All my very best wishes for a happy, healthy, and joyous 2017. My own personal resolution for 2017: getting back to writing blog posts. I must apologize for being "off line" last year! More to come. Continue reading

All my very best wishes for the new year. May we all visualize and realize a better future for our planet. Très bonne année à tous. Visualisons et réalisons des merveilles pour notre planète. https://youtu.be/ZEZn6IjBctE?list=FLS_hE1nJqmfVMJxHxPQ89NA Continue reading

Ever since the exhibit "The Making of Images" at the Museum Quai Branly curated by Philippe Descola, who currently holds the Chair of Anthropology of Nature at the Collège de France (which institution has been filming and putting online lectures, seminars and conferences of its professors for some years now, you can view them all on the site), I have been thinking about how to evolve the way we think about nature and ourselves. In a climate of focus on climate, with the COP21, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change to be held in December in Paris, I've been... Continue reading

Drawing videos, or video scribing, or drawing animations, among many other names, have become quite popular in many venues since 2010 when RSA Animate first invented it back in 2010. It involves watching a hand drawing images that reinforce and add to the message on many levels. Their technique is highly sophisticated, with an extensive pre-production phase that involves creating an engaging storyboard in two colors following a talk by an eminent speaker, then filming the drawing process in real time on whiteboard, and of course a post-production phase to ensure perfect timing between drawing and voice. While there's not... Continue reading

J'ai récemment eu le grand plaisir de faire un Ted Talk au TedxCelsa autour de la facilitation visuelle. C'est là on je me suis rendu compte que réaliser un Ted Talk est un exercice difficile, mais très enrichissant. Au fait, c'est du théâtre - un concentré d'éléments à la fois visuels, sonores, et kinésiques qui appellent les émotions, la réflexion, mais aussi l'action. On peut faire passer des messages par le langage du corps, le mouvement, l'utilisation des slides, et dans mon cas, une mise en scène autour de la métaphore de base de tout le talk - la construction... Continue reading

Yet another approach to making a video using drawing - this is a classic example of animation using After Effects and of course an editing program... I did the drawings of the people but had no input on anything else. It was an interesting project because I had to work from verbal descriptions such as "Annick's husband, skeptical and cautious." Here's the COAB blog. The topic is interesting too! Continue reading

Just finished a fun project along with Agence Ondine, for the Franco-German channel Arte - a promotional drawing video for their new interactive web TV series, Do Not Track, about internet tracking. Seven episodes that explain all about how everyone is keeping an eye on you... The fun part is being able to enter url's and seeing all the connections to all the different sites that are collecting your data. Terrifying? The video was animated thanks to screen capture functions in the old Brushes drawing app on my iPad. Unfortunately, to my knowledge the new version doesn't have this function.... Continue reading

Having recently plowed my way through Arthur C. Young's "The Reflexive Universe", his comprehensive discussion of his vision of process, following a challenging workshop at The Grove with David Sibbet, I began seeing the seven stages and four flows absolutely everywhere. Then I did a graphic recording, and realized that Young's process theory could equally apply to that complex process. Just for fun, I made a drawing of my first vision of how that could look. Of course, there are many, many ways to use Arthur Young's model to dig deeper into our graphic facilitation process -- this is just... Continue reading

J'avais travaillé avec la société Nexus en facilitation graphique pour créer un panorama stratégique sur la vision stratégique de la Fondation de Nant à Vevey en Suisse. Non seulement le résultat leur permets de visualiser mieux les problématiques à gérer et l'évolution futur de la structure, mais aussi à mieux communiquer avec des parties prenantes très diverses - patients, partenaires, et personnel, en intégrant la vision dans leur rapport annuel 2013. Pour visualiser le rapport annuel, cliquez ici. I worked with Nexus and the Fondation de Nant in Vevey, Switzerland using graphic facilitation to visualize their strategic vision. The result... Continue reading

I recently discovered a remarkable publisher, "Wooden Books", with small, inexpensive volumes that bring together an impressive collection of historical and modern visual wisdom from prehistoric times onwards. A few examples: "Sacred Geometry" by Miranda Lundy -- the secret visual language underlying much architecture and art from the earliest times to the present. "Li - Dynamic Forms in Nature" - the ancient Chinese word for the main families of natural design, special patterns with names like "Anfractuous", "Nubilous", "Filices"... food for visual metphor use! "Earth Grids - The secret patterns of Gaia's secret sites" - this is particularly mind-blowing book... Continue reading

Here's a musical card to wish you all a highly visual and colorful 2015!! Made with SketchClub on iPad and edited in iMovie. Continue reading

Continuing the saga of EuViz 2014, we had a stimulating "Elders" session with David Sibbet, Ulrich Rudebeck, Reinhard Kuchenmuller, and Lynne Carruthers, current president of the International Forum of Visual Practitioners. They discussed their inspirations, concerns, and all sorts of powerful metaphors to talk about visual practice, such as imaginal cells, careering through space, and shifting containers. Here below two graphic harvests, one by Brandy Agerbeck and the other by Sophia Lang. Also my sketchnotes... enjoy comparing the different approaches. Continue reading

Anthony Weeks is an old hand in graphic facilitation, and has even extended his reach to documentary film-making. This have given him an unusual take on graphic recording and graphic facilitation. He generously offered participants in EuViz 2014 a session on Visual Storytelling, where he shared his insights on how what he learned in film-making is useful in his work as a graphic facilitator. For him, it all lies in the "art of paying attention". He certainly enhanced my awareness of how graphic harvesting or creating a visual meeting includes many facets of storytelling -- the 4W1H, the importance of... Continue reading

During EuViz 2014 in Berlin this summer, a team of passionate people harvested photos, videos, interviews, graphic recordings, and more from EuViz 2014 to help you who attended the conference to remember the experience and enhance your learning. Thank you for your great "post-EuViz 2014" contributions. Follow the links to the harvest and meta-harvest. To find a collection of video clips, click here , interviews on site are collected here, and for a collection of all the photos, click here. Thanks to all our photographers! I had the pleasure and the honor to record the last session with a talk... Continue reading

I've been meaning to share some of the content of EuViz 2014 via my sketchnotes and a brief article for those who were unable to attend or who would like to compare notes. EuViz was held in Berlin this summer, organized by Guido Neuland of Neuland Gmbh, makers of all those wonderful markers we love and use, and Kommunikationslotsen, a process facilitation consultancy that is deeply involvedin visual facilitation as well. The conference was co-sponsored by the International Forum of Visual Practitioners community, otherwise known as the IFVP. A total of 240 people gathered for a visual/process fest that included... Continue reading

Hilma Af Klint was a mystic and a painter, who created an incredible body of "abstract" work inspired by the Spiritist tradition coming out of the 19th century inspired by the Theosophical movement founded by Helen Blavatsky, who had a huge influence on artists and writers of the late 19th and 20th century, especially artists that were part of the early 20th century abstract movement. More on that in a lecture by Gertrud Sandqvist here, including the influence of Bhuddist thought and Darwin! As I begin to realize the connections between abstract art, spiritualism, the Bauhaus, design, and now design... Continue reading

To wish you all a healthy, happy, prosperous, and highly visual New Year, I've created two "visual music" videos... I used Sketchbook Pro on my iPad to create the videos. Happy viewing and listening! With Schumann Or Bach Continue reading

Constantly frustrated by the way many members of my "tribe", friends, and family are distant in space, and fascinated by the incredible potential of the various virtual communication platforms with their "whiteboard" and screen-sharing capacities, I've become convinced that virtual conversation is the way to go. However, I suspect that visual reinforcement is crucial to engagement and possibly decreasing the usual multi-tasking that goes on when people are in an on-line meeting that lacks the usual reinforcements of face-to-face dialogue. Let's surf and talk at the same time... what about that email I've been expecting? and so forth. Found a... Continue reading

Dans la série de films que je m'amuse à réaliser en ce moment, en voici un réalisé sur IPad avec l'app Brushes -- l'ancienne version -- le développeur à supprimer la "capture d'écran" dans sa nouvelle mouture. Cliquer sur la vidéo pour le voir en plein écran. Dans ce film, je n'utilise pas de voix off, mais uniquement de la musique avec l'image qui émerge... C'est en réalisant ces films que je me rends compte à quel point le mouvement du dessin conditionne le langage visuel -- par exemple, je pense que les flèches directionnelles ne sont plus de mise... Continue reading

I managed to properly record my latest webinar on body metaphor in graphic facilitation (in French, thank you Camtasia). The webinar is designed to introduce the participant to various ways we use the body and its parts metaphorically in graphic facilitation of all kinds. The "draw-along" lesson plan is crucial. Don't bother watching without some color and paper in hand! Voici donc mon webinar sur l'utilisation du corps dans la facilitation graphique. N'oubliez pas de vous munir de couleurs et papier avant de commencer à regarder! Vous êtes invités à dessiner au même temps que moi, dans un esprit "apprendre... Continue reading

Just a word to let you all know that I'm developing a new product -- a "RSA-style" video, also known as whiteboard animation or videoscribing. I'm convinced this clever combo of words and images, not animated but filmed as someone's hand draws, is highly engaging to the viewer -- with the tactile, real-time aspect that visually reinforces the voice-off. Perhaps it's thanks to our mirror neurons that watching someone draw out the vision behind the discourse helps us understand not only thanks to the visual aspect but also because of the action-process feel the hand that draws gives. At some... Continue reading

Scottish D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson has long held an extraordinary fascination for us visual thinkers, including many a 20th century artist. Inspired by Albrecht Durer's famous heads (see below, we even have a Vulcan), he developed a mathematical model as to how environmental forces affect the growth of organisms in his famous "On Growth and Form". Of particular interest is the structural approach that ensures changes in the part affect the entire form. His influence over major figures from many different disciplines from the arts to structuralism during the 20th century was huge. Today, while looking for ways to use a... Continue reading