We are on our second day in the Barcelona Climate Talks. We have taken small steps in applying visual techniques to various parts of the conference. On the above photos you can see Stine working on what will become a display of visuals conveing the essence of WWF’s 10 steps leading to a successful COP15 agreement.
You can see more photos from the first days in Barcelona in the sidebar of this blog.
We have come to experience 9 important steps (see further below) you as a visual practitioner can take to make to takeover a conference with visual tools and techniques:
Step 1: Visualise the main sessions on tablet, and project illustrations when and where possible
Step 2: Casually suggest presenters that you can put up a large piece of paper and start graphically recording what they are saying. Afterwards host conversations with anyone who come up to see the result.
Step 3: Ask everyone what Top 10 words / concepts they’d like to have a visual language for…and provide a space for them to write and seek visuals
Step 4: Collect powerful questions and organise them in a visual way, so that you start creating a visual dialogue tool (more and more people will want one for themselves
Step 5: “Attack” a stand and re-arrange the traditional type of stand into a living visual organisme, changing as people walk by and interact.
Step 6: Take the floor with a sandwich board (two boards put over you with big white paper). Walk around the conference premises and initiate spontaneous sessions where you facilitate a dialogue and create shared pictures.
Step 7: Start using social media to engage your community outside the conference. Invite them to contribute.
Step 8: Continue to create a hubbub around the visuals.
Step 9: Invent more and more ways in which the entire conference becomes visual and the participants can’t help get inspired to go deeper and deeper into the content and issues the conference is about.
Imagine you have a visual language which can help you communicate exactly what you need to communicate. And you would be able to visualise it with simple strokes on the whiteboard or a napkin or a flipchart.
The above post it’s show 12 words/ concepts which each have a following icon. The topic is Climate Change. The situation where they can be used is in a dialogue around how your organisation considers its rol in the current debate around climate change and COP15.
What visual langauge do you need?
Post a comment below with the Top 10 words you’d like a illustration and/ or an icon for.
Please include three things in your comment:
1) What industry / topic?
2) When – In what situation do you need it?
3) What 10 words / concepts would you like to have a Visual Langauage for?
This is a pilot project which we intend to run over the next ½ year. We will gather all the words we get and follow up on our blog with the progress we are making and get back to those of you who have submitted words.
Thank you!
There is a group of Danish Cartoonists who has created this site where they from now on and up to the COP15 will post illustrations and cartoons. We hope to engage with the group in terms of some of the events we will be partcipating in. Thanks to Erik Petri for the link.
Just stumbled over this site. In some ways it seems pretty old fashioned – and then again. It really is a matter of using (re-discovering) our visual capacity in face to face meetings. Just a pity they focus on “this will help you sell better and more”.
Our purpose is to show the world how visual language, visual thin- king and visual practice enable more sustainable actions.
On this blog we write and draw out what we find inspirational on this journey.