Mapping Inner Space: Learning and Teaching Visual Mapping

Nancy Margulies, MA

This book was written by my friend and colleague, Nancy Marguiles. She is the author of many books about visual language, learning and systems thinking. This book describes the process of how visual thinking relies on paring down thoughts to key words and pictures.

Helm Wotzkow

I come by my life-long interest in letterforms honestly. My father was an engraver and my grand father was a hot lead typesetter for a letterpress publisher of fine books. This has been one of my favorite books since I was about 10. From the grace of Roman engraved lettering to modern (1950s) hand lettered styles, Wotzkow shares with us his love for the shape and flow of letters.

Alan Fletcher

A primer in visual intelligence, an exploration of the workings of the eye, the hand, the brain and the imagination. It is an inexhaustible mine of anecdotes, quotations, images, curious facts and useless information, oddities, serious science, jokes, memories all concerned with the interplay between the verbal and the visual, and the limitless resources of the human mind. Loosely arranged in 72 'chapters', all this material is presented in a wonderfully inventive series of pages that are themselves masterly demonstrations of the expressive use of type, space, colour and imagery.

Master designer Alan Fletcher has distilled a lifetime of experience and reflection into a brilliant exploration of such subjects as perception, color, pattern, proportion, paradox, illusion, language, alphabets, words, letters, ideas, creativity, culture, style, aesthetics and value.

Robert H. McKim

This was the first book I found on the theory and practice of flexible and visual thinking, and I still think it is the best. Originally published in 1980, it has been reissued recently in paperback, making it an affordable resource. There are five sections to the book:
1. Laying the ground for thinking in visual images
2. Preparation; materials, environment and attention
3. Seeing; form, space, and patterns
4. Imagining; fantasy, recall and insight
5. Idea-sketching; moving out of the "language rut"
Each section has theory and several relevant exercises.

On page 180 you'll find an example of generative graphics, one of the forerunners to graphic facilitation.

Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form

Scott McCloud

Scott McCloud is one of the most knowledgeable persons that I've run across concerning the science and effects of the sequential art medium. Understanding Comics, is a brilliant how-to guide on marrying image and language. They are both very different approaches to understanding comics and I recommend reading both.

Anthony Stevens

A look at symbols that transcend ethnic and linguistic boundaries. The engaging text, a bibliography rich with recent references, a glossary, and a separate symbol index combine to make this a standard, if not the standard in the field. The most accessible book that I have read on the meaning and development of symbols.

Gordon MacKenzie

MacKenzie worked for the Hallmark greeting card company for 30 years, first as a sketch artist and eventually as an upper-level manager, until he escaped the "hairball" by creating his own niche. In this book he tells what he knows about creativity and what he learned about the creative process in a corporate setting. I found it to be a delightful thought-provoking work of art. Read it and enjoy.

Re-Zoom

Istvan Banyai

Two entirely visual books that will grab your attention as you're drawn into the details of a story without words, showing that what you see is not always what it appears to be. The hardbound editions are scarce and collectible, but the softcover reprints are affordable.

Gene Combs, Jill Freedman

This book was inspired by the work of Milton H. Erickson and Gregory Bateson. Although it is a book primarily for therapists I found it particularly useful in thinking through the use of visual metaphors in my work. In the section on "Co-Creating New Meanings for Memories" the idea of personal experience becoming symbols for ideas, as well as linking symbols to context is explored.

The Whole Scale Change Toolkit

Dannemiller Tyson and Assoc.
Some illustrations by Christine Valenza

This book is full of the authors' collective wisdom that walks the reader through their model for changing the whole organization.

Christopher Hart

Susanne F.Fincher

Edward de Bono

J.E. Cirlot

Richter and Bakken

Larry Gonick

Richard C. Brandt

Charles Hampden-Turner

Jan V. White

Fran Claggett

Larry Raymond

Kurt Hanks and Larry Belliston

Jean Westcott and Jennifer Hammond Landau

Tony Buzon and Barry Buzon

Robert E Horn

Envisioning Information

Edward R. Tufte

Michael Doyle and David Strauss

Marvin R. Weisbord and Sandra Janoff