Danny & Marcel
Visual Friends Team
A time of change is upon us, like none we have seen for generations. A time of vulnerability, but also opportunity too. In this episode of Visual Friends Radio, we’re joined by Marcel van Hove and Danny Low of the Visual Friends team to talk about how they’re focusing on adaptability, innovation and channelling their creative power during the current pandemic.
Over a decade ago Charity watched a team of consultants at an offsite event create awe-inspiring visual content. She dreamed that one day she too could communicate with simple visuals from words but had no idea how to get there. Flash forward 10 years to discovering Visual Friends, bikablo and her journey has begun.
Graphic Recorder Strategic Visualiser, Award-winning Cartoonist, Writer and Animator.
Sarah Firth is an award-winning comic artist and writer based in Melbourne. Since 2011, she has run a successful small business, offering graphic recording and facilitation, animation and event design. With the mission to help clients clarify, align, resolve, connect and communicate – through powerful visual modelling, storytelling and strategic mapping.
Sarah works across industries and sectors, with a particular interest in supporting clients navigating wicked problems, systemic change and high levels of complexity, environmental justice and social impact.
She has worked locally and internationally on projects and events with; Vienna Complexity Science Hub, Google, The Rockefeller Foundation, CSIRO, The Red Cross, Conservation Zoos Victoria, Melbourne Faculty of Business & Economics, Comedy Central, Environmental Justice Australia, SIEMENS, Vienna Complexity Science Hub, Not For Profit Law, ACMI, Aboriginal Victoria, KPMG, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Planning Institute of Australia, Ernst & Young, City of Melbourne, Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet, Oxfam, PLAN International and many more.
Alongside her business Sarah maintains a professional art and writing practice. Some notable achievements have been; receiving the Talking Difference Fellowship with the Immigration Museum, being named one of Australia’s top 25 artists by Art & Australia Magazine, winning The People’s Choice Award in the Australian Shorts section of the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival, performing at the Yogyakarta Biennale in Indonesia, the Lakes International Comic Festival in the UK, and the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival.
Most recently, she was appointed deputy chair on the board of directors for the Cultural Development Network, she received a Frankie Magazine Good Stuff Award, was a finalist in the Incinerator Social Change Art Award, and her graphic essay on complexity was listed in The Conversation’s ten best literary comics in Australia.
Sarah has a new illustrated book Badass Mums out now with Affirm Press, along with comics in upcoming publications with Allen & Unwin, Abrams Books and Picador Australia. She is currently working on her debut graphic novel thanks to the support of the Creators Fund.
Marcel combines agile team coaching with visual thinking. Marcel believes that a group of people drawing together on a whiteboard can change the world. He loves high-performing teams and therefore coaches teams every day.
Visual Thinker, Mum and Educational Manager
Melaine D’Cruze has been a visual thinker all her life. Through her school years and her career, she always took visual notes and doodled to focus and to remember ideas. She didn’t know that there was actually a professional field for visual thinking until one day when she discovered the TED Talk from Sunni Brown, Doodlers, unite!
Melaine read the book, subscribed to an online course from the Doodle Institute, read several books and through that became a very good sketch note taker. She even got invited by the Harvard Business School to publish a blog post after visualizing one of their online courses. However, her main application for visualization and visual thinking is not at work. Her main application is in the field of educating her kids.
Visual Notes
Melaine D’Cruze
Melaine has two amazing boys, who are much faster understanding and accessing information when seeing them visually. She started to visualize ideas together with the boys and through that, they could memorize the content easily. The other boy stammered from time to time and with visual cue cards she could remind her boy to slow down whenever they stumbled. Today both boys are doing fine, and we’ll talk more about ideas on how we can educate kids visually.
In summary, this episode is a statement to believe in yourself, follow your passion and let no one take you down. I hope you enjoy this episode with Melaine D’Cruze from Karachi, Pakistan.
Marcel combines agile team coaching with visual thinking. Marcel believes that a group of people drawing together on a whiteboard can change the world. He loves high-performing teams and therefore coaches teams every day.
Founder of Let's Letter Together!
A couple of words about Heather Martinez. Heather likes to live in the mountain valley of Durango, Colorado. Heather is a visual practitioner and also an ‘Agile guy’ like me or Danny. She spends a lot of her time running virtual lettering classes for visual practitioners on LetsLetterTogether.com where you can improve your lettering skills on a 1:1 based via Zoom. Additionally, she will be offering 2 online courses associated with her new book and a virtual version of her in-person workshop: Level Up Your Lettering starting in the spring. In parallel, she runs her coaching practice where she offers life and art life coaching to artists. Here Heather believes that everyone can become an artist!
We talk about her whole life from the beginning where she grew up, where she chose to live and how she got into graphic facilitation. We learn how it feels being graphically recorded for the first time herself and what we as graphic recorders might need to consider when recording someone talk.
Last but not least, we talk about her new book which will have the title the ‘Lettering Journey’. It’s based on a cross-country road trip she took after leaving Washington, DC. She has a great plan for how she will create her next book: She travels and teaches lettering across Europe over the next 2 months. While all of her workshops have filled, she will offer an additional 1-day Lettering tour in each city. She will take the participants out of the training room into the environment, walk the streets and look for lettering styles they can break down and use in their work at the wall. The “tradecraft” of lettering will be covered, including how to find inspiration in your environment and how to break down each style into the strokes and tools used. Please have a look at her travel schedule here:
Lettering Tours:
Other locations may include:
Other upcoming workshops:
Now you might think Europe is far away and I can’t travel right now! – Here we are delighted that Heather has confirmed to be our keynote speaker for VizConf 2019. Additionally, she will also run a pre-conference course about lettering the day before VizConf and might even take everyone on a lettering tour through Melbourne.
Stay tuned and make sure you get your Visual Friends newsletter updates so that you don’t miss the spot in her class.
Marcel combines agile team coaching with visual thinking. Marcel believes that a group of people drawing together on a whiteboard can change the world. He loves high-performing teams and therefore coaches teams every day.
Trainer & Partner at Visual Friends
Let me introduce to you Danny Low. Danny is not only a bikablo® trainer and partner at the Visual Friends. He is also a very good friend of mine and in many ways, we are very similar. We talk a bit about that but we forgot to talk about one great story. So in the early days when I met Danny, he told me that he will take time off and travel with his family around the world.
He told me that he would like to pass on some of the experiences he and his wife Anna had and to show the kids the world. With that, we pretty much hit the core DNA of Danny. He likes to pass on his life experience to others – not only to his kids but also to his students at the Visual Friends. He likes to help others and is a great mate that everyone would like to have as a friend. We follow his personal journey, learn how to visualise legal contracts, hear about project management, agile coaching and how he became part of the Visual Friends. For me, Danny’s story is another great example of what can happen in life when you follow your passion and make a couple of choices at the right time. Please welcome our lawyer and Kung-Fu master Danny Low from Brisbane.
Marcel combines agile team coaching with visual thinking. Marcel believes that a group of people drawing together on a whiteboard can change the world. He loves high-performing teams and therefore coaches teams every day.
Do you remember the time when Apple was founded or maybe have seen the movie ‘Pirates of Silicon Valley’? Until I met Dean, I never had met a person who worked at Apple at that time when the first Macintosh and with that the first graphical user Interface (GUI) was released to the world.
Dean knew that someone had to explain this new GUI-thing and therefore probably was one of the first trainers on the planet to teach how to use a GUI.
What strikes me when talking to Dean is his wide range of professional skills. You might know that we all learn by using different modalities. Some people prefer to access new information by reading or learn better by writing it down. Others need to hear it or visualise ideas. Different people again like to touch things and have a quick understanding when doing something with their hands. Through the years we find our preferred way of learning and develop it as your core skill. Dean is different here.
Dean is different – I haven’t met a person who has such a high experience in all those different modalities. He is not only a visual problem solver & design thinker but also an educated opera singer and music composer.
Additionally, he believes in the power of thinking with our hands and therefore is a facilitator for LEGO SERIOUS PLAY where you use LEGO bricks to coach people by building something with their hands. I am delighted to introduce to you Dean Meyer from New York.
Marcel combines agile team coaching with visual thinking. Marcel believes that a group of people drawing together on a whiteboard can change the world. He loves high-performing teams and therefore coaches teams every day.
Founder of Sunni Brown Ink.
This is the second part of the interview with Sunni Brown record on the 18th of September 2018: In the first part of this episode, you learnt a lot about Sunnis Brown‘s life and her early years as an entrepreneur from strangling to make a living to be one of the top speaker and best-selling author in the field. We followed her journey step by step, from working for the Grove, one of the first visual thinking consultancies on the planet before she moved to Austin, Texas where she started her own business.
In the second episode, We find out more about her work as an author and why riding a dragon and writing a book is a similar challenge. We talk about the serendipity that she got invited to TED2011 and how she prepared 4 months for the 6 minutes that has inspired more than 1.4 million people.
We compare the skill of graphic recording with sketch noting, do a “quickly ask round” and brainstorm together about the upcoming keynote at VizConf 2018.
We hear about her experience at TED, her keynote at VizConf 2018 and her work on the upcoming book DEEP SELF DESIGN™ that helps you to reach your goals in life.
Enjoy!
Marcel combines agile team coaching with visual thinking. Marcel believes that a group of people drawing together on a whiteboard can change the world. He loves high-performing teams and therefore coaches teams every day.
Founder of Sunni Brown Ink.
In this new episode, you will learn a lot about Sunnis Brown’s life and her early years as an entrepreneur from strangling to make a living to be one of the top speaker and best-selling author in the field.
For example, when Sunni was quite young she wrote to her mum a letter and told her that she either wants to become a doctor or – if that doesn’t work the president of the united states. This might seem like a funny kids letter but this letter has guided Sunni through her life. Not growing up in a privileged family she had to believe in herself and work hard for her success.
This guiding principle actually led her to her upcoming book called DEEP SELF DESIGN™ which is based on the idea that you are in control of your own life. In fact, we all are in control of our own lives and our mind is often the biggest obstacle why we don’t reach our full life potential.
We follow her journey step by step, from working for the Grove, one of the first visual thinking consultancies on the planet before she moved to Austin, Texas where she started her own business.
We find out more about her work as an author and why riding a dragon and writing a book is a similar challenge. We talk about the serendipity that she got invited to TED2011 and how she prepared 4 months for the 6 minutes that has inspired more than 1.4 million people.
We compare the skill of graphic recording with sketch noting, do a “quickly ask round” and brainstorm together about the upcoming keynote at VizConf 2018. By the way it on the 13th of October and the tickets selling out quickly.
We recorded more than 90 minutes and therefore cut this recording into two episodes. This one will start from her childhood through her first book “Gamestorming” and her second book “The Doodle Revolution” and is a great inspiration for any creator or entrepreneur.
In the second episode, we hear about her experience at TED, her keynote at VizConf 2018 and her work on the upcoming book DEEP SELF DESIGN™ that helps you to reach your goals in life.
Enjoy this episode with Sunni Brown record on the 18th of September 2018.
Marcel combines agile team coaching with visual thinking. Marcel believes that a group of people drawing together on a whiteboard can change the world. He loves high-performing teams and therefore coaches teams every day.
Founder of POINTS OF YOU®
Imagine the following: In order to make the most of the opportunity to attend a visual practitioner conference for the first time – you write a book, bring it along and sell it there. This might sound a bit crazy but this is exactly what Jill Greenbaum did when she attended her first IFVP conference in Pittsburgh in 2012 and it has worked out quite well as Jill is selling her book “How to Major in You and Find the Right College” ever since.
But of course, Jill didn’t write a book out of the blue. She looks back on a great career in the field of education. She has studied Psychology and Education at Clark University before she became a teacher, principal and administrator in various settings in New York City. Jill ran two non-for-profit programs before she started working for herself in 1996.
We talk about her coaching practice and her work as a facilitator with POINTS OF YOU® from Israel who provides inspiring life coaching cards that you can use for live coaching games. Last but not least we look at her upcoming bikablo® training in the US that she hosts, her work on the IFVP board and learn that she even has been to Tasmania recently!
Marcel combines agile team coaching with visual thinking. Marcel believes that a group of people drawing together on a whiteboard can change the world. He loves high-performing teams and therefore coaches teams every day.
Agile Coach & Graphic Recorder
TLDR; Visual Friends Question & Answer – Use mindfulness and deliberate practice to uplift your visual capability.
The Visual Friends training team have been flat-out running bikablo® visual training over the last year. A segment of the training I really enjoy, is opening the question & answer space on the second day. We simply hang up a poster with a big Question Mark and ask for Post-Its to fill the space. As trainers, we want to create a 2-way conversation over the topics and I enjoy sharing my experience as well as collecting insights from the room.
It’s time to share back and expand on some of the insights that resonated with me and the groups I have trained through a blog series. Let’s add to the co-created body of knowledge on visual facilitation and bikablo®.
“How do I get better? How often should you practice to become good, how do you get faster at drawing?”
How can I improve?
Mindfulness & Deliberate Practice 1. I have moved towards a mindset change in how I practice drawing and visualisation. The mindset of “Practice Makes Permanent” resonates for me. In today’s world, perfect generally gets in the way of a faster, simpler outcome that still achieves the result. So following that mindset, here are the steps in a structured approach to being deliberate with practice which has helped me achieve goals.
Sir Richard Branson said “If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!”. Be open to learning and exploring new challenges. Changing your mindset about learning and practicing, will allow you to say YES more often and grow from those experiences.
Before starting a big visual project, I have often felt like I have ‘bitten off more than I could chew’. Sometimes I have felt challenged to the point of fear because the project required skills I simply didn’t have at that time. Some examples; “draw 6 communication posters in a weekend!”, “can you graphic record tomorrow at the conference?”, “let’s create a 5 minute sketch video on a complex strategy!”.
Initially, I had no idea on how to move forward. That feeling of fear, while true in your current context, is not helpful to achieving a goal.
I recently learnt about a framework to describe how we think and feel about situations – ‘above or below the line’. Being mindful of your emotional state in this situation is important. Reflect on what your body and mind are saying, what is true?, what may be an illusion?
There is a catchy acronym that I use in this situation, F.E.A.R; False Evidence Appearing Real. Identify that are those things that are really not true, but are physically influencing the way you see and feel in a situation. Once you have that understanding, move onto the next step, moving above the line towards a constructive mindset.
Think about breaking down your problem. What small step could you take, what bet could you take to get a different perspective or new information on the problem. Sit down with a pencil and paper in a quiet space and sketch out our idea. That will change your context to a place from where you can see the next step towards achieving your goal.
Ask someone for feedback, but hold the feedback lightly. See how that new perspective may also help guide you towards achieving the goal. Another reflection technique is to keep a journal. Share your visual on the Visual Friends LinkedIn group or on the Graphic Facilitation Facebook group.
By being focused and committed to improvement, you may surprise yourself with the outcomes you create. You focus on the differences that make a difference. Set a goal, keep your goal, practice often.
Challenge: People speak fast, there are 150 slides of content, I can’t keep up and I loose track of the narrative.
Goal: Improve active listening skills – improve content capture and organisation of information. Strengthen your response speed between listening, synthesizing and drawing. Capture less but focus on verb & noun combinations. Practice recognising the key themes and patterns coming through.
Challenge: I can’t remember the symbols when I draw and I can’t remember people!
Goal: Build Visual Dictionary – recall more symbols and shapes that improves the anchoring and aesthetic of your poster. The less you need to think about what to draw, the more you can focus on capturing the content of the dialogue – the most important part of visualisation.
How to focus when practicing? When you are at the wall, turn off mobile phone, take everything out of your hands and pockets, slow down, take a deep breath, remember lines are your friend, draw slow but deliberate. Really, really focus on the speaker. The outcome is you will get “into flow” faster and you can be 100% present to serve the group.
Creating opportunities in the workplace. Practicing visual facilitation in your place of work is ideal. Many different sources of content, different communication contexts. Offer to perform a visual recording of a team meeting, strategy session, all hands meeting or communication poster. Be humble and thankful of feedback. My steer here is to be strategic with what you say Yes to..
Go small Sketchnotes are possibly the best way to practice – in meetings, at presentations, visualise the conversation and share it.
Please get in touch, I’d like to hear your feedback on this article and your experiences in personal growth and working visually. hello@visualfriends.com. Stay tuned for the next instalment of Visual Q&A from Visual Friends.
ref 1: http://expertenough.com/2327/deliberate-practice-steps
The article was written by Natalia Tsygankova. Natalia has always loved words and talking to people. She has put that passion to good use and has been sharing people’s stories in the community radio, TV and print media for the last 10 years. Natalia is also a big fan of true storytelling events and regularly volunteers at the most famous one – The Moth, interviewing the winner. You can hear her own story of moving to Australia from Russia in 1999 here. Natalia believes that everyone has a story – So what’s yours? Contact her today to share your story.
