Drink'n'Draw: Creating Visual Languages for More Effective Training

September 7, 2022
4 minutes
Kevin Thorn joins for another Drink n Draw.

Communicating clearly is probably the most difficult thing anyone can do in business. Our job as Instructional Designers is often to make better communication happen under the guise of "we need everyone to be better trained on _______". 

It doesn't matter what level you are at within your training team or the overall organization.  Everyone from the new intern to the experienced CLO needs to improve their ability to communicate complex ideas and concepts in order to influence others into action.  This is where Visual Language Theory comes into play. 

Kevin Thorn joined us to explore concepts on how to better communicate ideas and transform those ideas into a visual language. One of the most important aspects of this process (and coincidentally in our ID work) is extracting you and your stakeholders' ideas and converting them into a universal visual language that your target audience will clearly understand.  We discussed the entire process using old school "pen & paper" (and the digital version using Procreate w/ipad) so that it's accessible to everyone including those professionals not interested in mastering new design tools.

Join us for this session and find out how you can also get more in-depth instruction and training on these processes from Kevin at other events like DevLearn and StepAway.Design.  

Shared links from chat:

Kevin is part of this neat conference/non-conference event Step Away 2022

The visual alphabet — Your building blocks to draw quickly

What is Visual Language?

Procreate App

Camo – iPhone as webcam app

To see all the comments from the chat, check out the full session right here.  

And to ask more questions, or participate in extended conversations about this episode, please join us in the IDIODC LinkedIn Group.

About Kevin Thorn

Kevin is an award-winning eLearning designer & developer, consultant, and owner of NuggetHead Studioz, LLC., a boutique custom design and development studio specializing in online learning experiences.  

After retiring from the US Army, Kevin pursued a career in corporate IT and Training & Development. With his combined military and industry experience, Kevin started the Studioz in 2012 working with clients in various industries solving problems in a wide-range of creative projects.  

Based in the North Mississippi Delta, Kevin, the Chief NuggetHead harnesses a bench a creative practitioners in instructional design, elearning development, illustration and graphic design, animation, and serious comics. Kevin is a well-known industry speaker and trainer on elearning development, design workflows, and is also a certified facilitator in LEGO®Serious Play® methodologies.  

Academic stuff: BS in Information Technology Management from Christian Brothers University (2003) and MS in Instructional Design and Technology from the University of Memphis (2018).

About IDIODC

Instructional Designers in Offices Drinking Coffee (Affectionately known as IDIODC) is a weekly live videocast and podcast that helps instructional designers with pain points and provides best practices and industry insight.  

Every Wednesday morning at 10am ET hosts Brent Schlenker and Chris Van Wingerden guide us through an upbeat and candid conversation with their guests from the eLearning and training world. The live cast session encourages peers to participate in the chat and share their own personal insight! After airing live, you can catch the learning podcast on all major streams such as Spotify, Apple, and Google Play podcasts, as well as on YouTube.

IDIODC is a Top 40 Hit!

We could have been #1 but chair dancing was not a judged element. But no matter, we are simply happy to be selected. Check out this amazingly short press release: “IDIODC was selected as one of the Top 40 Learning and Development Podcasts on the web.”

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