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  A portrait of the user as a lost man.

  How do we help him become unlost? That’s where our software helps. Imagine that our software runs on a device that our user already has with him—his mobile phone, for example. We can draw that, too.

  Knowing he has a helpful application in his phone, he pulls it out of his pocket.

  Now imagine if our software could determine our user’s location based on his phone’s internal GPS locator. Wouldn’t that be cool: Just by having a phone in his pocket, our user already has a built-in location detector. How about if our software translates that internal location signal into a visual interface that shows the user where he is on a map? We can draw that, too.

  Our software translates the internal GPS signal into a visual map.

  Look at that: With nothing more than a mobile phone running our software, our user knows exactly where he is! And now he’s happy. And we can draw that, too. (Cha-ching! Hey, nice software!)

  Look at that: Our software made our user happy!

  This is the role of a “portrait” in Vivid Thinking: By adding more portraits connected by arrows (the essence of Grammar Graph elemental picture number 4, the “time line,” which we’ll get to in a minute), a simple picture of any part of our idea becomes a starting point for vividly exploring the entire idea.

  The Central Role of the Portrait

  Portraits are key to everything else we’re going to discuss in this chapter. Just as our fox’s verbal grammar tells us that every sentence needs a subject, our hummingbird’s visual grammar tells us that every picture needs a portrait. The “who” or “what” that first comes to mind when an idea begins to cook in our heads is what we draw first. We don’t need to think about it any more than that: The first thing that comes to mind is the first portrait that we draw.

  Because of this central role that portraits play in all Vivid Ideas, we’re going to assign “portraits” a simple shorthand visual icon: the dotted circle . That way, when we talk about “portraits” as a category of pictures, this symbol will help us identify the key position they play. From now on, whenever we see an empty dotted-outline circle in a picture, map, chart, or diagram, we’re going to know it means “a portrait belongs here.”

  In the rest of Visual Grammar, when we see a dotted-line circle, it means “a portrait goes here.”

  As we explore the remaining five elemental “parts of seeing” that compose visual grammar, we’ll see that empty circle again and again, reminding us that if we can draw a simple portrait, we can draw anything.

  The “portrait” is the first elemental picture in our Grammar Graph: a simple representation of a person, place, or thing. Portraits are the visual equivalent of nouns, pronouns, adjectives of quality, and simple verbs.

  Quick Break: Our Hummingbird Would Like to Remind Us of Three Things . . .

  Before we go on, a word of reassurance. If any of us remain concerned about our ability to draw, our inner hummingbird can offer three soothing truths:

  First, when it comes to Vivid Thinking, nobody cares “how good” our drawings look. Remember: The whole point of Vivid Thinking isn’t to create a visual masterpiece; it’s to get the pictures our hummingbird sees in our mind down on paper so other people (and our fox) can see them, too. And in most cases, the less refined they are, the better our inner fox likes them.

  Second: Of all six elements of visual grammar, only the portrait requires any “artistic skill” at all—and we can learn that with minimal practice.

  Third: In a pinch, if for whatever reason we just can’t draw the right portrait—we can’t draw the image well enough, we can’t think of what the image might be, we don’t want to get slowed down—a simple “word in a circle” can often serve as a workable temporary substitute. (But it’s always worth coming back later to create the portrait; it’s the visual thinking about what the “thing” really looks like that gives the portrait so much mental value.)

  2 The Adjectives of Our Ideas: Charts

  The next picture type that occupies our Grammar Graph is the Jtablhe our i“chart,” and it sits just below the portrait, on the left side.

  These pictures are called “charts,” and they represent the numeric adjectives of our idea: Just as our portrait identified the person, place, or thing we had in mind, so the chart visually answers the question “How many are there?” In this way, charts represent the “how muchs” and “how manys” of our ideas.

  Charts represent the number of objects we see; they are the visual adjectives of quantity.

  Knowing how many of something there are is often critical to making decisions about it, especially when we want to compare the quantity of one thing to the quantity of another (books I have read versus books I haven’t read, for example) or want to compare the quantity at one time with the quantity at another time. (For example, two years ago Apple was worth less than Microsoft, but today it’s worth more.) That’s why we see so many charts in education and in business: We want to see how things numerically stack up against one another. (Not to mention that stacks are really easy to draw.)

  Charts show us how things stack up next to one another.

  Although charts are the most common picture we see in education and business, the frequency with which we create them often masks what we’re really supposed to see28 when we look at them. As a visual representation of the quantity of something, the simplest chart is one that just shows exactly how many of that thing we have by representing its portrait that many times. If our fox says “three users,” our hummingbird draws . “Six mobile phones” becomes .

  The trouble with these kinds of portrait-quantity charts is that (as we can already see here) they very quickly become unwieldy—if not outright unreadable. A better way to create a chart comparing many objects or large numbers is to first draw a portrait of the objects being counted and then add a box (or circle) around them to show relative quantity. The portrait helps our hummingbird see the difference between the types of objects being compared, and the chart helps see the quantity.

  The best way to create a chart is to first draw a portrait of each item being compared and then draw a box (or circle) to show the relative size or quantity of each.

  Now when o Je’isu11" recindur fox says, “Ideally, every user should have two mobile phones and every mobile phone should have five of our software applications,” our hummingbird can help everyone see clearly what that means.

  This chart shows how much software we’d like to sell.

  The “Chart” occupies the second slot in our Grammar Graph: It is a visual representation of how many persons, places, or things we’re thinking about. Charts are the visual equivalent of adjectives of quantity.

  3 The Prepositions of Our Idea: Maps

  The next picture in our Grammar Graph is the “map.” “Maps” sit just below the portrait in the middle of the graph.

  Like a chart, a map is another way of “packaging” portraits so that they show something new—in this case the position and location of the “things” the portraits represent. What a map does in visual grammar is identical to the role of a preposition in verbal grammar: It shows where one thing is in relation to another.

  Maps represent the prepositions of our ideas, where one part of the idea sits in spatial relation to another part.

  For example, verbal grammar tells our fox that if he wants to describe the fact that one circle is inside another circle, he has to use the preposition “inside.” Our hummingbird instead draws the simplest conceivable “map,” one circle inside another:

  One circle is inside the other.

  As we might remember from the last time we slogged through grammar, sometimes a preposition takes a couple of words to describe (that’s where “prepositional phrases” come from). If one person is “on the right” of another person, our fox has to use the prepositional phrase “on the right” to make that clear. Our hummingbird just draws the two portraits next to each other.

  He is on her right. J
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  There are dozens of prepositions our fox uses to describe the spatial relationships of things29—and our hummingbird can easily show all of them:

  All a map does is use these visual positioning cues to show how far apart things are and in what direction. Like all elemental pictures, maps are easy to create if we start with a couple of portraits. We pick the things whose relative positions we want to compare and then draw them in those positions.

  This map shows that Little Red Riding Hood is still a safe distance from Grandmother’s house.

  Simple maps like these also represent the visual equivalent of verbal conjunctions.

  Maps also represent the conjunctions of our ideas.

  For example, our fox’s verbal conjunctions, like “and,” “or,” and “but,” become our hummingbird’s visual equivalents:

  These kinds of simple maps are great when we want to show the position of things relative to each other, but if we want to show where our things are in relation to an absolute direction (like east versus west) or a conceptual ranking (like cheap versus expensive), we have to add something else: labeled coordinates.

  In maps, labeled coordinates are two intersecting lines that explicitly show the dimensions against which we’re mapping our items. (Labeled coordinates don’t have to come in twos, but two makes the most visual sense when we’re drawing on a flat surface.)

  Labeled coordinates explicitly show the dimensions against which we’re mapping our items.

  With only these elements—portraits plus positioning pictures plus labeled coordinates—we can draw maps of any spatial idea we can come up with.

  Maps give us the means to see where items are located within our ideas. Maps are the visual representation of prepositi Jg wsol"19ons and conjunctions.

  4 The Tense of Our Ideas: Timelines

  The next picture type is the “timeline.” In our Grammar Graph of elemental pictures, timelines also sit just below the portrait and to the right of the map.

  Just as charts showed the number of items in our ideas and maps showed those items’ locations in space, so timelines show those items’ positions in time. In visual grammar, timelines take the place of tense.

  Timelines represent the temporal relationships of the objects and events that we see. They are the visual equivalent of tense.

  If our fox is feeling satiated and well rested, it’s probably because yesterday he ate, last night he had a good snooze, today he is feeling chipper, and tomorrow he will need to do it all again. Whew: There’s a lot of tense in that sentence. How would our hummingbird show it?

  Ate, slept, feels chipper, will eat: Our fox lives a TENSE life.

  Timelines are easy to draw: As we saw in the first software example (back in “portraits”), all we need to do to create a timeline is draw a couple of sequential portraits and add an arrow between them.

  A temporal sequence = a timeline.

  The key here is the sequential part: Since (as far as we humans can detect) time always appears to run in one direction, from past to present to future, all timelines must do the same. Unlike the arrows we used to create “labeled coordinates” in our map (which could point in any direction because they represented open space), the arrows in our timeline must always proceed in one direction, from before to now to later.

  Before, now, later: Time is a one-way street.

  When we want to show “when things happen,” we simply draw a timeline.

  It’s worth noting that as we translate verbal ideas into Jlly t="s havisuals, there is another way to express the relationships in time of our noun portraits: Some of the prepositions explored in the maps picture reflect temporal rather than spatial positions: Before, during, and after are prepositions that act in Vivid Grammar just like tense. We represent them with the same “This first thing happened” , “That next thing happened” , “The last thing happened” arrows used in all timelines.

  Timelines give us the means to see how the things in our idea fit together in time; what came first, what comes next, what will come tomorrow. Timelines are the visual representation of tense.

  5 The Complex Verbs of Our Ideas: Flowcharts

  The two remaining elemental pictures of Vivid Grammar are different from those we’ve seen so far. While we created charts, maps, and timelines by arranging portraits in uniquely different ways and kept the three resulting pictures independent, the next two pictures require us to mix things up.

  The flowchart combines nouns and prepositions and tense to illustrate “how.”

  In our table of elemental pictures, number five, the “flowchart,” sits below both maps and timelines. This is because this visual representation of complex verbs is created by combining aspects of the map and the timeline. By merging nouns (portraits) with prepositions (maps) with tense (timelines), flowcharts, like verbs, descriptively show how something happens.

  Flowcharts give descriptive action to how things occur.

  A more verbal, fox-like way to say that is, “The interaction of nouns plus prepositions plus tense gives us complex verbs”—or who and what + where + when = how.

  The interaction of nouns plus prepositions plus tense gives us complex verbs.

  A more visual, hummingbird-like way to show that is:

  Who and what portraits + where maps + when timelines = how flowcharts.

  Both ways of describing flowcharts tell us the same thing: When our fox uses a sentence (or a paragraph or even an entire report) to describe a subtle cause-and-effect interaction, our hummingbird draws a corresponding flowchart.

  For example, it has often been said that “the early bird gets the worm.” As a graphic reminder that we should get up early and be diligent in our work, this statement can also be represented vividly like this:

  Birds, worms, timing, and location. They all combine to tell us to get up early.

  Although this maxim talks explicitly about birds, worms, and time, what it’s actually referring to is what happens when all three coincide,30 resulting in a statement that tells us far more than how much someone gets to eat.

  That’s what happens when we let out hummingbird loose on a verbal expression that we’ve heard so many times that we don’t think about it anymore. (Which is another good working definition of blah-blah-blah: something we’ve heard so many times that we don’t think about what it means anymore.) When we force ourselves to create a visual representation of the words, the central idea becomes vividly clear.

  Given the complexity of what happens in any multicomponent cause-and-effect relationship, we simply can’t effectively wrap our heads around more than a few pieces at a time using words alone. That’s the job of flowcharts: mapping out all the pieces of an interaction in one place so we can see them all at once.

  6 The Interaction of the Complex Subjects of Our Ideas: Multivariable Plots

  The sixth and last elemental picture in our Grammar Graph is the “multivariable plot.” Otherwise known by the technical term “the kitchen sink,” the multivariable plot is created by combining aspects of the chart (who and what portraits + how many of each) and the map (where are they located, both spatially and conceptually). As the term “multivariable” suggests, this last picture is the combination of all the elements of Vivid Grammar mapped together within a common frame.

  When nouns, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and tense come together in writing, we call them a phrase; when we add verbs, we call them a sentence. When they all come together in drawing, we call them a plot.

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  The best way to think about a multivariable plot (which for simplicity we’ll call an “MVP” from now on) is to imagine it as a kind of visual stew of our ideas. We throw all the raw ingredients of our idea together into a pot and let them simmer. After several bubbly hours, the thicker meaty elements melt together at the bottom, the vegetables get friendly in the middle, the essential soup rises to the top, and the unnecessary details burn off as steam. From many ingredients
comes together a single rich meal, tasty and fulfilling.

  The essence of a multivariable plot: From many ingredients comes a rich stew.

  If we’ve selected good ingredients and cooked them together well, when we’re done we’ll have something tastier and more nutritious (not to mention more fulfilling) than any of the original components. That’s the ideal MVP: a single picture that displays the rich interaction of multiple independent elements.