Intended as a forceful wake-up call for Iowa educators, the video stresses the importance of an educational approach that moves away from “low-level mental work” and towards stronger development in critical thinking and problem solving.

We knew we needed the look of “Iowa, Did You Know? to respect the serious tone of the content — and also create a sense of urgency. To do this, we minimized the color palette and illustrated in a simple, flat style. We found ourselves inspired by letterpress and silkscreen posters — they always seem to convey such personality and immediacy. This is true for both modern band posters and things like historic FSA and political posters.

To help strike a contrast between Iowa and the world, the Iowa scenes have an earth-toned color palette as well as a burlap texture. This makes them feel somewhat analog and vintage. Anything related to the outside world or new technologies received a brighter, cleaner color palette that is more vivid and energized. We used Thirstype’s Apex typeface to bring an academic feel and a look that meshes with IowaFuture.org’s branding.

XPLANE previously worked with Dr. McLeod and Karl Fisch on the educational “Did You Know? 2.0” video in 2007. We collaborated again in 2009, this time including The Economist, on “Did You Know? 4.0” which focused on media convergence and technology. These videos have more than 7 million views on YouTube.

The “Iowa, Did You Know” content was developed by Dr. McLeod, with all storyboarding, design, and animation by XPLANE | Dachis Group.

Tell us what you think!

Update, August 5, 2011: Here’s Scott McLeod’s blog post with more info about the piece and the series.

As a history professor, I work with words. Pages and pages of them, in fact. Words to write, words to read, words to speak. I use pictures and images too, but they usually play second fiddle to the words. So it was challenging and humbling to visit XPLANE | Dachis Group for a recent Visual Thinking School (VTS) because it forced me to think deeply about using visual thinking to communicate history. It was also enlightening, as I came away convinced that history instructors should incorporate more visual thinking tools into our classrooms.

We started by creating empathy maps for students and teachers to help us get into their heads regarding what they’re seeing, hearing, thinking and doing while in class.

The idea for a history-themed VTS came from discussions at home (full disclosure: I’m married to an XPLANE designer) about how I was — and was not — using the chalkboard in my classroom. Chalkboards and whiteboards are ubiquitous in education, yet there’s precious little attention to how college educators like myself should use them. I never thought much about what I was capturing on the board until a colleague pointed out that a student writing only what was on the board would have a poor grasp of that day’s rich discussion. The board was basically a list of nouns in no particular order with a few pathetic arrows. Clearly, there was room for improvement. But I went into history because I loved stories and words, not drawing. And I’ve always been a little self-conscious of my stickman presidents and maps of the United States with Maine the size of South America. And with PowerPoint or Keynote slides available to present pre-planned material, there are even fewer opportunities to capture ideas visually in real time in front of a classroom.

Enter VTS. During the session, we divided into two groups and everyone live-sketched while my colleague Buddy Paulett and I discussed a tricky historical topic. I explained why St. Louis lost so much population in the twentieth century and Buddy covered the origins of the French and Indian War. The resulting visuals were great. When presented with a brief lecture by the person who sketched, they quickly tell a complex historical story.

Here’s one of the sketches describing St. Louis’ 20th century population loss. See more sketches of this and the French and Indian War in our Flickr VTS set. Each of these was drawn live over the course of 20-30 minutes while listening to guest historians speak.

The takeaway for me was that live sketching, cartooning, and creative doodling are all useful tools to communicate complex stories. I’m not going to stop using words, but I’d like to add more visual skills to my toolkit. So I’m going to try to implement a few new things this year:

1. Develop a small icon set that I can draw quickly and effectively in real time during class. For a modern U.S. historian teaching in the St. Louis region, this might include the outline of the U.S., outlines of Illinois and Missouri, the St. Louis skyline (thank you, Arch!), a two-dimensional factory, a car or truck, a person holding a picket sign, etc
2. Spend a few minutes planning how the board will evolve during a class session. As a writer, I tend to start at the left and move to the right but live sketching seems to work better if I start in the middle and grow from there.
3. Encourage students to capture class notes via drawing. I’m still not sure how this could work, but I like the idea that artistically-inclined students could sketch their notes and somehow share them with the class. Doing this might encourage more creative students to see history as stories to be communicated rather than lists of names and dates.

Baby steps for now, but we’ll see where they lead.

This is from a PDF you can download on their site:

This is a program at a level on par with graduate studies. The intensive offers advanced students and working professionals a unique opportunity to study with faculty composed of leading designers and social entrepreneurs. In addition, weekly lectures and field trips will allow students to directly interact with a dynamic range of innovators in the field.

This is a rapidly growing area of design. This program will instill in participants the confidence, self-motivation and collaborative spirit which will be needed as they continue on to work as design activists.

Professionals, educators and advanced students in the following disciplines are invited to participate: advertising, graphic design, product design, information design, interactive design, fashion design, photography and illustration. The program is oriented towards these design disciplines but we have had architects and social entrepreneurs participate

Over the last few years all of these things have been getting mashed up and spread around, especially on Tumblr, Posterous and sites like FFFFOUND. I can’t even count the number of simple but lovely posters, graphics and sketches featuring an inspirational quote or a set of rules or a piece of advice set in a condensed gothic font and overlayed on a moody photograph. Don’t get me wrong — for the most part I like them. Sometimes they make you think or give you a needed kick in the butt — or at the very least give you a peek into another creative person’s head.

I’ve had the above poster hanging in my home workspace for several years now. It’s a constant reminder, and I like that.

But it seems that pretty much everywhere I go online lately I am being told what to do…

▲ I get reminded to take it easy — or don’t bother.

▲ I’m told how to work better — but that it won’t be easy.

▲ That it’s now or never.

▲ I’m encouraged to be inspired by everything — even if those things don’t make sense.

▲ That there are rules. Or not.

▲ I am reminded of how the little, familiar things matter. And I’m reminded that maybe I already knew that.

▲ I’m told how to be happy. And how to be miserable.

A few weeks ago I printed some of these out and tacked them up on our inspiration wall here in the St. Louis studio. At the center I placed the above image. Soon after, senior illustrator Chris Roettger added something of her own. No rules, no advice, no maxims. No condensed gothic type. Just a comment.

A very nicely designed comment that looks great on FFFFOUND.

So, do these things inspire — or irk — you?

• http://vimeo.com/18880751
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mrtu4MmthE

For the most part, the video was created with markers, whiteboards, sticky notes, paper and other “low-tech” tools commonly used in Gamestorming.

Written by XPLANE founder and business design mastermind, Dave Gray, XPLANE consultant James Macanufo and Sunni Brown of Bright Spot Information Design, Gamestorming is a collection of 80 games to help teams break down barriers, communicate better, and generate new ideas, insights, and strategies.

Drawing largely from the visual thinking techniques that have made XPLANE famous over the years, Gamestorming is for anyone who wants to engage a group in collaborative, creative thinking. The book is for sale now on Barnes & Noble, O’Reilly Media and Amazon where it is ranked 4.8 out of 5 stars, is the number one book for etiquite in business life, and number two for running meetings and presentations and for business as related to computers and the Internet. For more information check out the Gamestorming blog at www.gogamestorm.com.

Enjoy!

PS: There’s a free Gamestorming webinar on January 26 — sign up now!

We’re all familiar with the problem of the rising tide of information.

But how do you wrestle with that wave? The growing magnitude and complexity of information is not going away, and yet by most accounts the bandwidth we possess to process that information is going to remain fairly constant (barring any long-overdue cybernetic enhancements.) How do you parse that wave into a channel fit for human consumption?

There are plenty of ways, but I’m only going to focus on one theory here. I’m also going to have some problems with it.

What is a chunk?
As someone who designs information, I’m interested in understanding how the brain receives, processes and remembers stuff. One trusted explanation goes by a more-or-less scientific term: Chunking.

A chunk is any meaningful piece of information. It can be as simple as a digit in a phone number or a word in a sentence. The chunking theory comes from George A. Miller’s 1956 article on information, memory and the brain. Miller delivered the studies and data behind what by now seems like common knowledge: That at any given time, we can focus on seven chunks of information, plus or minus two.

It makes sense, it’s backed by science, and as a rule of thumb it’s useful: When working with any information you want people to understand, try to break it down to seven chunks, plus or minus two.

That’s just a rule of thumb. I’d invite anybody interested in chunking theory to read Miller’s article and explore some of the dilemmas it presents.

The problem with chunks
Chunks are not definitive or discrete, and their boundaries are relative. Unlike a binary bit, which is absolute and measurable, a chunk is made so by its context. A sentence is chunked into words, but words are chunked into letters, and the typographically inclined will further chunk a single letter into its shapes, lines, and marks. But it seems ridiculous to chunk a sentence into its letterforms; it’s an interesting exercise but it’s not how (most) people carve understanding out of it.

Where a chunk begins and end depends in large part on its context and the person who processes it. They can’t be crafted in isolation. There’s no such thing as a singular, well-made “chunk” of information. Chunks are fractals, and they change when you look at them from different angles.

This is especially relevant in pictures. A substantial part of Miller’s article includes “multidimensional stimuli” and I put pictures in this category. In the picture of a human face, how many chunks of information are presented? And why do we find faces so easy to remember, when we find it so easy to forget the names?

My best guess here is that pictures are about something else. They are about chunks for sure, but maybe more so, pictures are about relationships. Just as a sentence’s meaning is in the relationship between its words, a picture’s meaning is in the relationship between its parts.

This might seem like a pedestrian conclusion, but I think it’s worth exploring. Here are a few assertions I’m trying on for size:

1. All pictures define relationships, but a picture that is about relationships is more meaningful (and more likely to get through and be remembered) than any isolated imagery. A simple diagram is better than any orphaned, lonely icons (chunks.)
2. The number of possible relationships in a picture is far greater than you probably anticipate. It’s potentially powerful and dangerous work. If you have a picture to make, make it good.
3. We would all be better if we understood how the brain parses visual relationships. We should unearth the studies that have been done and take them for a spin. We should make newer and better ones. We need more collective mental energy focused on what’s already working on us — the language of visuals — and how we can work on it.

Chunks are a good start. What’s next?

Originally posted at viznotes.com.

The Interaction Design Pilot Year is a collaborative initiative between Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) and The Danish Design School (DKDS). Our aim is for students, faculty and staff to work together in a multi-cultural, multidisciplinary studio environment to co-create a new kind of education that is relevant for academia and industry.

I love it all except the 2nd part of #5.

Dave Gray’s Free The Facts presentation is a must-read, must-share for anyone who cares about either science or open access.

It’s also a masterpiece of presentation economy, and a fantastic demonstration of how to make a text-heavy presentation into something magical. Reminiscent of the work of Michael Wesch. (It’s also a fascinating demonstration of the convergence of YouTube, Flickr, and Slideshare as communication and teaching tools, and a foretaste of the generational change that the New York Times hinted at a few weeks ago.

Dave is the founder and president of XPLANE:

I’m a project guy. As an artist, entrepreneur, educator and amateur philosopher, I always have a number of projects going, both personal and professional. Sometimes they go somewhere, sometimes I get bored and abandon them. One of the beauties of the internet is that even abandoned projects continue to exist and can be picked up or reenergized at any moment. Here’s the definitive list of projects that I am working on or have worked on in the past (A work in progress). The list is alphabetical because I don’t work on these projects in any kind of linear way. They are like a busy kitchen: there is always something simmering, something boiling, something set aside to cool for awhile, something in the deep freeze, and something being served. In fact I am still working on this list. If you see something with no explanation it’s because I haven’t finished writing the description yet :)