“If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress” – Barack Obama
Pyrotechnics, also known as fireworks, comprise a key component of contemporary live entertainment, such as stage shows, sporting events, circus performances, New Year celebrations, and event grand finales. Powered by combinations of human expertise, combustible materials, explosives, and propellants, modern pyrotechnics inject spectacular elements into celebratory occasions. When we consider prosaic matters – such as processes and systems – we find flowcharts emerge as key platforms that help to design, construct, encase, describe, and demonstrate the concept of functional workflows.
Such an assertion gains substance because modern flowcharts (and their inherent mechanisms) allow designers to envision, build and execute – with dollops of creative/disruptive flair – the small, large, and expansive components, actions, flows, layers, and moving parts that comprise/animate contemporary workflows. Further, the appropriate application of digital technology enables flowcharts to gain scale and depth, resonate with readers and audiences, thereby uniquely equipping them to outline substantive and intelligent workflows.
A considered use of on-screen colors, tints, fonts, process information, design style, and white spaces could generate the outline, structures, and content of functional workflows. Such ingredients empower designers to deploy the powers of the human imagination, design the most efficient in-diagram structures, conform to the demands of representing a process, and frame lucid flows of information inside modern blueprints. Key functions that animate a process could gain specific tints of colors inside flowcharts; alternatively, these could be organized and positioned at certain areas of a depicted process. Such a design technique allows readers to appreciate the various mechanisms, intersections, integrations, and direction of movement built into processes. Additionally – designers could calibrate white spaces to achieve maximum effect in terms of spotlighting different actions that animate processes. The outcomes could include user-friendly depictions of complex functional workflows brought to life by the exertions of designers and process experts.
Detailed descriptions of cross-functional processes, designed inside flowcharts, offer readers ample scope to appreciate multi-layered visions encoded in functional workflows. Such descriptions hinge on headers and tabs arranged along the X-axis and Y-axis of flowcharts. This technique allows designers to depict a multiplicity of factors, operators, and triggers that drive the performance of complex workflows. The connectors built inside these diagrams span multiple spaces, connect with different phases, stages, and sub-stages, and help underline the moving spirit that drives various functions of depicted processes. Digitally-enabled design tools help add creative inputs, thereby elevating the visual appeal of these illustrations. These tools help further subsequent objectives, such as adding revisions to functional workflows, re-orienting these in response to changes and alterations in process dynamics, adding complex sub-stages, and driving the vision to attain the perfect workflow.
Black (or dark) backdrops and a palette of interesting colors, when mated with innovative design elements, could power the creation of spectacular instances of functional workflows. These elements find reinforcement in rounded connectors, dotted lines, new age fonts, slanted stages, and stylized legends to bring together a stunning flowchart-based illustration. Such a technique could gain from an expert implementation of a minimalist design vision, wherein designers re-visit diagrammatic constructions in a bid to reduce and refine any excess. Additionally, creators could experiment with colors that best suit dark backdrops; such effort may exert pressure on deadlines, thereby requiring judicious use of time and other resources. Designers must approach the task of constructing such diagrams with caution. High levels of accuracy must attend the representation of functional workflows, and regular inputs from process experts must inform the design process; such a composite stance helps construct and project a visual image based on pure facts with zero scope for errors in interpretation.
Subtle variations in contemporary design languages could be instrumental in design efforts that seek to construct functional workflows inside flowcharts. For instance, circular shapes – encasing tick marks and crosses – could denote positive movement and negation/blockages (respectively) inside diagrams that comprise accurate representations of workflows. This design stance amplifies the visual element inside flowcharts, enables creators to depict clear meaning inside large/complex renditions of workflow, simplifies the transmission of workflow details, enables rapid troubleshooting when said processes undergo disruption, and encourages interesting explorations of symbols and motifs. Further, variations in design language allow creators to breach certain aspects of the language barrier, and empower readers of every nationality to extract meaning from flowcharts. Illustrations, thus enabled, may find positioning inside large transportation hubs that cater to passengers of multiple origins.
Clusters of composite workflows depicted inside flowcharts could describe the functionality of large, diversified industrial conglomerates. For instance, expanses of flowcharts could depict in detail the stages and sub-stages of production processes, delivery systems, distribution networks, research and development initiatives, and marketing campaigns. We could view such large diagrams as depictions of functional workflows that transmit information and knowledge to different audiences; these diagrams typically encase sets of operational procedures nested inside master stages that connect through appropriate interfaces. The designers of such diagrams could allow these creations to expand in tune with the growth of the sponsor organization; such actions entail subsequent attempts at creation that dovetail with the original design motif. Multiple lines of interesting information could gain expression through such flowcharts, thereby validating the use of such diagrams to depict contemporary workflows.
Intelligent designers could seek to deconstruct every stage of functional workflows as part of attempts to detail the innards of such phenomenon. In line with this stance, they could position master stages at the top of the flowchart, and build sequences of multiple stages and sub-stages that descend toward depictions of completed workflows. By utilizing digital technology, creators could incorporate digital features that allow readers to zoom into every pixel of said illustration. Such techniques allow creators to include an infinitesimal level of detail in every diagram, thus completing the depiction of workflows. Additionally, such diagrams could feature panels that detail a variety of potential outcomes that emanate from each stage. This level of information transmission allows process operators to gain insights into performance, and encourages reviewers to suggest refinements or extensions of depicted workflows.
Circles (and circular forms) – when deployed as stages and connectors inside flowcharts – could drive the creation of emphatic, visually stunning examples of fully formed and functional workflows. Such a stance finds dramatic expression when designers deploy contrasting colors to ink core segments of workflows and ancillary stages/sub-stages. The connectors between stages could represent stylized lines that mirror the essential form of these stages, thereby endowing the visual image with high levels of symmetry and a unique design motif. Further, straight lines could embellish the appeal of the visual, thus emanating a style-heavy look that completes the landmark illustration. Designers must focus on geometric proportions as part of implementing this form of visual grammar. The emergent illustration remains fully capable of depicting every aspect of a modern workflow.
The modern organization can register distinct gains by assessing these lines of design exploration. The outcomes of interesting design initiatives can variously output fascinating illustrations that attract the attentions of readers, lay the foundations of new voyages that uncover fresh design elements, and impart new vitality to depictions of workflows. Close collaborations between designers, ideators, software developers, process experts, and reviewers could drive further impetus in such directions, thereby unleashing the creative potential inherent in two-dimensional blueprints.
