Bikablo – using visual dictionaries to make serious cartoons for getting your ideas across

Over a decade ago a German consulting group in Cologne produced a visual dictionary book for training people in how to do graphic facilitation. In my last blog post titled Getting your big ideas across by using simple cartoons – learning from graphic or visual facilitators I noted that an introductory web page from Brandy Agerbeck defined:

“Graphic facilitation is the practice of using words and images to create a conceptual map of a conversation. A graphic facilitator is the visual, usually silent partner to the traditional, verbal facilitator, drawing a large scale image at the front of the room in real-time.”

As is shown above, that visual dictionary was a spiral-bound block of picture cards (a bild karten block). A typical German description would be to string together those three words into a long compound one. Instead they mercifully just took the first few letters from each, and trademarked the word bikablo.

A three-minute YouTube video titled Frank Wesseler’s quick demo of the bikablo method shows how bikablo works.

It contains an example of how to represent an idea, solution or inspiration by drawing a light bulb - which you can easily remember via the letters U, Z, M, and O, as shown above. That’s excellent for making flip charts of putting into PowerPoint.

There is a web page describing the first book (Bikablo 1), a downloadable 21-page pdf description (with a keyword index), and a German YouTube video whose description translates to:

“Bikablo® 1 is your ticket to the world of visualization: Martin Haussmann has put together hundreds of successful pictograms and keyframes and sorted them into 120 pages. This visual dictionary is specifically tailored to the needs of visualizing trainers, facilitators and consultants. The drawings are so simple that you can easily mark them with felt markers, vary them and recombine them on the flip chart. In the latest edition, we have completely revised our bestseller and adapted to the current, once again simplified drawing technique.”

There also is another web page describing their second book (Bikablo 2.0), a downloadable 16-page pdf description (with a keyword index), and another German YouTube video whose description translates to:

“The successor to bikablo® 1 continues the success story and expands the visual vocabulary with new image motifs. It starts with tips and tricks for quick visualization, followed by the most popular figures, graphics, pictograms and poster layouts. The main part consists of keyframes on dialogue methods, situations in team and leadership, personality and organizational development up to project management and IT. So if you are looking for simple yet sophisticated image ideas, bikablo® 2.0 should not be missing in your moderation case.”

There is yet another web page describing their third book (Bikablo Emotions), a downloadable 11-page pdf description, and yet another German YouTube video.

I had not heard of Bikablo before I found a web article at The Illinois Model by Lou Hayes, jr. on March 2, 2019 titled Presentation Hack: Death by Bikablo.