The world of visual communication is opening up in so many directions, we often get calls from people asking what we do, and how our approach differs from what other visual practitioners do? When I first started doing visual journalism, the work was radical. Here is a description from 2004. Today, thousands of times more visual practitioners have hung out their virtual shingles, everyone with a slightly different offering. An increasing number of organizations see the value, but they are not quite sure who is doing what. Styles, work approach and fees are all over the map.
This seemed like propitious time to clarify our work (our passion!) for visual insight, and to put that in the context of all the emerging fields in visual communication. The discipline is still undefined and practitioners’ approaches, capabilities, knowledge and art style differ dramatically. Currently there is not a scholarly field for our discipline (though I hope there will be), so we are still evolving a taxonomy and details analysis of the forms and uses.
Most of us can trace our professional roots back to the work of David Sibbett at The Grove, whose basic style deeply influenced the field, then our styles evolved in different ways. I became interested in what my colleague Bonnie DeVarco and I call “The Shape of Thought” — the ancient visual language of shapes that show up across cultures and mostly have their roots in Nature, which led me into finding shapes that matched the storyline and emotions emerging in the room. Lately I’ve had a chance to explore this further thanks to Mei Lin Fung who invited me on to the cable TV show she hosts with David Sibbet called “Just Picture It.” Here is an excerpt
Live visual journalism: This s the approach I have been practicing it for 10 years. Visual journalists have deep background in writing as well as a specific type of art. We do not create detailed pictures but rather use art as a communication tool to connect ideas–Live, in the room, on 4 by 6 foot murals. Typically during a session, we will do a “gallery walk” to tell the emerging story and reflect back highlights.
Visual journalism can be used in many venues, including conferences where people can see ideas unfolding live. My clients mostly are top leadership groups and so I am listening for big, transformative ideas and a gestalt of the group’s perspective. My background is in journalism and think tanks, so I end up with a “big picture” that tells a visual story and captures patterns of new ideas that may point to emergent knowledge. Visuals were used as forecasting where I first started doing this work at Institute for the Future, where I first met David Sibbet, Sometimes an image can give us knowledge about the future that we do not have words for yet.
Graphic recording: This is by far the most prevalent, with practitioners who are more visual note-takers, illustrating individual concepts as they emerge. They also work on roomsize murals, but rather than one big picture, they are capturing ideas sequentially across the page. I really enjoy this excellent video by AlphaChimp studio
Deliverables: Either approach can be captured afterwards in books, animations or other deliverables.
I make a distinction between graphics for process (helping people engage and think together) and for content delivery (books, animations, etc to share information after the fact). They overlap when the live visuals carry emerging new ideas into images that help them “stick” and that is always my goal.
