Evaluation and Learning Consultant TCC Group South Windsor, Connecticut, United States
Abstract Information: Picasso’s Guernica painting. Reading those three words will conjure images of an enormous monochromatic mural, created to shine a light on a site of atrocities in the Spanish Civil War. Picasso likely could not have conveyed the same messages of abject chaos and violence with a simple, well-written pamphlet. As evaluators, we always have a story to tell, and doing that often requires channeling our inner Picasso.
This expert lecture will teach you to use the Cartesian Grid Design System to lay out evaluation findings that tell a story in a visually arresting way. The Grid System is a method anyone with a PowerPoint slide or even just a blank sheet of paper can employ. It doesn’t require special artistic proficiency, just an understanding of the method itself and a desire to flex your creative muscle. The lecture will first cover a description of the method and the theory behind why it leads to a more effective message. Then it will show you how to use the method and showcase before-and-after slides that have undergone the grid system makeover. Attendees will walk away with an understanding of how to use the method in telling their evaluative story. This lecture will benefit those in the field by ensuring the data they work hard to gather doesn’t fall with a thud. Instead, it will help to drive your message home to your intended audience. With increased proficiency in the Cartesian Grid Design System, you can use data, words, and images to tell a story or even call your audience to action.
Relevance Statement: Evaluators work diligently to gather rich data on a regular basis. In almost every case, that data has an interesting story lurking somewhere inside. But in some cases, the story’s intended audience doesn’t latch onto the narrative. There are many potential reasons that a narrative falls flat. Some audience members may be uninterested in or opposed to the message. Some clients may only be in the presentation room because a funder required them to be. Whatever the reason that a narrative falls flat, we have tools at our disposal to drive the point home more effectively. The specific tool covered in this lecture is the Cartesian Grid Design System.
The method has been leveraged for years by those in the marketing field. The first step is setting up a grid on any blank slide or panel with dimensions that have a tested history of being pleasing to the human eye. The evaluator using this grid then must fill up segments of the grid in various ways, with their selection of information, numeric data, quotes, and images.
This lecture will begin with the concrete reasons why the system works and why the proportions of the grid have a history of being pleasing to the human eye. Then, the lecturer will walk step by step through the system to show evaluators how to lay out a visually arresting slide. The next section of the lecture will showcase before-and-after images of evaluative messages that have undergone the Cartesian Grid Design System makeover. The lecture will wrap up with audience questions and will even include opportunities for you to workshop your existing slides. So please – bring example slides form your own work you’d like to invigorate!
Lurking in our data is a story, waiting to burst out. But you’ll be limiting yourself if you only tell that story with numbers and with words. The Cartesian Grid Design System can be another tool in your kit, supporting your use of the visual arts inherent in storytelling.
