On 24 April 2020, I attended an interesting online session by Rafael Höhr on “Applications to create graphics in newsrooms“.
Although the title was explicit, we were going to talk about tools to create graphics, I cannot help thinking that tools are not the most important part in the process of creating graphics. Rafael explained this very well during the session and despite everything we spent (too much) time on tools.
The process of creating graphics should follow this order:
First, create a story! A story around the questions you want to answer, around what you want to show, around the 5Ws
Link your story to skills. Surround yourself with a multi-skilled team that will help you analyze, edit, interpret, tell, graph, animate your data.
At the end only, choose the tool (s) best suited to your needs
My sketchnotes of Rafael’s online session:
Thanks to my colleagues in the EU Publications Office for organising the online session.
Being forced to work from home due to the coronavirus pandemic brought a lot of uncertainty, fear, big changes to our lives. Teleworking mindfully makes possible to live it better! This is the main message of an online session organised by my colleagues from the EC HR department.
Their presentation is based on the work of two extremely inspiring and inspired persons: the master of mindfulness, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross who described five stages of grief. (it fills me with joy to see how “we” rediscover the Elisabeth’s work during this coronavirus crisis).
Recently I posted on social media a visualisation of my CV based on my LinkedIn data. I enriched it with my practice of visual thinking and my main job experience.
I explain here how you can do the same and create your own visual CV using Excel only (Microsoft Excel 2016). If I used Adobe Photoshop to add the fades in the 2nd and 3rd graphics, you don’t need it for the basic version of the 3 graphics. You don’t have to be an expert in Excel either, a low-medium level is sufficient.
How to create a visual CV step-by-step:
Start with a new blank workbook
Create a table with the start/end dates of the different periods of your professional life that you want to visualise. Rename this sheet to “Data”. I customised the cell format of my dates with the custom type “mmm yyyy”. Up to you to use any other date format, it has no influence on the following. Note that I decided to start the list with my birthdate, which makes my data more complete than what is displayed on Linkedin. It’s up to you what data you want to see in your visual CV.
Create a new sheet that you rename to “Viz” for your visualisation.
Reserve its first line for your title and any other information you want to add. Create a matrix with the months of the year on an horizontal line and a top-down list with all years you want to use in the first column. In my case the list goes from 2020 to 1965. You can duplicate the line with the name of the months at the bottom of the matrix if your list of years is long (like mine).
Fill in the first 4 cells of the matrix with the corresponding dates. Then drag the fill handle to fill the remaining cells of the matrix with their date (from January of the year in the top-left cell to December of the last year in the bottom-right cell)
Select all your data. Select the “Format” option in the horizontal navigation menu and set the value of Row height to 20 and the value of Column Width to 4. In my case, these values resize the cells into a nice shape.
Select again all your data. Right-click them and select the “Format cells…” option. In the “Fill” tab, set the Background Color to white. All gray cell borders are gone.
Select the dates into the matrix only. The row(s) with the name of the months and the column with the years are not part of your selection. Right-click it and select the “Format cells…” option. In the “Border” tab, select the thick style line; change its Color to White; and tick the Outline and Inside options to apply these changes to the selected cells. Don’t press now the “OK” button or come back to the “Format cells…” option.
Within the “Format cells…” option, go to the “Font” tab. Select a light gray for the font Color. Then go to the “Fill” tab and select the same light gray for the Background Color. Confirm your changes with the “OK” button. If everything went well, your matrix should consist of gray cells with white borders. Something like this:
You have a nice matrix with all years of your professional life represented with a gray box for each month. You will now color each month with a different color according to the different periods of your professional life. You can do it by hand (like I did the very first time), or use the Conditional Formatting feature to change automatically the color of your cells based on the start/end dates you entered in the “Data” sheet.
Select the matrix of gray cells only.
In the horizontal navigation menu, choose “Conditional Formatting” and the Manage Rules… option
Click the “New Rule” button and select “Format only cells that contain”
Set the condition to format the cells of the matrix with your first professional period. In my case, it’s what I called Recklessness. The condition will select the cells “between” the start date of my Recklessness (= cell Data!$B$10) and its end date (= cell Data!$C$10). You do that with a click on the icons on the right of the field; here indicated by the red arrows, then go to the “Data” sheet to select the related cells.
Then click the “Format” button to choose what color to apply when this condition is met. In the “Fill” tab, set the Background Color to the desired colour. In the “Font” tab, set the font Color to the same as the background. My condition looks like that:
Confirm this condition by clicking the “OK” button, and apply it to the matrix cells with the other “OK” button. Cells corresponding to my period of Recklessness are now colorised in a dark violet.
Reselect your matrix of cells and redo the same steps to create a new condition for your second period: From the horizontal navigation menu, choose again the “Conditional Formatting” and the Manage Rules… option. Click New Rule… and select “Format only cells that contain”. Select the start and end dates of your second period and select a new color for the font and the background. In my case it’s the Primary School period that starts in Sep 1971 and ends in Aug 1977. I decided to format the corresponding period with dark ochre color.
Repeat these steps for all periods of your professional life. At the end, you have as many conditions as there are periods. And all periods of your professional life are now with different colors.
Add a title on the first row and any other details you want to display in a footer. Add the name of the period on the right of the related year, maybe using the same color as the period. Don’t forget to set the background color for these cells to white.
Excel does not allow to save your final work in image format. You need another program like Microsoft paint or Adobe Photoshop, or any other application for images.
Select all the cells with the visualisation of your CV. Copy them, Ctrl-C, and paste them, Ctrl-V, in your favorite application for images . Save to an image. That’s all.
To add other graphs on the right of this one, like I did with my practice of visual thinking and my main job experience, you should
add your new data in the “Data” sheet
go again through all steps to create a new graph and to colorise it, being smart in managing the matrix with the dates.
I look forward to seeing your results, feel free to share them with me.
In this post, I explain what is a visual thinker and the benefits of using the visual approach for individuals, groups and managers. Originally, it was a document that I shared with my superiors and colleagues to help them better understand. Then I thought that everyone could benefit from it.
Update (21 May 2024): If French isn’t a problem for you, then you might enjoy listening to this podcast where I try to answer some questions about visual thinking. What is sketchnoting, visual note taking? What benefits can this visual practice bring you in a professional environment or in your private life? What does this have to do with well-being and meditation? Where to start with sketchnoting?
What do I mean by visual thinker?
As a visual thinker, I use a visual approach mainly during live events to allow you and your participants to anchor information, find patterns, make your ideas visible, establish connections and relationships between your ideas, and to ultimately make sense out of chaos or complexity. It also activates the emotional intelligence of people, not just the rational one. It consists mainly of combining hand-made graphic elements with texts and visual metaphors. Different techniques allow me to meet different needs and obtain different results.
What are my visual techniques?
Graphic Facilitation and Graphic Co-creation
I use Graphic Facilitation and Graphic Co-creation as thinking tools for better discussions due to a different meeting setup. Both help people to find solutions, to innovate, to brainstorm, to reach consensus, to make decisions. Compared to the other techniques described below, the level of involvement of participants is high to very high in these two first techniques.
Example where researchers have had difficulty to agree on what is the meaning of “innovation”. Thanks to the visual elements they created with me on the paper they were able to “see” this difficulty. This awareness allowed them to redirect their discussion in a more constructive and clear way:
Example of using a hand-made visual template (also called canvas or harvesting sheet) to put participants in a different mental state and mood, conducive to better conversations and exchanges:
I use Graphic Recording to visually capture live the main message of conferences, meetings, or training. This helps participants to “see” their thoughts, to consider the topic being presented and discussed from another angle, and to better retain information and learning. Depending on the circumstances, I work on a large mural or on flip-charts.
The use of sketchnotes is quite similar to graphic recording in the sense that I also visually capture live what happens during an event. The difference lies in the paper size which is that of my notebook. Here participants don’t see my visuals directly (unless a camera projects my work on a big screen). I also use sketchnotes on many other occasions “just for me”, at work and at home. Whether it’s to organise my thoughts, to sketch a work planning or a process, for a to-do list or a grocery list, to plan my vacation, etc. Anyone can benefit from the practice of sketchnotes, and I guide those who wish during small learning sessions.
Visual communication
I use Visual Communication with hand-drawn illustrations to attract people’s attention incredibly. It gives more impact to your message, which is better understood and memorised by your audience. This is the technique with the lowest involvement level of the participants.
Example of visual communication with the story of the EC’s DG HR represented as a river. The handmade visual supported the Director-General’s speech and captured the attention of her audience.
Visuals as a Working tool
On a smaller scale, I use visuals in my daily routine as a working tool to offer more efficiency to my colleagues. It helps to clearly represent complex processes, workflows, etc; to capture, modelize and structure association of ideas, also for problem solving and project management.
What are the benefits of visual thinking?
I’m not going to review the benefits that neuroscience has long proven with hand-drawn visuals. I will simply mention the benefits that come from my direct and personal experience.
Benefits for an individual (at least for me)
I grasp complexity better than reading a linear text
It stimulates my imagination and creativity
It helps me better retain information and learning
I am more present and focused
It’s a pathway to heightened my self-awareness, my understanding of others, and have a deeper connection with the world around me. It opens my mind to other perspectives
It’s a source of well-being and a meditation channel
I have more fun working on serious, tedious, complex topics
Benefits for a group or a team
Visual thinking brings a new energy to the room that boosts collaboration and engagement (people realise this is not an ordinary event)
The large format graphic helps participants to work together more
effectively because:
they can “see” their ideas and what others are saying too
everyone can contribute, feel heard
the process and its progress is visible
The large format graphic creates also a neutral space that encourages
the debate about ideas while it reduces interpersonal conflicts
It helps the participants stay focused on the discussion (less distracted)
An individual can isolate himself from the group and
think in front of the large format graphic
It brings more clarity and less ambiguity
It generates collective and emotional intelligence by unlocking collective creativity
It improves collective understanding of concepts and sharing of agreements. The group can get on the same page
It transcends language barriers, eases conflicts, and dispels misunderstandings
It allows to achieve emotional and deeply relevant results
The meeting report is created on the go.
It will hold the participants accountable for what they have said and
decided
It will help them to remember and share their work with others
Benefits for managers and the organisation
Visual thinking is a powerful and effective tool
It gives the image of a modern and positive leadership
It contributes to better decision making and better shared decision making, both achieved much more effectively
It enables to tap into the collective, creative and emotional intelligences of a group in order to:
Deal with complex issues
Collect information to make informed decisions
Meetings are with fewer interpersonal conflicts and more debate about ideas
It leads to greater buy-in for visions, strategies, actions plans, decisions; to better commitment to these and better appropriation for a sustainable change
It generates greater accountability for what is said and decided
It denotes a transparent communication
It materialises the recognition to individual contributions and group consensus
It leads to more motivated teams
It brings fun into otherwise boring jobs, tasks, and meetings
Some years ago, Robert Madelin was appointed Director-General of DG INFSO and he requested major changes in the way the DG ran its intranet. To explain to him that we didn’t have enough time to apply all of them, given our available resources, I made our case to him with a quickly sketched story on paper, instead of a Powerpoint and Excel figures. Robert accepted our proposition because I was disruptive. I approached him with unconventional thinking. When I went to his office with a drawing, he said, ‘Oh my God, what is that?’ And when he looked closely, it helped him think differently about the problem. This for me was the opportunity to make my case and he accepted my explanation.
