I have been reading (or rather looking at) a new book that landed on my shelf entitled The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless. It's sub title is "A colourful guide to the world's most consequential trivia".
He has visually represented in interesting and cool ways things like dangers of death, varieties of romantic relationships and when condiments go bad. Some of the more "serious" topics include global warming, who really runs the world and the media jungle.
To quote from the intro " Swamped by information, I was searching for a better way to see it all and understand it. Why not visually?
Why not indeed.
As a graphic recorder, I found the experience of reading this book both enlightening and entertaining (my favourite kind of read), but what was more exciting, is that it was immediately useful!
I had the opportunity to be the graphic recorder at a recent Appreciative Inquiry (AI) Summit. Very large event, over 100 people and we produced some really good (and cool) work.
One of the processes involved a "card sort" after which I was handed over 200 index cards, sorted, and asked to represent the result visually. I instantly panicked and thought "holy crap!"... and then it hit me like the proverbial sledge hammer...."Visual Miscellaneum !!".
The result follows. I have removed some of the information that would give away the client name, however the chart makes the point. I have created people standing in a line, and the size of the person represents the frequency of the idea shown on their t-shirt, or on a sign. I was pretty chuffed with the result, but better, the client loved it!
