DesignJam: Visual Thinking, Visual Production with Greg Van Alstyne and Kelly Kornet

From napkin sketches and diagrams to photos, storyboards, and the all important slide deck, your visuals say a lot about you, your organization’s values, and how you communicate. Visual communications play a critical role in conceiving, developing and sharing innovative vision, whether we call it the big picture, the roadmap or the blueprint.

The good news is that thinking in a visual way, and creating great visual materials, is teachable, learnable and easier now than ever before. In this practical workshop you’ll learn smart ways to work -- with your eyes, your hands and your laptop -- to improve and sharpen your ideas and your output.

Photo: Greg Van Alstyne

Our two-part approach coaches and connects visual thinking -- generating and discussing ideas -- and visual production -- expressing and communicating key points about your company’s products, services and value proposition. We’ll cover visual approaches to:

• Generating and improving new ideas
• Understanding people’s needs and wants
• Choosing and using illustrations, photos & videos
• Creating attractive and effective slide decks

Whether you’re creating a business, or making your business more creative, come and try your hand at doing it better with visuals.

Participant will gain practical tools & skills including:

• Techniques for visually generating & refining ideas
• Visual tools for evaluating alternative product & service choices
• Ways of working with visual sources including Creative Commons
• Processes and rules for creating better presentations

Requirements

• Attendees are encouraged to bring material and ideas (product / service / value proposition / brand) they wish to advance
• All paper and pens are provided
• Slide design exercises require laptop with MS Powerpoint or equivalent software
• Search exercises require device with Internet access (free wifi available) 

About the Facilitators

Greg Van Alstyne (@gregvan) is a designer, teacher, researcher and futurist with more than twenty-five years practice in strategic communications and experience design, creative concept development, visualization, art direction, branding, publication design, and design management. At OCAD University Greg is Associate Professor of Design & co-founder and director of Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab). His strengths include visual communication, presentation & facilitation. Prior to his OCAD appointments Greg held positions in media, design and education settings including founder of the Department of New Media at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Creative Director at IconNicholson NY, and inaugural Director of the Institute without Boundaries (IwB).

Kelly Kornet (@kellykornet) is a trained graphic designer and a foresight & design researcher. Compelled to make sense of complex information through visual methods, her work draws from systems thinking, design, and graphic recording. A full-time student in the Strategic Foresight & Innovation program, Kelly is a Graduate Research Assistant in Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) – engaging in projects such as Digital Governance and the Strongly Sustainable Business Model Group.