Visual Thinking is making your thoughts, feelings, and ideas visual, spatial and tangible.
Countless tools and techniques help you think visually. For example, a handful of methods you may already use:
No matter what physical tools you are using, or goal you are working towards, visual thinking is all about making.
First, you are making a drawing — even if your whiteboard is filled with words and arrows, you are drawing out your ideas.
Why choose to drawing versus writing?
Writing is linear.
You line up your thoughts, feelings, and ideas into words, sentences, and paragraphs.
Writing is wonderfully specific. But it can be limiting.
By contrast, drawing out your ideas lets you put your ideas anywhere on the page.
You make countless choices about size, color, style, placement, connecting one idea to the next.
These additional visual and spatial choices are exactly why visual thinking tools and techniques are brilliant for:
As a visual thinker, you can more easily organize your thoughts, recognize patterns, and make new connections.
You make meaning of your life, work, and the world around you.
Now that mind map, whiteboard, or stack of index cards becomes your first step, or next step, in making great things happen.
In the video below:
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Video transcript, edited for clarity
0:00
Hello, I'm Brandy Agerbeck, of Loosetooth.com. I help you reclaim drawing as your best thinking tool, so you can see and shape your life and your work in new ways.
Today, I want to talk about what is Visual Thinking.
Now, this happens to be what I eat, sleep and breathe. It's what I do for a living. It is why I'm here talking to you, in these videos right here.
As a concept, a tool, a process, a couple things are getting in the way understanding what visual thinking is:
1. Few folks think visual thinking is for them.
How many people are actually walking down the street saying, "I'm a visual thinker?"
"Let me think visually today."
2. Defining visual thinking too narrowly.
3. Misunderstanding how visual thinking works, and the many ways you can make these tools work for you.
This video hopes to shift all three of misconceptions, and to help you recognize how visual thinking can work and help you in your life.
1:06
In the first misconception, we tend to lump people into either:
I am a visual thinker or I'm not a visual thinker.
(☝️ This is not true.)
I addressed this in my own TEDx talk in 2013.
There are people who tend to think in pictures more easily, more readily.
And there are folks who may think more in words.
You may be like me, where a very clear picture forms, when you recall something.
Perhaps your mental picture of completing a task is so clear that you think you already completed it.
Or is that just my?
Then I realize, "Oh, no, that was all just happening up here between my ears."
2:01
Unfortunately, misunderstanding visual thinking often begins with this idea that you're either this thing or you're not.
Yes, I do think there are people who are more sort of hardwired for:
Visual thinking lets people work with these strengths and develop them further.
For others, these characteristics may not be as familiar or comfortable to you.
I want to separate the idea of your latent ability, with your ability to learn new skills.
You can learn visual thinking.
You can use visual thinking as a tool that helps you make fantastic things happen.
That's why I'm here.
This is why I'm looking at that little red light 🔴 on my camera.
Soon we'll talk about all the ways that visual thinking can be extremely helpful to you in your life and work.
But first, the next misconception —
2:52
The second misunderstanding is the overemphasis on visual.
Borrowing our gorgeous flowers, this is the idea that visual thinking is translating a word into an image or an icon.
We've been so beautifully trained in text, all throughout our educational system and workplaces.
This focus of verbal, auditory, written, and linear thinking may have fit you like a glove.
Or an itchy sweater.
For the latter, discovering visual thinking, lights you up with possibilities!
Now, this new love for visual thinking, may get you fixed on imagery. Pictures are good.
Somehow, text is now bad.
Not so.
3:34
Visual thinking is a marriage, a partnership, a best-friendship between images and words.
Let's broaden our definition of visual thinking
Don't confuse learning to draw pictures as learning visual thinking.
Visual thinking is so much broader than pictorial drawing.
4:23
You can do an absolute massive amount of visual thinking when you learn how to use simple shapes...
... along with how to use different types of lines. When to use a solid line versus a dashed line, or when an arrow works best.
A strong visual thinker masters color.
I know exactly when I want to use that beautiful split pea green that I love.
Visual thinkers confidently choose colors:
5:06
Scale is a large part of visual thinking.
How big or small is the next idea you and adding to your drawing?
Different sizes of ideas represent relationships between ideas.
5:21
One of my personal favorite aspects of visual thinking?
Proximity.
Knowing where to place the next idea on the page. How all the ideas fit together.
Two very different, unrelated ideas can be placed far apart.
Similar ideas can be grouped together.
5:46
See how many visual thinking choices go beyond images?
If you love drawing pictures, it is fun to draw a snazzy little flower.
And if you're anxious about learning to draw, good news!
The largest part of learning visual thinking is learning how elements of:
...can truly organize and shape your thinking.
6:24
Let's drop this narrow definition of visual thinking, just focusing on the visual.
Don't get stuck in translating words (perceived as old school or bad) into images, icons (newly thought of as better).
Unfortunately, a massive amount of visual thinking curriculum does just that.
Limited to only teaching people iconography.
6:53
Now, I want to give a huge shout out to Bikablo, a systematic way to learn iconography. It goes far beyond the binary thinking of word equals icon.
Another trap —
"If you can learn these X shapes, you can learn visual thinking."
A terrific way to begin to learn drawing icons...
While is not untrue. That is a very tiny part of learning visual thinking.
8:01
Taking our emphasis off the visual side, let's get ready to focus on the thinking side.
In summary, VISUAL thinking is:
In contrast, visual THINKING is:
Now we are primed to move to the gorgeous right side of this drawing. The THINKING part.
9:44
My favorite!
Visual thinking is a fantastic thinking tool.
What does that mean?
When you use visual tools and techniques there is so much thinking you can do. And do better!
10:20
My #1 biggest reason why visual thinking has been my go-to tool all through my life: reducing overwhelm.
You simply get all of your ideas out of your head, and onto a piece of paper.
I hold a lot of stuff between my ears and it does get overwhelming.
Once I empty all my thoughts, feelings and ideas onto the page, I get this beautiful sense of relief.
I want you to feel that sense of relief, too.
11:13
Once you get all your ideas out on paper, you have made your problem tangible.
This is a fantastic first step in solving a problem.
You can immediately see the problem you're tackling from a new perspective.
Visual thinking is an ideal tool for tackling challenges because it supports breaking mental ruts, spatial reasoning, and big picture thinking.
11:49
Think of the classic Pro/Con list.
Again, you're getting every pro and con out of your head, making comparing and contrast clear.
Visual thinking takes you beyond that side-by-side format. You can map out your decision making factors any way you like, gaining new insights and perspectives.
Very often, I find the decision makes itself, once I see it in ink. As I make physical drawing, I notice physical sensations.
Visual thinking is a direct line tapping my intuition, and listening to my gut.
12:22
As a lifelong learner, I always grab paper and pen.
A pitfall of traditional notetaking is becoming a human recording device.
Think back, did you ever say to yourself, "Okay, I have to get down everything that teacher is saying."
Later, did you look down at word-filled pages, but you didn't feel like you really learned it?
Using visual thinking, you'll use a combination of words and images and some of this fantastic snazzy stuff up in the upper left corner in the video.
Now as you listen and learn, you have to make new and useful choices.
Instead of recording mode, you are more present and truly processing what you learn.
Visual thinking can't be beat for harnessing our attention and keeping us focused.
For us tactile peeps, our memory is embedded in the drawing we made.
Now, when you look back at your visual notetaking, you are brought back into your body, into your active learning.
14:11
Visual thinking improves communication is two ways.
Let's say you are:
First, visual thinking clarifies your message.
You actively organize your points, shaping your argument.
Second, you can use visual tools to clearly convey your ideas to your audience.
Your are improving your reader, participants, audience's focus and attention. Increasing engagement with your work, and far more likely to remember you and your message.
Again, this is not "words bad" and "images good."
As a visual thinker, you:
15:30
Much like decision-making, visual thinking helps you get all of your different tasks, or parts of a big, complex project down onto paper.
Again, the relief of externalizing your ideas in the first gain.
Next, start moving the parts around to clearly answer, "What is most important? What needs to be done next?
16:00
Before we decide or prioritize, we need space to get new ideas out!
And a lot of them.
Making your, or your group's, thinking modular is an ideal way to harvest your ideas.
This means one idea per sticky note or index cards.
Stay in generative mode and away from judgement at first. Later this rich pile of ideas can be sorted and grouped.
16:23
While brainstorming is coming up with the next thing, visual thinking is a great tool for looking back.
Personal or professional, recent or distant past, the space between you and the page is a safe space to process and reflect.
When you make a physical drawing, you can better tune into your body, noticing and letting go of tension or pain. Working through emotions. Or reliving great memories, and celebrating your past.
17:08
Eight great life areas to use visual thinking tools. And so many more.
I am here, ready to teach you your visual choices, and making learning this complex skill set engaging and joyful.
17:44
Let's talk more broadly why visual thinking works so well for all of these different things.
I talked about this a tiny bit upfront, but I want to make it a little more explicit.
When we are thinking, we bounce between two realms.
Abstract thinking and concrete thinking.
Abstract thinking is what can we hold in our mind? What we can picture?
What does not exist yet.
18:37
Concrete thinking is what can we hold in our hand?
What can we see outside of ourselves
18:42
There's a book I absolutely love called Taming Your Gremlin: A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way, by a gentleman named Rick Carson.
There's a whole lot of fantastic things in this book. Much about shushing that inner critic.
One thing I think is absolutely gorgeous is, he says that at any given time, there is only three things you can focus on:
That's it.
Basically, you have the world around you, your own physical experience in your body...
And everything else is the theater of the mind.
19:43
Those of us who excel at abstract thinking can spend a heck of a lot of time in the theater of our mind.
Thing is, we get so caught up in the theater of our own mind that we get disconnected from what's concrete.
Ignore what's around us and our physical experience.
Visual Thinking is the bridge you build between these two worlds, the abstract and the concrete.
A big, gorgeous bridge between the abstract, your ideas, the theater of the mind — and what is concrete.
This trapezoid that stands in for that physical piece of paper we're drawing on.
The strength of this bridge are the arch stones. Each stone is one set of choices, one element, of visual thinking.
For example, the element of color.
21:09
Again, these choices are far richer and broader than I hear the word "flower," and I draw a flower.
Instead:
Every choice you make takes the abstract thought and makes it concrete on that piece of paper.
21:39
The beauty of drawing, making a physical drawing as a visual thinker, making countless visual choices.
Each one of those choices that you're making, you're making meaning.
That's the jackpot.
Pick up paper and pen anytime, ready to make your drawing.
Confidently make all the visual choices at your fingertips.
Enjoy the satisfaction of making meaning for yourself.
Using your drawing, no matter how messy it is, to make great things happen.
1:55
This is why I teach what I teach.
You are making meaning for yourself.
When I am making a drawing, sometimes I feel the mental puzzle pieces click together.
I think, "That's it. I got it all figured out."
Now, there can also be a whole lot of creative tension or discomfort when things don't fit.
Every time you are working in this space between abstract and concrete, you go back and forth between the intangible and tangible.
22:59
No matter why you are thinking and working visually:
You are always going back and forth between abstract thinking, the pictures in your head, "the theater of the mind," and making a concrete drawing.
Again, going far beyond images into making choices:
In every one of these choices, you create meaning for yourself.
Just like avoiding binary thinking of text versus images,
we also don't want to get into this idea of abstract versus concrete.
As visual thinkers, we are constantly moving back and forth between abstraction and the concrete.
It is always an and.
Not an either/or.
24:57
Let's say you start to fee overwhelmed because your brain is full of too many ideas.
abstract
Get them on a piece of paper.
concrete
Once you do, you will see those ideas from a new perspective. abstract
New ideas will emerge.
abstract
You'll add your insights and new ideas to your drawing.
concrete
The power of visual thinking is moving back and forth between these two modes.
Visual Thinking 101 is the one-hour micro course that teaches you the 9 Elements that make up the arch stones of your bridge.
Register for Visual Thinking 101
25:34
Lastly, I want to share qualities of visual thinking, some adjectives, that make these ways of working especially effective.
25:47
Get some stuff out down on a piece of paper. Get messy.
It does not have to be gorgeous.
In fact, often those messy drawings create more clarity than a gorgeous, beautiful refined drawing.
That movement from abstract to concrete is the key.
Messy drawings create clarity.
26:11
Given the speed of your thoughts, visual thinking is fast.
Do not get precious about exactly how you capture an idea.
Just get it down on the page. That's it.
One of my favorite things Dan Roam says is instead of stopping to draw an image, just draw a circle and label it.
DONE.
Keep moving. Keep thinking.
Keep moving between abstract and concrete.
Keep making your choices.
Keep making meaning for yourself.
26:46
Visual Thinking is spatial and non-linear.
Unlike writing, your next idea can go in 360 degrees. Anywhere on that piece of paper.
Our choices about proximity shine.
Having so many more choices for placement — far beyond the next word over or the next item in a list — taps into spatial and non-linear thinking.
Ideal for dealing with complexity.
27:45
We live in an age where folks say, "Keep it simple, Stupid."
"Give me the headline."
"Give me the soundbite."
The problems we're trying to solve are not simple.
To solve complex problems, we need the right tools to tackle complexity.
Because visual thinking involves making countless choices, this skill set is itself complex.
But even starting with a handful of principles, you already arm yourself with far better tools to wrangle complex ideas:
The spatial and non-linear approach of visual thinking is what makes it your ideal tools for problem-solving, decision-making, mapping complexity.
28:48
While we have been talking about the magic that happens between you and the page, visual thinking tools are also collaborative.
First, you can share the drawing that you've made with others to explain your thinking, get feedback, get other people involved in your project.
Group work with everyone filling in sticky notes can surface tons if ideas fast. Sorting and grouping makes all those individual inputs spatial and organized.
Certainly my work as a graphic facilitator is creating live, large drawings supporting groups of people collaborate with each other.
29:25
While visual thinking is brilliant at handling complexity, the materials could not be more simple and affordable.
I have tons of markers, because this is what I do morning noon and night.
But really, all you need is paper and pen. A few colors and you are set.
29:46
Visual thinking is also very, very portable.
I'm using a Neuland Sketch@ Work flipchart — it's the right tool for the job, right now. Using this flipchart to communicate to you the complexity of visual thinking.
On another day, tackling a different challenge, I'll work in a sketchbook. Portable.
Even more portable? The massive, massive amount of visual thinking I do on index cards with a couple pens.
Always at hand. Always ready to get my ideas down on paper.
30:20
Your visual thinking skills, the choices you make are extremely adaptable.
You apply same proximity principles with any materials, index cards to flipchart.
How you organize your thinking using scale works to meet any goal, whether you are making a decision, learning, or writing a paper.
Every set of visual thinking choices:
Every paving stone on the bridge between abstract thinking and concrete thinking applies to any area of your life, any goal you are reaching.
30:53
Take nothing else from this video, never forget —
Visual Thinking is extremely learnable.
Yes, it is a complex skill set.
Remember, making a drawing, filled with making countless choices is what sparks the meaning you make for yourself.
That's why I'm here. Why I made this probably overly long video.
If you start on the visual side of VISUAL thinking, I'd love to see you go beyond drawing icons.
Let's strengthen your visual THINKING skills. Continually building the bridge between abstract thinking and concrete thinking.
Making the intangible tangible.
32:04
Thank you for making it this far in this particular video.
Remember that these 8 are just a starting list of areas of your life you can improve as a strong and confident visual thinker.
Let's keep learning together
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This one-hour primer clears away mental blocks, gives you the first steps to unlearn linear thinking habits, and teaching you the 9 elements that build your visual thinking bridge.
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Your encyclopedia
The Idea Shapers
In my 2016 book, The Idea Shapers: The power of putting your thinking into your own hands, I breaking down visual thinking's complexity into 24 techniques, called idea shapers.
Far beyond images, only a tiny little sliver of the book is about imagery.
Order the book
Your clear path to mastery
The Agerbeck Method
In my core online course, The Agerbeck Method, I teach you all 24 idea shapers with:
33:19
Questions to consider:
The number one answer I hear is, "Well, I think in pictures, but I can't get pictures to show up on that piece of paper."
"I can't draw."
Again, visual thinking is far beyond images. There is so much you can do that doesn't have to do with drawing a thing that looks like a thing.
Do not define visual thinking so narrowly.
Your fast, messy drawings — even just text, shapes and lines — can create clarity.
Making drawings that lead to making great things happen:
As a visual thinker, you can do all of this, and more.
I am here to teach you the thinking side of visual THINKING.
You can move effortlessly between abstract thinking and concrete thinking:
33:19
Questions to consider:
The number one answer I hear is, "Well, I think in pictures, but I can't get pictures to show up on that piece of paper."
"I can't draw."
Again, visual thinking is far beyond images. There is so much you can do that doesn't have to do with drawing a thing that looks like a thing.
Do not define visual thinking so narrowly.
Your fast, messy drawings — even just text, shapes and lines — can create clarity.
Making drawings that lead to making great things happen:
As a visual thinker, you can do all of this, and more.
I am here to teach you the thinking side of visual THINKING.
You can move effortlessly between abstract thinking and concrete thinking:
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