“A simple drawing can communicate complex ideas quickly and almost effortlessly. It can even be the basis of a successful business plan.”

“The Entire Communications Industry, in Less than 200 Pages… The 2007 Digital Economy Fact Book is a tightwad researcher’s dream: In-depth, statistic-heavy, well-cited, and freely-available online. One could hardly ask for more.

This report covers so much ground that any sentences I try to write about it are positively littered with commas and semicolons, and quickly become confusingly long. So instead, I’ll just list out some of the topics covered to give a feel for the extent of the info available here. Bet you can’t get to page 188 without learning something new…”

“This website attempts to walk you through the long and diverse history of a particular aspect of human endeavour: The translation of ideas, stories and concepts that are largely textual and/or word based into a visual format, i.e. visual communication.”

“The gifts and paper goods of Knock Knock tap into the vernacular with their dead-on vintage aesthetic and thoroughly modern wit. Each snarky piece is lovingly concepted and written by founder Jen Bilik, who oversees Knock Knock’s design studio in Venice Beach. Bilik talks with Alissa Walker about answering her creative calling, reality TV and the beauty of overdue correspondence.”

“Bringing together leaders in visual thinking for the first time in one location, the VizThink ‘08 Conference (http://www.vizthink.com) is an opportunity for executives to understand ways of incorporating visualization processes into business, learning and communications strategies to gain faster and more effective results. Hosted by Portland, Ore. based VizThink LLC, the conference will include breakout sessions and forums facilitated by some of the most recognized names in the visual thinking space, including the distinguished Bob Horn from Stanford University, renowned author and artist Scott McCloud, award winning designer Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design, most notably known for her work in Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, and Nigel Holmes formerly with Time magazine. The conference will be held at the Westin San Francisco Market Street Hotel from January 27-29. Registration (http://www.vizthink.com/reg.html) is open now.”

“The Eames’ best-known film is the 1977 Powers of Ten, the zooming visual explanation of scale which has no doubt been shown in more than 10^4 classrooms and 10^2 science museums. In their much earlier film A Communications Primer they describe the application of Claude Shannon’s model of communication to familiar media experiences, along with some that aren’t very familiar nowadays, such as telegraphy. There are very nice iconic images deployed, as well as shots of media technologies in use.

In about twenty minutes the film covers not only Shannon’s basic model for communication but also details how digital information is represented and, via the analogy of the halftone photograph, how it can be built up to represent data that is arbitrarily detailed.”

“Cartographies of Imagination, by me, Sarah B. Nelson, is about navigating the world of collaboration, through methods, tools, techniques and ideas. I’ll share methods, tools, and ideas to inspire you to draw on the collective wisdom around you. I’m an interaction designer and design strategist at Adaptive Path.”

“Graphicology is the continuing education of a mulitdisciplinary designer. Here, you’ll find resources, inspiration, current events and material that challenges what it means to be a strategic & creative communicator in today’s world. Art directors, graphic designers, engineers, photographers, typographers, writers, producers, cinematographers and others are encouraged to comment and check in regularly.”

“Researching the Human Genom[e], they say that all present humans are very close; and perhaps started from a family in Africa. But taking a hundred thousands years in different locations on the earth, their cultures and the languages have diversified; now communication difficulties happen among them. Humans are social animals; can’t survive without communication. In the beginning era, how did people make a mutual understanding? Looking back at the ways and taking their wisdom would help to build natural EL. Because the ways work even now when a language is useless. My proposal for the concrete EL system is referred to the primitive methods and ideas of main writing/communication systems worldwide…”

From Khoi Vinh and Liz Danzico: “A Brief Message features design opinions expressed in short form. Somewhere between critiques and manifestos, between wordy and skimpy, Brief Messages are viewpoints on design in the real world. They’re pithy, provocative and short — 200 words or less.”

Check out this visual over at XPLANE founder Dave Gray’s blog: “Language is more than just communication, it is the primary method by which we do things together. Language is the accumulation of shared meaning — on common ground.”

“A short guide to what works and what doesn’t when talking to reporters.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I love road signs. I respect their clean layouts and clear typography, I dig their spartan utilitarian design aesthetic, and I usually appreciate their concise and meaningful content. But this parking sign from Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill neighborhood cost me 45 hard-earned ones.”

We email. We wiki. We blog. We IM. We convince ourselves that as long as we can write well, these are all good forms of communication. Perhaps in some ways even better, since we’re not distracted (blinded, biased, seduced) by the person’s physical presence. And we are wrong. According to the neuroscientists, anyway. I’ve just come back from a couple of days at the Conference on World Affairs, and attended a couple of different presentations where Dr. Thomas Lewis spoke. He has a particular interest in neurobiology (including the neurobiology of love), and what the brain does and does not want and need. One of the key points he made was that we are fooling ourselves into thinking that text is even half as effective as face-to-face at communicating a message.”

“An experimental interview with Maish R. Nichani of elearningpost: …Nichani has been blogging — well, it seems like forever. His blog, elearningpost, is always full of fascinating and thought-provoking links. But Maish himself has always been a bit of a mystery. So I asked Maish if he would be up for a little ‘experiment in conversation.’ Luckily he said yes! …The idea behind this ‘experiment’ is to do an asynchronous interview with Maish, and open the conversation up to you, the Communication Nation community.”