Back to Basics

Sheri Kennedy • January 5, 2024

The Art of Applied Visual Thinking

The official newsletter of Applied Visual Thinking SUPERHEROES. Vol. 5 No. 1

January 5, 2024

Let’s start the new year by coming back to the basics. What is meant by “visual thinking” anyway? A simple way of thinking about it is the use of pictures, words and diagrams to convey meaning. It’s a way of organizing ideas in a visual way that helps you remember and communicate those ideas.

There are a million ways to source, use and combine pictures, words and diagrams, but for any given situation, not all methods work well.

For example, in my days as a graphic designer working on PowerPoint presentations, there were common clip art pictures that were very commonly used to convey certain ideas. These were fine for corporate presentations that needed to be functional, readable and only flashed on the screen for a short time. These were NOT great to use if you wanted to generate an original logo.

a pair of hands holding a flower pot with colorful, live flowers

Today, the internet is rich with copyright-free sources of imagery in all kinds of styles, and some tools are integrating artificial intelligence to generate new images from requests like, “make a photograph of a flower pot with flowers in it held by a pair of hands” and poof, there it is. The ease with which we can generate images, text and even video got me thinking.

Image generated with AI using Magic Media from canva.com

Prompt: "make a photograph of a flower pot with flowers in it held by a pair of hands"

A couple of lightbulbs lit up for me when I followed the brilliant New Year's Goggles process posted by my colleague, Deb, at the end of 2023 (see our last two blog posts here and here).

Lightbulb #1: I’m more inspired to create from scratch than to use something that exists. Call it an entrepreneurial mindset, innovation obsession, or a tendency to reinvent the wheel, it’s a part of my process that I am starting to name and work with.

Lightbulb #2: I am a crusty New Englander. It’s in my genes. As such, I feel compelled if not obligated to do what I can myself. This makes it difficult for me to even know when to ask for help, never mind accept it.

In completing the exercise,
I also uncovered my two words
for 2024, which form a phrase
I hope you’ll find useful, too,
“authentic growth.”

My "homework" is pictured here.

Template with all 8 dimension gauges filled in at varying levels. Dimensions are mental, physical, spiritual, family, work, financial, artistic and fun. 4 dimensions have words listed below with some outlined such as connection authenticity, growth, expansive, and love.

Template with two sections filled in. The first statement is filled in with,

Growth

One of my learning edges is the embracing of technology to make work simpler. There are lots of cool technologies, for example, being developed to put visual communication into the hands of the creatively curious of all ability levels.

“Generative AI” lets you combine elements and define a style to produce a visual in seconds that would take hours to produce manually. Thankfully, I work with someone who is much more of an early adopter with tech, so I know I can follow her lead.

Other ways I intend to seek growth in 2024:

Learn new skills and become more proficient in the ones I have.
Expand my world to learn more about topics, people, cultures and histories less familiar to me.
Repeatedly push my boundaries to ask, “what else?”

Authenticity

While I love the idea of making my life simpler and my work better, I am also concerned about what I am putting out in the world. I want to be sure my intent and voice don’t get lost in a tradeoff with efficiency.

Here are a few thoughts I have for staying authentic.

Communicate and act from a place of love, not lack or fear.
Stay rooted in the goal, whether that goal is making human connection, solving a problem, or making something that is needed.
Remain true to who I am and what I believe.

In 2023, I plan to use tools available to me as sources for ideas, a way to speed up ideation and expand my thinking. I also plan to keep in mind that it is up to me to decide what I want to put out into the world and how I want to say it.

Yup, I used AI to help me generate some of the ideas in this article, then I edited them a lot. I applied a tool I didn’t invent to get over the first hurdle. And it was fun!