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[Reminder] Visual Journeys is next week!

Just a quick reminder that our next VizThinkU workshop, “Visual Journeys: Using visual thinking techniques for personal, and professional development” is next Thursday, September 3.

While there’s little question about how visuals can be used to better communicate your ideas not a lot gets said about how visual thinking can be used for brainstorming & planning, even less with respect to personal development techniques.

In this new VizThinkU workshop, we’ll explore how visual thinking can be used in personal, and professional development.

Our two facilitators, Joy Meredith & Sean Griffin, have made names for themselves with their individual techniques and this promises to be an amazing session of self discovery & planning.

This workshop is perfectly timed as summer winds down and many of us start planning for the coming year – take this time to get yourself focused and prepared personally and professionally with the skills you’ll learn in Visual Journeys.I hope you’ll join us.

For details and registration visit our VizThinkU workshop page.

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Missed a past VizThinkU workshop? No worries! All of our workshops have been recorded and are available on our website in the VizThinkU section.

Visual Journeys with Sean Griffin & Joy Meredith

While there’s little question about how visuals can be used to better communicate your ideas not a lot gets said about how visual thinking can be used for brainstorming & planning, even less with respect to personal development techniques.

In this VizThinkU workshop, we explore how visual thinking can be used in personal, and professional development.

Our two facilitators, Joy Meredith & Sean Griffin, have made names for themselves with their individual techniques and this promises to be an amazing session of self discovery & planning.

This three hour recording is divided into two parts:

Part 1: Me Mapping
w/ Joy Meredith [ ~1 hour ]

The unexamined life is not worth living. – Socrates

When was the last time you examined your life . . . your whole life? Ever take a complete inventory of what’s working and what’s not? Well, Me Mapping is a simple yet powerful technique to diagram out and get a full picture of the different aspects that make up your life. From there you create a plan to declutter the things that are draining you, engage with the things that are going to energize you, and learn to appreciate and incorporate gratitude for what’s already working. Me Mapping is a simple yet powerful tool that can be used to help you make the most out of your life, marriage, and business. Socrates might have been a little dramatic, but still shouldn’t your life be as amazing as you are?

Part 2: The Seeker Visual Journey: Discovering and Living Your Life’s Purpose
w/ Sean Griffin

A special workshop for those wanting to align with and start living their purpose in life.

2 hours that will change the way you think and act!

Improve your ability to solve problems, improve your thinking performance and create meaningful results in the ‘here and now.’

Tangible outcomes include:

• Creativity tools that support your ability to be the best you can be
• Visual thinking tools and exercises
• Turning your creative thinking into valuable tangible results – today
• Understand how to generate creative thinking on demand
• Challenge your current thinking into constructive and productive new thinking
• Align with your passion and purpose in life

In this interactive, visually-driven program you will learn creativity exercises and tools that will support different thinking allowing you to uncover the place inside yourself where you can truly reach your full potential. This program will inspire you to think more deeply about your unlimited potential, experiment with your limitless reservoir of creativity and become more aligned with your passions and purpose in life.

Get Access Now

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Joy Meredith Joy was busy climbing the corporate ladder as an award winning sales and training professional for Sony, when in the summer of 2002 she got side tracked by some dramatic life events that left her very discombobulated. After some tough choices and hard work sorting out her life, she left her chosen path and embarked on creating a life more suited for her. In this new phase of life, she authored the book My Last Wishes . . . A Journal of Life, Love, Laughs & a Few Final Notes which was published by HarperCollins in 2007; created a self-development technique called Me Mapping which allows people to sort out works working and not in their lives; and started JOY TH!NK where she brainstorms with individuals and businesses to help get them unstuck. Joy believes that our lives are short so we might as well grab the reigns and take control to make the most of them. With Me Mapping you create a plan to declutter the things that drain you, engage with things that energize you, and incorporate gratitude to keep your whole life in balance. Learn more about Joy at www.joymeredith.com

Sean Griffin Sean supports individuals and organizations to reach their full potential. He is nationally recognized as a leading visual thinker and graphic facilitator. Sean works with clients in a variety of industries, focusing on the development and fostering a Purpose-Driven Performance Culture. As an entrepreneur and Internet pioneer, Sean founded one of the first interactive agencies and website development companies broadcasting original television content. He is one of a handful of people in the world with the powerful combined talent of graphic facilitator and business strategist. Sean supports his select client base through business model development, visual communications, creativity, strategic planning, group dynamics, marketing campaigns and What Box? thinking. He is a motivational speaker and author the What Box? series of books, Out-of-the-Box Thinking for Career and Life, The Creativity Challenge, Arrows of Wisdom, and The Seeker – Discovering and Living Your Life’s Purpose. Learn more about Sean at www.seangriffin.com & www.whatboxbooks.com

VizThink & Visual Thinking in ‘Associations Now’ Magazine

A few months ago myself, Sunni Brown (VizThink Austin) and Mike Rohde (VizThink Milwaukee) were interviewed for an article on visual thinking called “Are you a visual thinker?“. It ran in Associations Now Magazine, a publication of the American Society of Association Executives & The Center for for Association Leadership. At the time I thought it would just be a little piece in one of the back pages of the magazine but it turns out they had bigger plans and ran it as the cover story.

In fact, they went the extra step further and hired none other than Mike Rohde to design the cover and provide illustrations for the article. The end result was a fantastic looking piece that exposed the idea of visual thinking to a whole new audience. Mike did a great write-up over on his blog about his process in creating the illustrations and he’s kindly let me repost it here for your enjoyment, which you’ll find below.

(Of course if you truly want to learn from the masters, both Sunni & Mike (along with Austin Kleon) recently recorded a, very well received, VizThinkU workshop with us called Visual Note-taking 101 where they share their secrets and advice for producing excellent visual notes.)

- Ryan

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Associations Now Magazine: Sketchnote Illustrations

Originally Posted at Rohdesign.com, republished w/permission

I was honored and excited to be interviewed by Mark Athitakis for his Associations Now Magazine article, Are You A Visual Thinker?

Imagine my surprise and excitement at being hired to illustrate the Associations Now Magazine cover and feature spread for the very same article in my signature sketchnote style.

What a great opportunity to share visual thinking in a fun way, to about 20,000 leaders of associations.

The Hand-Drawn Idea

As Mark was writing the article, Associations Now Magazine’s art director, Beth Lower, saw and liked my sketchnote of the iPhone 3GS Unboxing. Each issue of the magazine has a different design in context to the feature story, which led Beth to a completely hand-drawn, sketchnote style cover to communicate the visual thinking feature story.

Beth and I chatted about the concept on the phone, and both of us resonated with the concept of a visual thinking collage, comprised of the tools and notes about them in a hand-drawn sketchnote style.

Pencil Sketches

For the next step, I sketched out a rough cover design idea using pencil in my Moleskine squared notebook, and scanned it for Beth to review for direction.

Beth liked the the look and feel of my pencil sketch and approved the illustration phase of the project. I prepared for the final sketchnote illustration, though I knew some elements would likely need to be sorted out on the fly.

Inked Illustration

Because I wanted to create the art at 100% actual size, I found a sheet of heavy paper to layout the structure of the cover on. I drew out the full size of the cover and began laying out elements I knew had to be in place — Associations Now logo, headlines and table of contents elements in pencil, etc.

Once the main elements were organized, I began inking in the elements, starting with the logo in the top left of the page and working my way down to the main headline on the left side of the page.

I encountered issues with gel ink reacting less than smoothly with my paper and pencil graphite lines, but thankfully, I was able to work through those issues and ink out the cover for production.

Photoshop Production

Once I was pleased with the final illustration, I scanned it into my MacBook and began preparing the final art for production in Photoshop.

I knew Beth wanted to capture the sketchnote style, which meant producing a creamy background color behind the rich black illustration work.

Cream can be a very tough color to capture in the printing process, using standard colors of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK). It’s so easy to lean too much toward yellow or red and ruin the creamy feeling you’re hoping for.

I found what I felt would reproduce in CMYK as a good cream combo, then imported the final scans in, tweaking the contrast, moving elements around in subtle ways and perfecting the final artwork.

Once the art was finalized, I shipped source artwork off for production.

Inside Feature Illustration

Next up was the two-page feature spread illustration which had to continue a consistent image and feel from the cover, to connect them visually.

Beth provided a PDF of the page spread with a headline in place. I used this to trace and ink in the headline and figure out where drawn elements needed to be placed.

I used some elements from the cover for consistency, then began sketching out other elements to fill the remaining space in a balanced way. This is where I built art elements on the fly, allowing the concept of the article and elements already created for the cover to spark new ideas.

When the inner spread was completed to my satisfaction, I created a Photoshop file similar to the cover, with cream background and the elements in their exact locations on the page.

Beth had one more element for me to sketchnote — a quote by Ryan Coleman of VizThink. I sketched out a pencil grid, drew the lettering, scanned and sent the art out to wrap up my illustrations.

Printed Magazines: Wow!

A few weeks later, a package arrived at my door with a package of final, printed copies of the Associations Now August magazine, featuring my illustrations on the cover and feature spread. I’m very pleased with the cream color and how well the illustrations look on the page.

The Associations Now team have been very pleased with the final results, and I’m excited to hear how their subscribers react to this unusual issue of the magazine.

Thank you Mark Athitakis, Beth Lower and Lisa Junker from Associations Now for your faith in me to produce the cover and feature spread illustrations. I’m very honored to have been chosen.

If you are interested in getting a copy of the August issue, let me know. Lisa, the magazine’s editor has told me she has limited copies of the magazine available for those who ask nicely.

Related Links:
Associations Now Magazine Illustrations Set
Are You A Visual Thinker?

All you need to know about Visual Thinking