The ability to visualize and create rich imagery is foundational to creative thinking. So how do you know if your visuals are "rich"? Black & white or full color, rich images create an impact because they're strong, clear, vivid, and lively. Rich images and rich visuals come from and lead to rich thinking!
Be More Visual: Free Downloads!
Just added the Freebies! page...check it out! Each file features super simple ways anyone can be more visual. Print them out or download and save for later. No fancy drawing skills or supplies required!
TEDx Berkeley: Live Recording
Two Saturdays ago, I was busy graphic recording TEDxBerkeley with fellow Bay Area graphic recorder, Melanie Ida Chopko. This was the fifth and largest event held on the UC Berkeley campus, with all 1700 seats sold out!
Visual Thinking: Fall in Love with Pictures
My parents bought me this book when I was in preschool.
I loved it! And spend hours turning lines into animals, like this scary dragon. Boo!
For my 5th birthday, my aunt gave me this book, and I love it, too!
I took it everywhere, pored over the pictures, got lost in them, even, for hours on end.
I knew they weren't real, born only in someone's head.
I was fascinated, curious, excited.
I could read pictures far better than words!
Storytime was never the same. Words were never enough.
I wanted pictures. I needed pictures, I was totally and completely madly in love with pictures.
I had no need to read (That's what older sisters are for.)
I had no need to write. (That's what parents are for.)
But I did have a need to dream, to wonder, question, explore, discover the world around me and within.
That's what imagination, creativity, visual thinking is for.
Using pictures seen only in the mind's eye, or with doodles, drawings, murals, diagrams, sketches, illustrations
To understand, create, synthesize, tell stories, solve problems, determine next steps, find the big picture and see it clearly
Regardless of language, race, education, gender, age
In order to make difficult, positive, personal, professional, social, global change happen
Changing the world, our world, your world, your life
Making your life better, bigger, bolder, brighter, an adventure...
An adventure is a thing that chooses us, not a thing that we choose.
Falling in love has been called the supreme adventure, but to some extent we choose, even judge, before falling or jumping into love...In this degree, the supreme adventure is not falling in love. The supreme adventure is being born.*
Visual thinking has chosen us.
Choose to fall in love with it because we are born to question, explore, discover the world around us and within
Both with our eyes and through our eyes, with our heads and through our hearts, with our whole brain and through our whole brain.
Our brains, our souls, our children, our leaders, I, you think in pictures.
Even if you don't own a camera. Even if you don't own a pencil. Even if you know nothing about art.
Fall in love with pictures.
Think with pictures.
Slay your dragons. (Boredom, miscommunication, fuzzy thinking)
And live the supreme adventure, your supreme adventure to the fullest.
*Chesterton, G.K. (1905). Heretics. New York, NY: John Lane Company.
Draw Something!
One of my highlights of 2013 was creating this collaborative recording of insights from the International Forum of Visual Practitioners Big Apple 2013 conference with fellow visual practitioners Anke Averdunk, Heather Martinez, Virginia Montgomery, and Brian Tarallo. So fun!