Distilling the essence of your ideas

When you design and run a strategy session, offsite retreat, or conference, you want to fully engage the hearts and minds of all your participants. Graphic facilitation supports this! Capturing people’s comments into a synthesized graphic chart strengthens their connection to the work at hand, and improves the quality of the meeting outcomes. Participants are more focused and engaged during the session, and the visual crystallization of ideas stays with them as they go back to work. The charts create a shared sense of momentum, alignment and clarity and allow people to easily share their insights and action steps with others in the organization.

Why it works

Graphic facilitation allows people to process information faster and more thoroughly. The large visual format allows groups of people to collectively engage and respond to ideas. Teams are able to think through complex ideas to identify connections and opportunities that might otherwise be missed. This process of co-creation provides a built-in sense of ownership that helps teams remain engaged as they implement new strategies, products, or services.

How it makes a difference in your business

Graphic facilitation allows organizations to create a shared experience and language that allows their teams to:

• Develop a common vision or mission

• Build momentum and alignment to pursue specific priorities

• Share lessons learned

• Communicate with investors, board members, or senior level managers

• Capture the significant ideas that emerge in discussions, presentations, or keynote speeches

Ready to discuss your graphic facilitation needs?

One illustration can summarize your whole story

Custom illustrations allow you to tell a story in a visual form. Unlike a linear progression of Power Point slides, an integrated visual can show a whole system or set of ideas, and help people understand where they fit in the big picture. This allows people to make connections between complex, interconnected issues, and can generate excitement about moving forward.

Why it works

The brain processes visuals with text faster & more completely than when the text is presented all by itself. It’s called the pictorial superiority effect. When images and narrative are combined, it increases the ability of audiences to recall and retain information by 42%. Visuals and metaphors also boost retention through tapping into our emotional brain, and can connect with people in a personal and authentic way – engaging hearts as well as minds.

How it makes a difference in your business

Custom illustrations are powerful storytelling vehicles that can help groups:

• Understand competitve landscapes and challenge

• Visualize the steps to acheive their strategy

• Clarify focus group feedback through personification

Want to help people see the whole picture?

Flexible learning – available when you need it

As the world gets more complicated, the need increases for “bite-sized” ongoing education and training. Animated videos provide an engaging way to relay a consistent message or break down complex processes to distributed work teams or potential and existing clients. Video on demand means that all members of a global team can absorb the content when it best suits them. We help you refine your voiceover script and develop storyboards to reinforce that narrative. The outcome is an animated video that will be enjoyable and memorable for your audience.

Why it works

Animated videos combine two out of the three adult learning styles: visual and auditory. (To get three out of three, ask viewers to pick up a pen and take notes. That will activate the third learning style, kinesthetic.) These videos are typically one to three minutes long, an ideal length that allows for easy absorption of new material.

How it makes a difference in your business

Video animations can be used to:

• Demonstrate how a process works

• Help employees to understand their roles and responsibilities

• Inspire and motivate people to act in a new way 

• Communicate company strategy and mission

Many of the videos we have created are for internal corporate use only, but please look below for a few videos we’ve created that are non-proprietary.

The Multiplier Effect Trailer

True Ventures People

Need artwork for your animated video?

The power of visuals in your hands

More than ever, success in business depends on equipping teams with the tools they need to think creatively and work synergistically. Learning how to think and express yourself visually can help to inspire new ways to ideate and transform your meeting into a collaborative process that engages the entire team.

Available Workshops

Visual Thinking

Representing concepts visually can clarify thinking and speed up collaboration. This workshop teaches the basics of visual language, where drawing becomes a thinking tool that allows for quick iteration, prototyping, and sharing of ideas. Participants will learn how to draw a variety of simple icons and different ways to structure and sort information on the page. Through this process, they will learn how to generate ideas by themselves or in a group, and how to access another thinking style to unlock their creativity.

This workshop is perfect for people who:

• Work in teams and want a fast, clear way to develop new ideas or strategies,

• Are looking for a different way to communicate and collaborate with one another,

• Want to make their presentations “stick” in their audience’s minds.

Flip Chart Finesse

Next time you jump up to the flip chart, or run an internal session, wouldn’t it be nice to have a few techniques up your sleeve? Participants will learn simple principles that will make their flip charts easier to read and more effective. We’ll show you the essentials you need to know about color, lettering, and  how to draw easy icons and headings.

This workshop is particularly useful for people who:

• Facilitate team meetings

• Lead group information-gathering sessions

• Are teachers or consultants

Graphic Facilitation

When you capture a group’s thinking, how can you distill the main messges? Participants will improve their ability to listen for the key points of a presentation or discussion, and learn methods to sort and group information in real time on larger format paper. As in the Visual Thinking Workshop, participants will learn the basics of visual language, so that they can build a “toolbox” of icons and simple graphics they can use to clarify the information on the charts they create.

This workshop is particularly useful for people who:

• Facilitate team meetings

• Lead group information-gathering sessions

• Are teachers or consultants

Interested in expanding your capacity to capture information visually?