Karen~Singer~Talks~Tile

A wise person once said, “It’s not just what you say, but how you say it.”

Another wise person once stated, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Creatively taking these two aphorisms together can lead to great fundraising success. Consider what happened when the City of Philadelphia competed for a $1 million grant in the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge:

Good Company Ventures, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia Department of Commerce collaborated on a grant application for their Philadelphia Social Enterprise Partnership.

With over 300 cities from 45 states competing, the Philadelphia collaborative knew it needed to do something to standout. The Philadelphia team prepared the required written proposal, which came in at 30 pages of dense content.

Then, they contracted with David Gloss and his team at Here’s My Chance, a Philadelphia-based creative agency that works with nonprofit organizations. HMC was tasked with…

This post looks at two techniques to assist our visual thinking: the humble Venn Diagram and the Concept Tree.

Visualization is the fundamental element of reasoning. This is an argument that Aristotle proposed and many more have affirmed, including Grim, who I make reference to in this post.

Before getting to the actual techniques, we need to step back and clarify some basic building blocks.

We use words, sentences, concepts etc. The point is: how do these things relate to each other; what do they mean; and what does it have to do with visualization?

Words are just signs. The physical word is nothing more than a combination of sounds or marks when written. The word becomes of interest when it has an association with ideas. Concepts lie behind the words. The words themselves are meaningless. It is the ideas associated with those words that are of interest.

To illustrate…

No, this isn’t a “your mom” joke, and my blog has not been hacked and taken over by teenage pranksters.  I chose the title because these things are inevitable.  Aging, illness, injury . . . they happen to everyone.

I made a statement in my recent video that everyone will end up in the hospital sooner or later, either for yourself or attending a loved one.  Yes, even you.

Why am I talking about this on a photography blog?  I’m talking about it because several years ago I learned that I, a simple nature photographer, had at my fingertips the tools to make a difference.  I learned that much of the art I was already creating was in alignment with the principles of Evidence-Based Art research – research demonstrating that art with specific elements can have a very real and tangible positive impact on the quality of life.

Can this…