VisionJar | Passion for visual communication and presentation design

At this year’s TED, Sarah Kay received standing ovations for her talk “If I should have a daughter”. The talk is an extraordinary powerful example of storytelling and her way of telling her poetry (telling – because this is way beyond “reading”) really draws you in, almost makes you hold your breath.

She talks about her passion, spoken word poetry, as a way to understand the world and self.

“Everyone can communicate in some way, and everyone of us has stories, that the rest of us can learn from.”

It’s a beautiful talk – turn it on and let her words visualize and flow and listen to her stories.

Tim Brown, CEO of the design and innovation firm IDEA, talked in 2008 about creativity and play at the 2008 Serious Play conference, presented at TED.com. If you haven’t seen this – grab a cup of tea or coffee and spend 27 minutes and tune in and get reminded about the relationship between creative thinking and play.

One of the most important passages in his speech is the one about finding a trusted environemnt for creative thinking compared to how kids crate:

“Kids have no embarrasment at all – they just quite happily show their masterpiece to whoever wants to look at it. But as they learn to become adults, they become much more sensitive to the opinions of others, and they lose that freedom and they do start to become embarresed. And in studies of kids playing, it’s been shown time after time, that kids who feel secure, who are in a kid of trusted environemt, they’re the ones that feel most free to play.”

TED is a great source of inspiration in all forms. This is an interesting speech by the bestselling author and social thinker Jeremy Rifkin “Can we reach biosphere consciousness and global empathy in time to avert planetary collapse?” – presented by making visualizations on white board – in only black and red. A great example on when visualizations of complex concepts become more comprehensible.

David McCandless, author of the book The Visual Miscellaneum – a great inspirational and colorful book on visual information talks about the beauty of data visualization at TedGlobal 2010.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: The 25-year Swarthmore professor says TED is more alive and engaging than a college campus. | Courtesy of TED

TED really is a great resource for inspiration and knowledge – these are the 10 most popular TED Videos, as chosen by TEDsters. My personal favorite is #4, followed by #1, 6 and 7.

Sociologist and surfer-turned-designer David Carson walks through a fun and interesting slide deck of pictures from the world around us and from his work – talking about design and it’s meaning.

“Information is gushing toward your brain like a firehose aimed at a teacup” -Dogbert/Scott Adams as quoted and visualized by Karl Gude at TedX Lansing.