Traditionally, business communication and messaging has been verbal, with simple visual support tools, such as PowerPoint.  Traditional measurements only report an audience’s retention, and not the value of internalization through dialogue, inquiry, and other active engagement processes.

In the early 70’s, innovative leaders began experimenting with visual methodologies to both craft and deliver messages. 

A large portion of this pioneering visual work was developed and incubated in community change organizations, such as the Coro Foundation, before finding acceptance in business.

Founding Visual Ink artist, Kevin Woodson began his visual career at Interaction Associates, a management consulting and training firm.  Kevin’s first role was supporting consultants and facilitators at Interaction Associates to create strategic visions for change initiatives.

With the tech boom of the 90’s visual methodologies saw mass-acceptance in large strategic and departmental meetings, as a technique to visually capture and document presentations, dialogues, and decisions.  In meetings, visuals were an excellent foundation for storytelling and inquiry because the artist would create wall-size murals of meeting outcomes in real time.

At this time, Michael Stark and Kevin Woodson formed Visual Ink to address the business needs of the emerging High-Tech industry:

• Partnering with leading facilitators to illustrate the Rapid Decision Workshops driving mergers and transformations.
• Hosting Las Vegas-style offsites for hundreds of department managers and employees
• Creating hands-on experiential presentations to win ERPs, mergers, and  other major transformation-consulting engagements

With the end of the tech boom and economic downturn of 2001, event budgets shrunk, travel was eliminated, and the lively all-hands meetings that had provided such fertile soil for visual work all but vanished.  During this time, visuals were widely regarded as an unnecessary expense, along with travel and venue costs.

In the absence of events, Visual Ink aligned with the business need to create and deliver clear communication and messaging to specifically targeted audiences.  The visual business model shifted focus from expensive, one-time events to designing and delivering communication programs with long-term value.  Visual messaging was able to engage stakeholders and encourage dialogue.

In the business climate today, visual messaging has fully matured, and is playing a vital role in bridging internal and external business communication:

• Account teams capitalize on visual techniques to deepen relationships and achieve solution selling goals.
• Transformational programs include rapid visual design and delivery of targeted messages to keep stakeholders and employees in the game.
• Marketing and external messaging programs are realizing the value of aligning creative internal communication with external messages.

Because visual practice and communication has followed a trajectory through all aspects of human interaction and change in business, visuals are increasingly valuable tools for today’s leaders.  Visual methodologies play the role of the ‘glue’ in massive change initiatives because visuals deliver specific outcomes over the scope of a long-term process.