Meet VizWiz: The Visual Thinking Wizard

Today I would like to take just a little bit of your time to introduce you to VizWiz.

VizWiz is a visual thinking magician, however he prefers to be called a wizard. He tells me that once you have mastered the process of visual thinking that you naturally get promoted from magician status to wizard status. I don’t know what to say. He’s the one who makes up all the rules.

VizWiz, aka “Visual Thinking Wizard”, was originally a light-bulb. In the true sense of the word he was a manifestation of an idea that took shape as a result of the visual thinking process. Subsequently this “idea” eventually took a life of its own, called itself a Visual Thinking Wizard and now lives with one purpose — to help you become a visual thinking magician.

From this moment forth, as we continue to work through the visual thinking process, VizWiz will be there to assist us along this journey. He will help explain a variety of visual thinking concepts, be there when we’re working through problems, and guide us towards finding the solutions we’re after. However, VizWiz won’t be doing this alone.

Introducing the VizWiz Family

Yes, VizWiz has a loving family. He has a beautiful wife, a charming young daughter, a mischievous son, and a darling baby VizWiz.

This is a very unique family because they are all master visual thinkers who will help you along your journey towards becoming a visual thinking magician.

Why VizWiz?

I adopted VizWiz — at a time when he was homeless and had no family of his own — for this visual thinking journey for a few very important reasons.

Firstly, VizWiz can be very persuasive and charming. He convinced me that it was a good idea to get him involved, and I blindly agreed.

Actually the truth is that I chose VizWiz for this journey because I draw a lot of pictures here, and I will continue to draw pictures in future posts. Having him here gives the blog consistency and also allows him the opportunity to become a bit of a celebrity.

Secondly, I chose him because he’s very simple to draw. He also has these really long flexible arms that can be used in a lot of creative ways. And yes, he also has legs, but doesn’t always need them.

An Emotional Audition Session

I will be using VizWiz in a variety of ways in future posts. Primarily he will help me explain and walk-through a variety of visual thinking elements and examples that we will discuss. As a result he will need to reach into his book of tricks and pull out some major A-grade acting skills that will help him express a number of valuable emotions.

Below is a sample from the emotional audition session we conducted last week. As you can see he is expressing nine very interesting emotions. The emotions themselves aren’t that interesting, however, what is interesting is the way he expresses these emotions.

Notice how the differences between these nine emotions can be found in his facial and eyebrow expressions.

This is a quick example, but I hope you see how easy it is to express a variety of emotions on paper using a few simple lines. Of course you can add many more emotions to this list by modifying these lines in a variety of ways. We’ll of course get into that at a later time when I begin exploring the artistic side of visual thinking.

BTW, I would like to thank visual thinking extraordinaire Austin Kleon for introducing me to this very simple yet powerful concept.

If after seeing these images you’re still afraid of drawing — don’t worry. Drawing is easy and can be a lot of fun. You just need to learn a few fundamentals that anyone can master, very quickly. In fact, I will show you how in a few short days — if not hours — you will develop the ability to draw your ideas out on paper.

All of this awaits you, and so much more as you make progress along your journey towards becoming a visual thinking magician.

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