Category: Thinking

Posted on

More visual genius of Walt Disney

I’m sure you’ve seen the brilliant and ground-breaking concept map that Walt Disney drew in 1957. You should have, it’s been on Mind-mapping.org since mid-2008, but if you’ve missed it so far, it’s in our history article here: Roots of visual mapping.

Well, here’s another piece of outstanding visual thinking and communication apparently from even earlier – 1943 – and yet it looks fresh enough to have been designed yesterday: The Disney organization chart.  As it says at the foot, “This Chart Designates Operations and Not Authorities.”


Click the image to see the largest size I have.

Vic

Have you checked Our Faves yet?
Subscribe to the RSS feed for news of regular
posts & follow me on Twitter for in-between
items about visual tools you never knew existed.

If you’re on Twitter and tweet about mapping topics,
tweet me — I’d love to know and follow you.

Google

Posted on

The laws of simplicity – John Maeda

I’m browsing “Designing Universal Knowledge” by Gerlinder Schuller at present, and came across a thought-provoking guide to simplicity (‘laws’ is OTT, but that’s how they are described).  I like this list a lot.

Reduce
The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.

Organize
Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.

Time
Savings in time feel like simplicity.

Learn
Knowledge makes everything simpler.

Differences
Simplicity and complexity need each other.

Context
What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.

Emotion
More emotions are better than fewer.

Trust
In simplicity we trust.

Failure
Some things can never be made simple.

The One
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.

Vic
http://www.mind-mapping.org
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software

Google

Posted on

Exploratree

Now listen up, this one is really interesting if you value visualization and thinking tools.  And I doubt if you’d be at mind-mapping.org if you didn’t.

A new web-based tool for thinking, Exploratree, went up at the end of last year.  It’s aimed at students, but I’m sure that those of more mature years could sometimes make good use of the many visual thinking guides on this site.  It has something of the feel of de Bono’s CoRT about it, but is visual rather than acronym/text-based.

There are 23 read-made thinking guides like these:

exploratree.jpg

and you can make your own thinking guides as well.  But not a mind map or concept map in sight.  You work with these in Exploratree’s free, on line tool, and after you’ve registered, you can save them.

Vic

PS     Wish I could think of names like that.  Hints of “exploratory”, “exploring laboratory”, a “tree for exploring”  ….

Google