Nelson has started an 8-week art history class. We're at the halfway point, and I've been reviewing my notes and starting to summarize them.

In our first meeting, we did two exercises designed to introduce some organizing principles and basic concepts that we'll be working with and going into more depth on in coming weeks. We started by comparing two works by different artists in different periods - see this post. Then we played a game, matching works of art and architecture to their period, to learn "where" in time the periods occurred, and some classifying characteristics. See the game board and more details here.

More on VizThink '09

There are a few things I forgot to include in my earlier post about VizThink '09.

Dave Gray has a great post, detailing why he thinks you need to go. He says VizThink is different than other conferences, because VizThink is about:

• Differences
• Innovation
• Design
• New Voices

Read his post for the details.
If you're planning to go, look for the registration discount code at the end of his post to save money on your registration!

You might want more information before you decide. Just look at the session descriptions, and facilitator bios, and you're sure to be intrigued.

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.)

Immerse yourself in color!

My friend Gabe is planning to build an exciting - real world - interactive demonstration of the relativity of color for an art festival on Maui in February. You'll be able to to go into a room and change the color of the walls, based on where you point.

See his blog for a more complete explanation, and be sure to try out the demo! Play around with changing the colors (mouse over the colored matrix). I love the "light switch" by the "door"! Click on the video floor mat to see and hear his description, and click on the "Donate" button if you feel moved to support this project!

Color is relative video clip

Gabe had some questions about my last post, and I realized it would be fun to use a Jing video capture on his cool Color is Relative website. He's built some interactive pages demonstrating the relativity of our color perception, based on our recent classes with Dick Nelson. The video above shows just one example. Check it out!

Cool tool

Today I discovered a new free tool that I think will be very helpful. It's called Jing, and you can use it to capture, annotate, and share screen shots, and make short videos of your screen. I captured the image above from their website, and added their tag line, "Visual conversation starts here", in the blue annotations. The intuitive interface lets you highlight or frame areas in the image, and use arrows to point to areas of interest. You control the colors, fonts, and sizes.

Here's a 34-second screen capture video:

The six secrets of sticky ideas

Short and sweet today - just the facts. From the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by brothers Chip Heath and Dan Heath. I highly recommend it.
The six secrets of sticky (memorable) ideas - they are:

Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Stories

Hint: it spells SUCCESs.

Campaign photos

Yard sign


Bumper sticker


T-shirt: Ray of Automatic T-shirt Printing in Kahului

Beyond Bullet Points

We developed another presentation last week, and I used Cliff Atkinson's Beyond Bullet Points approach to structure it. It wasn't a full-on BBP presentation, because a large portion of the time was devoted to working sessions, and because my partner wasn't that familiar with the approach, but I found it a helpful development tool. The Word template helped me to focus, order, and limit our ideas. I sketched out ideas for some of the slides' graphics, and actually wound up using some of my crude sketches in the final presentation, as the hand-drawn look, though casual, conveyed the important concepts. I kept a consistent look and theme through the "call to action" and three key point slides.

There were some glitches, but they could be traced to the rushed timeframe and limited review cycle time, rather than the methodology.

The title slide and 8 key BBP slides (Setting, Role, Point A, Point B, Call to Action, and 3 Key Points) are shown above. Get a copy of the BBP Storyboard Sketchpad PDF (below) here. Also see my May 26 post, Walking his talk.

Campaign season

A friend of mine, Michael Howden, is running for the Upcountry seat on the Maui County Council, and he's asked me to help with some of the publicity aspects. We've ordered signs and banners printed with the design above. Check out his website for his take on local issues.