Behold. My trusty painting apron! A physical metaphor for something we often forget... Creativity is messy! I seldom need my "painting armour" in the convergent phase. Controlled. Deliberate. Critical… But the divergent phase is something else entirely. Free. Uninhibited. Expressive. Energetic. Exploratory… Ah, this is that lovely, messy place where ideas are born! And for […]
"The olive tree is surely the richest gift of heaven." Pliny the Elder In my garden on a mountain slope in Cape Town grows an unruly olive tree. Planted by the original owners of our home back in 1948, for the past 78 years it has stretched upward, unpruned and untrained, as it tries to […]
Slides are built to be clicked past. Hand-drawn visuals are made to be remembered. When ideas are captured live, in real time, in words and images together, people engage with them differently. People get excited, they respond, they point. And they recall it weeks, sometimes years later. That difference is the heart of visual thinking, […]
To sit in the question is to resist the urge for immediate answers and instead dwell in uncertainty with curiosity. It’s a deliberate act of patience...
In Visual Thinking, a question isn’t just a prompt… the question is a frame...
Once, there was a kite who loved to fly.
Each day, it soared high above fields and rooftops, dipping and dancing in the wind. Children below marvelled at the bright colours, its grace and joy...
In the 1964 movie, Mary Poppins, to the children’s delight and amazement, pulls a series of impossibly large items – a standard lamp, a potted plant and a coat stand - from her carpet bag…
Recently, I had the great pleasure of hosting a Cape Town CEO at my studio for a one-on-one Visual Conversation.Â
We started with a Brain Dump on a large whiteboard. A perfect erasable medium for a shifting and organic conversation.
The greatest innovators are those who don’t just think outside the box - they question why the box exists at all.
And sometimes, reimagining the box is just the genius of not knowing what’s impossible…
AI promises speed and simplicity - but in outsourcing thinking, creativity, and visual communication to algorithms, we risk losing the human nuance behind meaning-making. Like a high-interest credit card, the convenience comes with a hidden cost: loss of expertise, ethical erosion, and the atrophy of true creative practice.
