Infographics inspired by Jared Diamond’s book “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies”

I had fun making infographics for passages that inspired me to visually interpret in Richard Florida’s “The Rise of The Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life”, Derek Sivers’ “Anything You Want” and Al Pittampalli’s “Read This Before Our Next Meeting.” Motivated to do the same with “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies” by scientist Jared Diamond. Another good read. Took me awhile to finish it—I’m a slow reader, also considering that it’s packed with historical information and analysis—Diamond has a logical narrative running through all of it. Here are visualizations of some his points:

Infographic 1: World-changing trifecta
The book’s title is game to visually portray, like in the form of a rebus. It’s Diamond’s framework that scaffolds his findings and arguments about the three major contributors, for better and worse, to the life of people and our planet. Sketch:



Digital iteration:



Infographic 2: Developments over time, largo pace
What was established, way back when, activated the evolution toward the methods and tools used today. The latest means to make things, to make a civilization, share a long history and continue to make history—as both a complex benefit and a mixed bag of unintended consequences. Sketch:



Digital iteration:



Infographic 3: Geography’s blatant role
One can easily call Diamond a “geographic determinist.” The physical environment, coupled with human desires, can play a definite part in the day-to-day environment—manipulated era to era. It’s a generative outcome that can’t be ignored. Sketch:



Digital iteration:

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Highlighted in the book’s Preface, a reviewer wrote that Diamond viewed world history as an onion, where modern society is on the topmost layer and past versions on subsequent layers. Diamond admitted, “Yes, world history is indeed such an onion! But that peeling back of the onion’s layers is fascinating, challenging—and of overwhelming importance to us today, as we seek to grasp our past’s lessons for our future.” This claim can seed another visualization.

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Infographics inspired by Al Pittampalli’s book “Read This Before Our Next Meeting”

To pose the question, “What do you think about meetings?”, my expectation would be a unanimous answer, something like: “Meetings in the workplace suck.” And I would easily agree: If not well-initiated and facilitated, work meetings waste time. Workdays are too short to tolerate unnecessary meetings.

But Al Pittampalli, founder of The Modern Meeting Company, aims to change work environments mired in a culture of counterproductive meetings with his book Read This Before Our Next Meeting: The Modern Meeting Standard. The action-oriented title is endowed with urgency, a theme throughout the book, which is intended as a handbook. In it, he shares and explains specific ways to improve meetings from the get-go. Such a movement has all work teams readily equipped to hold purposeful meetings—within companies that take meetings for granted. This is Pittampalli’s practical vision.

Read This Before Our Next Meeting shares the same publisher, The Domino Project, founded by Seth Godin, that released Derek Sivers’ first book, Anything You Want. Pittampalli’s first book also shares a lean form, under a hundred pages, and is packed with straightforward, concise writing. Here are some of Pittampalli’s modern-meeting standard principles, turned into high-level infographics, set in a similar font and color stemming from the book’s design.

Infographic 1: Meet to brainstorm

Brainstorming is beholden neither to solo workers nor to visibly outgoing workers. To Pittampalli, meetings are not only prime for generating ideas to solve what needs to get solved, they are also meant for brainstorming. Anyone can participate. In the workplace, Pittampalli places importance on brainstorming as an essential meeting function. Here’s an initial sketch:



A digital iteration of Pittampalli’s ideal meeting culture:



Infographic 2: Meet to make decisions and follow up

Meetings are held to make decisions. On their own, decisions are static. They must be acted on, in order to be executed. Here’s an initial sketch:



A digital iteration of Pittampalli’s stress on not leaving decisions alone, for they instantly get stale:



Infographic 3: Meet then coordinate

To Pittampalli, meetings exist to resolve what’s wrong—as approached through brainstorming—and then followed by a plan to immediately act on the meeting’s decisions.



A digital iteration of the forces of conflict (when it comes to opinions) and coordination (when it comes to decision-making) in meetings—before, during, and afterwards:



In one of the closing passages of Read This Before Our Next Meeting, Pittampalli urges, “We need a culture where people don’t dare show up to a meeting late or, even worse, unprepared, for fear of being shunned. We deserve a culture where the strong spirit of teamwork brings out the best of the group, not the worst of the individual.”

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See: Rest of sketches, parts one and two, plus Infographics inspired by Derek Sivers’ book Anything You Want.

Infographics inspired by Derek Sivers’ book “Anything You Want”

Derek Sivers’ first book Anything You Want is compact like one of his TED Talks(1). In it, he relates experiences and lessons learned while founding CD Baby—an online CD store for independent musicians. I’m enjoying this emerging pattern of business books written with the reader clearly in mind: brief, plainspoken tone, and nothing like an MBA-speak presentation.

The poet J. D. McClatchy said, “Novelists want to flood, poets want to distill.” Brevity is therapy when it particularly comes to business books. I gravitate to this deliberate short form, like Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk, REWORK by Jason Fried and David David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals(2), Evil Plans: Having Fund on the Road to World Domination by Hugh Macleod. Sivers uses a distilled approach that I greatly appreciate. One clear advantage to reading an entire book, in one sitting, is the ability to easily revisit the parts you highlight and reread them, or even the entire book—again, in the same sitting. Another advantage is the ability to extend the book into a project. In this case, the project was playing with some of the Sivers’ quotes and turning them into high-level infographics.

Infographic 1: What business is and is not

Sivers offers a good reminder (one of many in his book): making something—whether it winds up as a business or not—must be done for emotion, not money. To paraphrase author Besa Kosova, this practice helps relieve stress even if, as the phrase goes, it ultimately can’t buy happiness. Here’s the initial sketch:



A digital iteration of Sivers’ really simple breakdown in defining a business:



Infographic 2: Execution never gets old

Ideas only have color, shape, volume, and visibility, when they’re made real. What’s imagined rests on paper, on the surface of your mind. And it can stay there indefinitely. In making an idea real, passion is never overrated. Here’s the initial sketch:



A digital iteration of Derek’s repeated emphasis to escape flatland of ideas:



Infographic 3: Your business, your universe

The author Mark Twain gave great startup advice: “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” A universe exists on matter and energy, space and time. It’s a demanding thing, like one’s livelihood, a process of world-making. Here’s the initial sketch:



A digital iteration of Sivers’ call to create your own version of the cosmos:



Sivers ends Anything You Want with a section called “You make a perfect world.” The last statement: “Whatever you make, it’s your creation, so make it your personal dream come true.”

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(1) One of my favorite TED Talks is Derek Sivers’ Weird, or just different?—wisdom in less than three minutes.

(2) 37signals’ new book is REMOTE: Office Not Required.

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See: Infographics inspired by Richard Florida’s book The Rise of the Creative Class

Infographics inspired by Richard Florida’s book “The Rise of the Creative Class”

I finally read The Rise of The Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life by urban studies theorist Richard Florida and published in 2002(1). Great read, and while reading, there were some passages which  inspired me to make infographics, set in a condensed font and red color, stemming from the book’s binding and jacket.

Infographic 1: Composition of the Creative Class
Richard Florida describes the Creative Class as consisting of two groups: “Super-Creative Core” and “Creative Professionals.” The former includes scientists and engineers, university professors(2), poets and novelists, artists, entertainers, actors, designers and architects, et al. From Florida, “People at the core of the Creative Class fully engage in the creative process. … Along with problem-solving, their work may entail problem-finding: not just building a better mousetrap, but noticing first that a better mousetrap would be a handy thing to have.” The latter group “engage in creative problem-solving … apply or combine standard approaches in unique ways to fit the situation, exercise a great deal of judgment, perhaps try something new.” Here’s the initial sketch:



Then a digital iteration of Florida’s breakdown of the Creative Class:



Infographic 2: Attributes of the Creative Class
A chapter is dedicated to “The Creative Economy” where precursor societal waves, such as “Industrial Capitalism,” were highlighted. A particular wave which Florida honed on was “The Organization Age” (late 1800s–early 1900s): “Its defining element is the shift to a modern, highly-organized economy and society whose fundamental features and large-scale institutions, functional specialization and bureaucracy. This transition was premised on two basic principles: the breaking down of tasks into their most elemental components and the transformation of human productive activity into stable and predictable routines.” The “creative limits” of The Organizational Age helped pave the way for “new economic systems explicitly designed to foster and harness human creativity, and the emergence of a new social milieu that supports it.” One economic system, a theme throughout the book, is its evolving form as a city, with its evolving infrastructure and affordances. Here’s the initial sketch:



Then a digital iteration:



Infographic 3: Cultural offerings of the street
Another of the book’s themes is the sense of place. One of Florida’s chapters is “The Power of Place.” Cities, especially those at the size of XXXL, show off their large stadiums and malls. Florida emphasizes the smaller, more grounded and diverse, cultural destinations, which stimulate creativity. Here’s the initial sketch:



Then a digital iteration of what Florida calls “The Hegemony of the Street”:

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From the book’s conclusion, “We must carefully consider the ends to which we direct our creativity. It is a precious asset not to be squandered trivially, and a powerful force to be harnessed and directed with careful consideration of all its possible consequences. Which brings us back to the question posed at the very outset of this book: What do we really want? What kind of life—and what of society—do we want to bequeath to coming generations? … The task of building a truly creative society is not a game of solitaire. This game, we play as a team.”

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(1) There is a 10th Anniversary Edition.

(2) According to Creativity specialist Sir Ken Robinson, “Not the high watermark of all human achievement. They’re just another form of life.” See his TED Talk Schools kill creativity.

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In his keynote address of South by Southwest 2012 in Austin, Texas, singer, songwriter, and performer Bruce Springsteen eloquently spoke about creativity: “I’d like to talk about the one thing that’s been consistent over the years—the genesis and power of creativity, the power of the songwriter, or let’s say composer, or just creator. So whether you’re making dance music, Americana, rap music, electronica, it’s all about how you’re putting what you do together. The elements you’re using don’t matter. Purity of human expression and experience is not confined to guitars, to tubes, to turntables, to microchips, there is no right way, no pure way of doing it, there’s just doing it. We live in a post-authentic world, and today, authenticity is a house of mirrors. It’s all just what you’re bringing when the lights go down. It’s your teachers, your influences, your personal history. At the end of the day, it’s the power and purpose of your music that still matters.”

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Reviews of more recommended books: Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination by Hugh MacLeod of Gapingvoid, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality by Scott Belsky of Behance, REWORK by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals Basecamp, Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk.

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Making Rare Book Feast #1: Herbert Bayer’s Book of Maps

From my rare design book collection, designer Herbert Bayer’s “World Geo-Graphic Atlas” keeps my attention. I wrote about it. This time I wanted to make a video of it.

I pitched the idea to my collaborator, Joe Giovenco, since I know nothing about working with audio and video. We’ve done some audio reviews of creative business books. He was game. As this was an on-the-side project, we worked over a few weekends, and Joe spent a few nights assembling, editing and refining the footage.



Camera and Microphone
The primary draw for this project was digital documentation. Joe did some research and determined that a Canon EOS Rebel T2i Digital SLR camera would have the best price point vs. performance—we split the cost and acquired one. But the thrill was short-lived: Joe noticed a rogue red pixel in the test photos. It was mailed (twice) for repairs. Afterwards, the camera cooperated. An Azden mic was used for the narration which was done at a separate time.



Software
Another draw for this project was Joe’s experience with Ableton Live and Adobe After Effects. The learning curve was minimal, but handling digital material with moving images and sound sucked up a lot of computing power, which became evident on Joe’s pre-unibody MacBook Pro. Much time was spent waiting for effects to render themselves. For drafting the script and storyboards, I relied on Microsoft Office, while the stills were handled in Adobe Photoshop.



To organize our files and share them, from iterative storyboards and scripts to soundtrack samples and to-dos, we used 37signals’ Backpack. I’ve been using this webapp for a lot of projects and it proved useful again for this collaboration.

What’s next?
The next rare design book project is TBD. In the meantime, enjoy our first installment of Rare Book Feast:



Big thanks to Joe for the video and audio engineering plus photography—most of all, a fun collaboration.

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The reception to the first installment of Rare Book Feast has been tremendous. This would not have been possible without Tina Roth Eisenberg of swissmiss, Maria Popova of Brain Pickings and The Atlantic, Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners, Daniel Benning of ONEEIGHTNINE, and Dan Wagstaff of The Casual Optimist. Big thanks to each of these awesome Gestalt-Ingenieurs and to viewers like you!

From Scandals to Stimulus: Visualizing Finance

Reflecting a clear signs of the times, news headlines are infused with a financial language that ranges from scandals to stimulus. Here are a few visuals aimed at demystifying the loaded, complex terms currently playing a big role in the economy:



Karen Yourish (reporting) and Laura Stanton (graphic) of The Washington Post visually tackle the composition of the stimulus package.



Katherine Dillon and Kate Thompson of the media design firm Dillon Thompson created a step-by-step walkthrough of a Ponzi scheme.



Dillon Thompson also illustrated the meaning of a Pyramid scheme.



Jonathan Jarvis, Masters of Fine Arts Candidate in the Media Design Program at the Art Center College of Design, created a series of animated shorts to help visualize the Crisis of Credit.



J. Jason Smith, of the blog Graphicology, comments on the presentations given by GM and Chrysler about their survival plans.

For additional sources that tackle the complicated nature of the economy, the New York Times has their Economix blog. There’s Planet Money by National Public Radio, and the program Frontline produced Inside the Meltdown with timeline.

There seems to be no fatigue in sight when it comes to envisioning information about the state of the economy. As Credit of Crisis creator Jonathan Jarvis put it: “The goal is to give form to the complex financial crisis to enhance the understanding of it.”

Optimized for Energy Conversation: Utility Statements Adjusted toward Green

Image credit: Max Whittaker for The New York Times

California’s experiment with redesigned statements, issued to Sacramento residents, is aimed at helping to change minds about energy. A positive byproduct of the effort has proven to be neighborly competition: Who can lower energy consumption the most? Find out more at my latest piece for the Green Printer blog.

Previous post: Designer Scott Ballum’s Consume®econnection Project

Design the Vote!

Information Architect Sean Tevis is running for Kansas State Representative. The illustrative and witty presentation of his campaign is reminiscent of the book Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. The unconventional approach is helping to bring in contributions as a result.