I just want my data to mean something

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.

  • Global Plastic Production

    Global Plastic Production

    “It’s a marine litter problem” says the Petro-chemical industry… …I don’t think so. Created alongside activists from the Rethink Plastic Alliance, whilst focusing on World Ocean Day, using the Visual Thinkery – 10 ideas process.

    Read more >>

  • Stop Sucking

    Stop Sucking

    No – but really – we’re going to need to stop sucking… Created alongside activists from the Rethink Plastic Alliance, whilst focusing on World Ocean Day, using the Visual Thinkery – 10 ideas process.

    Read more >>

  • Quant + Qual

    Quant + Qual

    On creating some Visual Thinkery for Tabetha at Timmus, our conversation touched on the differences between quantitative and qualitative analysis. Here’s a visualisation of that thought. You know, I’m always learning from my clients…

    Read more >>

  • Purpose, Puzzle, Picture

    Purpose, Puzzle, Picture

    If you’ve been unclear as to what Visual Thinkery actually is (I know I have!), then here’s the official definition. I listen to people with a purpose, and aim to create a picture which articulates what the people are trying to say to whomever they are trying to say it to. This is the puzzle…

    Read more >>

  • Piece of Cake

    Piece of Cake

    At the recent Creative Commons Summit in Lisbon, I tuned in to all sorts of insight from all sorts of people. But one of my favourite morsels of wisdom was this off-the-cuff comment by Dr. Doug Belshaw, which should serve as hearty wisdom for all future conference organisation teams. But maybe these words were simply…

    Read more >>

  • Ama-Zine Prompts

    Ama-Zine Prompts

    Amy Burvall and myself thoroughly enjoyed delivering a hands-on Zine-making workshop at OER19 in Galway earlier this month. It was so good to be back in the motherland. But the trouble with a workshop of this nature is that most people are a little uncomfortable when faced with a blank piece of paper. So, in our…

    Read more >>

  • Eyeball time

    Eyeball time

    Over the last month or two, I’ve taken part in Doug Belshaw’s book group. The book-in-question being Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism. As an experiment, I shared my reflections as quick sketches, created whilst listening to the audiobook version. Here’s one of those sketches re-created as a colour artwork using Procreate on the IPad Pro.

    Read more >>

  • The way of the remix

    The way of the remix

    Do you remix? If so, how do you remix? What is your remix trigger? Is it curiosity or simply joining the dots as you see them? Do you like to layer-up? Or strive to simplify? Is it a tickly thought? Or a random one from left field? I’d like to know, because I think we’re…

    Read more >>

  • Pin Globe

    Pin Globe

    This is what happens when a thought tickles my brain. TO THE REMIXER MACHINE! As the Voronoi remixer exports in SVG, a vector format, it can then be extruded using Illustrator…

    Read more >>

  • Bloggers’ Ink

    Bloggers’ Ink

    Well now, it all started with this Twitter conversation. There’s something about creating a sticker that forces you to boil down what it is you’re saying, as well as picturing it on someone else’s laptop hood. But this sticker is REMIXABLE, courtesy of the fabulous Remixer Machine. So blogger, go make your monster…

    Read more >>

  • Religion-less Christianity

    Religion-less Christianity

    I had this moment of clarity whilst out running this morning, and I think Paul (the guy that wrote a bunch of letters in the Christian bible) would back me up on this one. Maybe Marie Kondo would too…

    Read more >>

  • Thoughtful, committed citizens

    Thoughtful, committed citizens

    “We’re too young to have a vote, so the government doesn’t care about us. We’re too young to buy loads of stuff, so the companies don’t care about us. But we’re the ones that are going to have to deal with Climate Change.” To all those who struck school to protest the lack of action…

    Read more >>

Send a Message
If you'd like to ask about an image, or you have a project for Visual Thinkery - please drop me a line using the form below.
Send