Get The Picture?

I’ll bet my BrandVenture team and clients have discussed how they are going to get me into therapy for my compulsive need to visualize and sketch out ideas.

We’ll be in a meeting talking when all of a sudden I rush out to get a poster pad and markers and start drawing cartoon characters and arrows and boxes with labels.

Funny thing about it is that after we get done meeting, all of the folks gathering around the table want a copy of the sketches.

The current April 2008 edition of Fast Company Magazine contains a feature article called “The Napkin Sketch.”

The article contains the following commentary in its first paragraph…

“Graphic expression and visual thinking are a central part of human cognition,” says Neil Cohn, a researcher in cognitive psychology and linguistics at Tufts University.

The second paragraph begins with another quote from the author of the book, The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas With Pictures …

“Between information overload, globalization and the sheer complexity of modern business, we’ve got to be more visual and less language dependent in communicating ideas.”

How many people in the business world today are communicating back and forth with text messages or text Emails? At least with telephone conversations there is the dimension level of tonality combined with the dynamics of dialogue.

And then there is the generational shift with Boomer guys and their dependency upon the text articles of Sports Illustrated versus the Millennium guys and their dependency with the picture graphics of ESPN Magazine.

Not trying to be gender biased, but its also kind of like Better Homes & Gardens and Simple Magazine among the gals.

I wish I could post this blog in scribbles, doodles and cartoons.

There was a news story on ABC Nightly News the other night about how some of the Geek 20-something technology venture groups in the Silicon Valley are banning laptops and Crackberries from staff meetings.

The stimulus of the right-side of the brain…you know, the part that is visual and contextual versus verbal and literal…is required for ideas to be remembered and integrated.

My sister’s partner, who is working on a master’s degree in philosophy, has spent the last two years writing a thesis.

I sometimes wonder if academia could even handle a thesis presented totally in pictures or better yet, one that was sketched out on napkins.

Then again, when something ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Maybe it’s better when philosophical perspectives as well as MBA marketing plans exist in their vast volume of text.

And the right side of the brain and long-term memory is stimulated by actual real world happenings that we can touch and feel instead.