Some of you may recall that in 2008 I made a personal resolution to draw some one-frame cartoons and post them to this blog. I have renewed my interest in drawing, turning some of my recent doodles, thoughts, and overheard conversations into little cartoons. After all, creating is another way of thinking. I'll be posting them here over the coming weeks. Enjoy!

These drawings borrow heavily from the style of Hugh at GapingVoid, who pioneered the drawing on the back of business cards and for whom I am no substitute (definitely check out).

Feel free to use these cartoons for your own non-commercial purposes, if one strikes your fancy. On your website, in your newsletters, in your presentations, or even on a t-shirt. Just make sure to give me credit and link back here to http://jenniferbdavis.blogspot.com. Thanks!

Dan Pink, one of my favorite authors of late, had a blog post about Craig Damrauer, who is a insightful artist who has come out with a line of artwork that boils down complicated concepts into mathmatical formulas. See the collection here, below are a few of my favorites.

Said this way, to be happy all you have to do is identify the "un" in your life, eliminate it, and viola!

I highly recommend you check out his entire slide show and find ways to integrate this creative, and highly-effective, approach to communication in your next presentation!

I have to admit I am a PowerPoint junkie. At work we use it ALL THE TIME and sometimes we forget that we can have meetings without it. I just learned about a new tool that might change all of that, it is called SlideRocket.

What I love about it already is that it is web-based, it appears to create beautiful and innovative presentations, and has built-in tools for presentation sharing over the web. No need to utilize PowerPoint AND a web conferencing tool in the future. Plus, they have some community elements that look interesting.

If you really need/want to use PowerPoint, you can always export your SlideRocket show. If you must.

I found a new little tool which is worth passing along. It is called 5Clicks by Interapple and it is a freeware utility that allows you to capture a portion of your screen and save it off in a variety of formats. The reason that I find this useful is that I use multiple monitors (something I have become addicted to and can't work without). When I do the standard Windows screen capture it gives me all 2,560 pixels in width, which is exactly the dimensions that I never need. This little tool will save me having to edit things down in PhotoShop or Paint when I need to snap a graphic (like the one to the right).

Now here is a tool that makes the life of a blogger a bit easier. It is called tumbalizr and their alpha version site allows you to type in a URL and then select a pixel width. It gives you a thumbnail JPEG of the site you selected (either a screen or the whole page). Then you can embed the shots into your PowerPoint presentations, websites, or blog posting (see left). Cool!

I have been up-to-my-eyeballs recently in executive dashboard metrics and strategy presentations and have come to a startling realization: no one uses pie charts. At least in my experience, everyone wants some trend data or reference, so a pie chart just doesn't cut it.

Then, I ran across this great resource called the Periodic Table of Visualization Methods which shows the options for displaying data, information, concepts, strategies, or metaphors. So many options besides the ever-popular line chart. I love it that each of the options includes a pop-up that shows an example of the visualization method. Enjoy! For those of you who like pie charts, here is one that will definitely make you smile: