Global Cartoons for a Global Problem

Ada College

UCL Academy

OER24

Phew! I’m just back from Cork City, Ireland, having spent a couple or three days at the OER conference. OER is my favourite conference. Not only is it a chance to catch up with a bunch of Visual Thinkery clients – who I usually only get to see online – but the people that attend this conference are people-people. They care about care. They talk about social justice in their work. They are educators, passionate about what they do. So it’s such a treat to have a few days to hang out and absorb their warmth.

An Open History of the OER24 logo

I had run through the Visual Thinkery process with the conference organisers a bunch of weeks beforehand. From that emerged a freehand aesthetic for the conference including a bright and bold logo.

I’d leaned into a part of our creative conversation about Celtic Ireland being an ancient seat of learning – famous for its deliciously illustrated texts such as the Book of Kells.

At the conference, a few people told me how much they liked the logo. So I thought I’d create a quick stop motion video exported from Procreate (my iPad drawing software) illuminating part of the drawing process of its evolution:

A little humour goes a long way

When having creating conversations with clients, I’m always listening out for little golden nuggets of humour, as they often make great cartoons. A lot of AI-related chatter permeated the conference, and I found myself jotting down a few ideas for future AI related cartoons (if I ever get around to bringing them to life). The cartoon below came from the same creative process as mentioned above and is already a favourite of mine:

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Pesky Ethics - by Visual Thinkery CC-BY-ND

Keynote #1

I sat down to capture the first day’s opening keynote by the lovely Rajiv Jhangiani in a sketchnote form. Sketchnoting is extremely intensive as whilst drawing one thing, you need to listen out for the next thing to draw. On the other hand, the creative constraint of capturing meaning before it disappears means that there is no opportunity to overthink it. Did I mention I tend to overthink things?

Fairytales and Dystopian futures - Rajiv Jhangiani - oer24

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Fairy Tales and Dystopian Futures - by Visual Thinkery CC-BY-ND

Keynote #2

The second keynote was completely different. Catherine Cronin and Laura Czerniewicz were co-presenting. There were interactive elements which provided useful breathing space for me to catch up on the drawing.

Open Education at a crossroads - Catherine Cronin and Laura Czerniewicz - oer24

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Open Education at a Crossroads - by Visual Thinkery CC-BY-ND

Keep on running

I managed to get myself up for a 10k run on the morning of the second day (I’m running the London Marathon – eek! – you can sponsor me here) I ran along the banks of the river Lee on a cool sunny morning. All the way to Blackrock castle and back. It seems I have more exploring to do around that part of the world, and find out where it gets it’s rebellious reputation…

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OER24 Themes Postcard - by Visual Thinkery CC-BY-ND

And finally

I leave Cork with lots to think about and some new avenues to visually explore. A conversation over coffee with Maren Deepwell, Meredith Huffman and Alan Levine about conference formats sticks in my head. We hit upon the Upside Down Pear Cake conference format, where each session starts with the conclusions first, then gathering questions, spending the remaining time answering and explaining how they got there. Maybe a thought for next year’s OER25…

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OER24 Logo - by Visual Thinkery CC-BY-ND

OER17

Ada College

UCL Academy

That would look great on a T-shirt

That would look great on a T-shirt

A long time ago, when all of this was still green fields, I shared a flat at university with a guy that made his own t-shirts. He got them printed at a wee print shop tucked away near Kelvingrove station in Glasgow’s west end. He was particularly taken with the design on the Tetra Pak milk cartons produced by Robert Wiseman dairies. Don’t ask me why. University affords us the opportunity to reinvent ourselves, and he went for milk cartons on t-shirts. On reflection, he was quite possibly ahead of his time.

When I sift back through a conversation I’ve recorded with a client, looking for visual ideas, I often find myself playing with a logo, or a hand-drawn unofficial logo, and wondering what it might look like on a T-shirt or as a sticker on a laptop.

There’s something pretty powerful about someone wanting to wear a t-shirt or to stick a sticker on their laptop. They’re saying I’m aligned to this – this is part of who I am.

Over the last year I’ve been working on a series of Zines – cartoons and stories about growing up in troubled Ulster. The third Zine in the series looks back to a disremembered time when Ulster Presbyterians cradled the fragile beginnings of Irish Republicanism back in the late 1790s. It started as a secretive group called the Muddlers Club. It evolved into the Society of the United Irishmen. It ended in a failed bloody uprising that would change Ulster forever.

But of course I never knew about any of it until recently, as to some it has proved an inconvenient history incompatible with the tribal polarisation that dominated Ulster in my youth.

It is new strung and shall be heard…

When I stumbled across the United Irishmen movement’s logo, I was immediately fascinated with it. It sparked a curious idea to create my own version of the Muddlers Club logo – which ended up becoming central to the Zine I was trying to write.

Drawing on an iPad with RGB colour allows you to put bright orange on top of a deep blue. Turn the zing up to 11 and make it pop! And it wasn’t too long before I returned to it and thought – I wonder what that would look like on a T-shirt?

I get most of my T-shirts and stickers printed by Sticker Mule these days. They run an offer every week that often catches my eye. It’s perfect for a small pilot run – to test out an idea – to turn digital into physical. The trouble is that most of my T-shirts are now self-designed experiments, and I can only wear one at once!

Bryan sporting a self-designed Penguin T-shirt designed for GO-GN

Stickers on the other hand are a whole different matter. I decided to get a run of stickers featuring the Muddlers Club logo for the special first few people who ordered the latest Zine.

Zines & Custom Stickers

If you’re interested in some Zines about Ulster you can check them out here.

AND if you’d like to get some custom stickers or T-shirts made by Sticker Mule and you want a discount you can get £8/$10 off and if you do, I’ll get the same off my next experiment…

OER17

Ada College

UCL Academy

Documentary Cartooning

Documentary Cartooning

At a recent two-day gathering where I was busily trying to capture insight in cartoon form, a man came up to me and said – “I’ve figured out what you’re doing – you’re documentary cartooning!”. On reflection, he was quite correct. I’m trying to lean into conversations as they arise and when a visual idea presents itself, I grab it with both hands and let it come to life on my page – documented for others to derive meaning from long after the event has taken place.

For the last few years I have been experimenting with different ways of capturing and documenting live conversation as it unfolds. There are a few different techniques.

The Conversation Landscape

One way to capture the richness of a group’s thoughts or reflections is to live draw the session as it unfolds. The drawing above represents a 60min reflective session where a group of 25 people had previously split up into small groups to think about shared values and behaviours and write their responses on postcards to help with feeding back to the main group. There was a bit of overlap between groups, so as a point was made, it was grouped with others and group’s audible response gave an indication of resonance.

Output: Gives the feeling of having collaboratively created something meaningful. After the event it’s a great aide-mémoir for those who were part of the conversation, as technically the conversation has been mapped.

Nuggets of Insight

When people get together and share in conversation, nuggets of insight appear amidst their words. Metaphors, humour and storytelling all provide clues as to what the insight could look like as a visual expression.

The “Struggle Bus” example below is a good example of an off-the-cuff comment that resonated with a room full of social entrepreneurs. It tells a story of how hard it can be to get a social project off the ground – but that we can still get there. And it helps to know that there are others on the bus too! Interestingly, as a visual, there is plenty of productive ambiguity in the cartoon. Am I ready to get on the bus? Maybe if I sit beside the right person, they can help me? Different people will add different meaning.

Output: As individual cartoons, these digital assets can have impact long after the event, and inspire people who weren’t there. They can be a useful hook for a blog post and on social media, and can be made available to the participants to use under a Creative Commons licence.

Thanks SO much again – your thinkery captured the nuance and metaphor of our dialogue as always, and it’s made the follow-up communications a pleasure to do <3

Bex Trevelyan

Platform Places

Keynote Sketchnote

A keynote sketchnote is a visual landscape created live while tuning into a person deliver a presentation, usually at a conference. The example above was created during a keynote by Anne-Marie Scott at the ALT conference.

To me, a keynote feels like a journey. There’s usually a defined theme which flows through the presentation. Some pitfalls and highlights. An opening gambit and a measured conclusion. Often there are visual clues provided by the speaker in the way of slides. The challenge here is to be playful with all of the above, and see if it all can be balanced on a single page.

Output: This form of illustration can be a great way of sharing the “gist” of what someone just spoke about to the wider group who might be connected to the event but weren’t able to attend.

OER17

Ada College

UCL Academy

25 Years of EdTech

Martin Weller, Professor at the UK’s Open University, got in touch regarding the aesthetic for a book he was earnestly applying the finishing touches to – 25 Years of EdTech.

Of course, as Martin knows, the Visual Thinkery process means that together we’ll create 10 book covers, as well as anything else we pick up along the way. This includes even suggesting alternative titles for the book (which is outrageous, when you think about it) but even this creates a different lens to get an alternative glimpse through.

Interestingly, the first idea was the one that eventually stuck:

But there are a few others that I think deserve an honourable mention. I was tickled by the idea of a relationship between parent and child (but I want to go this way!)

And it’s not long before I’m drawing robots. (And then the world of assessment will be miiiiiiiine!)

25 Years of EdTech - The scaling up of Edtech

I like “The Web Years” as it reminds me of the common biographical strapline (the wonder years, the wilderness years…) and suggests that there has always been some sort of technology in Education, but only recently has it involved the web. Here we go again, here we go go go to the temple of consumption… (apologies – you probably didn’t need reminded of that song…)

ISDN – Now that will change everything…

We’re never far from someone taxonomising all the things. But not me – I’m more of an alchemist…

25 Years of EdTech - Alchemist's Handbook

In reflection, there were small elements from a number of these ideas that made their way into the final cover. Some consciously, and others less so.

Now Remix this…

As part of the promotion of the book, AU Press asked if would be possible to create a remixable front cover. So I (Bryan) set about separating the visual elements so that they could be remixed using the Fabulous Remixer Machine. Hair highlights, skin tone, background – but maybe more importantly the text on the glasses and the strapline at the bottom. Have a go!

And Finally…

Quite often ideas appear as mini-stories in 3-panelled comic strip format. A couple of these made it into the book. I don’t think it matters what the content relates to, there is always a place for visual humour…