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Art vs. Idea
I met Grayson Perry at an event once. When he was asked what is art? He responded by saying that Art is stuff made to hang on rich people’s walls… Personally, I think I’ve had to unlearn the classroom concept of art that I picked up at school. Whatever I created had to be a…
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A Typology of Interpersonal Recognition
Back in the old days of social media, h/t was a thing. (I remember having to ask what it meant…) Being restricted for characters as was the trend then, hat tip became h/t. I often posted half-baked drawings inspired by hearing someone speak at a meeting or event and used these precious 3 characters to…
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The Meaning of Recognition
I think in the early days of thinking about open credentialing, I got fixated on the credential part. The proof you might receive from an authoritative body, qualified to judge, rather than a human nod or tip-of-the-hat from someone in my community. Recognition – we all need it. By the way, it’s a long time…
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How you made them feel
I was listening to a politics podcast at the beginning of last week (weren’t we all?) and a cursory reference was made to this quote by Maya Angelou. It nibbled at the back of my head until I was prepping for a workshop mid-week. I drew it up and used it as the focal point…
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Microcredentials and Recognition
Hidden in conversation are a whole host of metaphors, which are pictorial clues to the stories being told. Contrasting two metaphors allows us to compare how different each one feels from the other. That being said, for those living in bungalows, this might need some explaining… This illustration was created for a series of credentialing…
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Elements of a badging policy
What creates the spark behind an illustration? There’s nothing I love better than playing idea ping-pong with a co-collaborator. This illustration was created for a series of credentialing workshops with Badge guru Doug Belshaw for the N-TUTORR project.
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The AI arms race
It seems that somebody somewhere is using new and sneaky ways of getting messages into my inbox. Will AI’s many fingered hands make the world more productive? I don’t know. But it will certainly make it more annoying… P.S. The arms dealer plays both sides and always wins…
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Permission Slip
I was giving a public talk at a Life Sciences museum in Göttingen, Germany earlier this year. Over a hundred people turned up to hear about my journey with Visual Thinkery – A picture says a thousand words. People were encouraged to bring pen and paper and we had plenty on hand to give out…
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Facepalm
I created this thinkery in June 2016. That’s probably all you need to know. <cough> Brexit <cough>
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Insight, in sight, incite!
I was reminded this week whilst running a Visual Storytelling workshop with a group of Social Entrepreneurs in Lewisham, the power of insight. We all stand in a different place and see the world through our lens of previous experiences. What you see is all there is. It’s impossible to reach conclusions based on things…
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We shape our tools
“How do you find a good name for your start-up?” someone asked. “Hold it lightly – don’t overthink it. In the beginning you don’t even know what it is. As it starts to take shape it will start telling you what it wants to be called”, I said, almost sounding like I knew what I…
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Venerable Diagrams
I’m a fan of Edith Pritchett’s Venn Diagrams that appear in the Saturday Guardian (UK). Who would have thought Graphs could be laugh-out-loud funny? I think every visual has the potential to reach in and tickle a different armpit.
Er… hello?
This is a blog of openly licensed thinkery. They are doodles, thoughts and ideas of Bryan Mathers – little curious tidbits which have emerged from juicy conversations. Also, this is a dumping ground for abandoned artwork. But one man’s dump is another’s treasure trove – amirite?
You can include artwork from this site under a Creative Commons CC-BY-ND licence.