August 2020 Travel Poster Challenge

graphic by Patsy Kambitsch

Travel is tough these days.

This month’s Visual Thinkers Challenge asks you to travel anyway, at least with your visual imagination. And so we challenge you to draw, doodle, photograph, map, paint, construct, or collage a travel poster.

What the words “travel” and “poster” mean are up to you. Travel within your city. Or your own back yard. Or the other side of the room.

But don’t let reality stop you. Where would you go if you could? What about traveling in time? Or to realms beyond the confines of space, time, or matter.

We invite you to share your work on Instagram or Twitter using #travelposterchallenge or #visualthinkerstoronto.

We also invite you to come to our virtual meetup, Thursday, August 13, 7:30-8:30, when we’ll share inspirations and doodle together. To register, email Patsy. And she’ll send you a link just in time.

Graphic by Manisha Laroia

July 2020 Map My World Challenge

July 9 2020 we met for our first virtual Visual Thinkers Toronto. We were an international group with visual thinkers from Toronto, Berlin, Colorado, Ottawa and beyond. We shared our passion for maps.

Sketchnote by Manisha Laroia

Co hosted by Manisha Laroia and Patsy Kambitsch, we explored the meaning of maps, a bit of history of mapmaking, and how we responded to our #mapmyworld challenge on Instagram and Twitter.

 

 

 

Inspired by works like  Katharine Harmon’s, You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination and Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City, we interpreted the word “map” broadly.

For more information about our next Visual Thinkers Toronto challenge and meetup contact Patsy

 

Visual Thinkers connects doodlers, dabblers, and professionals as a community of practice. We gather for conviviality, challenge, and support for each other’s learning.  In

Are you curious about visual thinking? Want to join others who make sense of the world using drawings, diagrams, photos and other images? Got something in the works that you want to try out with a community of interested visual thinkers? Join us!

We are birds of many feathers.  As a group, we are happy to include a wide diversity of fields and perspectives. Participants include data visualizers, artists, architects (of buildings, information or enterprises), sketchnoters, graphic recorders, facilitators, graphic designers, and others who use visual thinking in their work and play.

Experts, explorers and dabblers all are invited to gather for Visual Thinkers. We play games, share insights, and learn from each others’ practices.  No long lectures, no grades and no exclusions.

AND for now… we meet online. We hope to meet together face-to-face soon, but for the time being we are hosting a series of on-line challenges and virtual meetings, staying connected though Instagram and Twitter #visualthinkersto  and #visualthinkerstoronto.  Hope to see you online soon.

Contact Patricia, Patricia@playthink.com, to join our next virtual meetup.

 

 

About us

Are you curious about visual thinking? Want to join others who make sense of the world using drawings, diagrams, photos and other images? Got something in the works that you want to try out with a community of interested visual thinkers? Join us!

We are birds of many feathers.  As a group, we are happy to include a wide diversity of fields and perspectives. Participants include data visualizers, artists, architects (of buildings, information or enterprises), sketchnoters, graphic recorders, facilitators, graphic designers, and others who use visual thinking in their work and play.

Experts, explorers and dabblers all are invited to gather for Visual Thinkers. We play games, share insights, and learn from each others’ practices.  No long lectures, no grades and no exclusions.

AND for now… we meet online. We hope to meet together face-to-face soon, but for the time being we are hosting a series of on-line challenges and virtual meetings, staying connected though Instagram and Twitter #visualthinkersto  and #visualthinkerstoronto.  Hope to see you online soon.

Contact Patricia, Patricia@playthink.com, to join our next virtual meetup.

We’re back! July 2020 style

Visual Thinkers Toronto is BACK.

This month, July 2020 we will be meeting online, through the magic of Google Meet, to learn about maps.

Inspired by works like  Katharine Harmon’s, You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination and Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City, we interpret the word “map” broadly.

Join us in the challenge. Make maps. Share on Social Media throughout the month of July, if you wish. Use hashtags so we can find you. #visualthinkersto #visualthinkerstoronto or #mapmyworldchallenge.

And if you’d like to join us for games, conviviality, and shared learning, join our online virtual meetup on July 9 from 7:30-9:30 pm.  Simply sign up to our eventbrite, and we’ll send you a link to to the meeting.

Looking forward to seeing you soon!

For more information, contact Patsy

 

 

 

What’s Next for Visual Thinkers Toronto?

Visual Thinkers connects doodlers, dabblers, and visual professionals. We meet when a participant (this could be YOU) chooses to lead a session. Want to make something happen?  Contact Patricia.

Social Media as Art Form

At our next meet-up we will experiment with creative uses of social media.  Register for this free workshop on Tuesday January 26, 7-9pm at OCAD University, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto, Lambert Lounge: 

November 24, 2015 Drawing Systems

No matter where we look, our world seems to be a big, tangled, interconnected mess. With everything everywhere so interconnected, how might we comprehend the complexity of our problems, and deal with the wicked messes we’ve got ourselves into? Systems thinking is a powerful way to help us look at the big pictures of complex problems. How might we draw these big pictures?

The final Visual Thinkers gathering of 2015 will be a special interactive session on visual system sketching. Drawing on well-known frameworks from system theory, the session will engage participants in learning to hand-sketch interpretive models of systemic relationships. Peter Jones and Patricia Kambitsch will share modes of sketching-to-scale based on graphic recording presentation modes. The session will develop visual modeling approaches in the context of problem areas of interest to participants.

Also we will be continuing BOOK CLUB, an collaborative project whereby we share and exchange books that we make from sketchbooks. Read more about Book Club here.

Starting our collaborative Book Club

Tonight the Visual Thinkers met to start our Book Club.  It’s not like a literary-discussion book club. This is a collaborative sketchbook project that you can join in:  just come to our next meet-up on November 24.

Each book has a theme (magic, fear, computers, Canadians, etc.)  Contributors can make a new page by drawing, painting, writing, etc.   Or they can modify a previous page by someone else, maybe even by cutting it up!

Kaia Vintr has initiated this project to encourage participants to make something visual on a frequent basis (because not everyone is consistent about using their solitary sketchbooks!)  At our September meet-up, the group agreed to do this project using paper books, not electronic media.

Much of tonight’s discussion was about the hard edges of artistic collaboration:  How do we keep the books moving quickly between contributors?  What permissions are required if someone wants to publish a page of a book that other people contributed to?  What do we do with the books we produce?   For some artists, letting our work go may be the hardest part!

The beginnings of Book Club

Tonight the Visual Thinkers met to start our Book Club.   This is a collaborative sketchbook project that you can join in:  just come to our next meet-up on November 24.

Each book has a theme (magic, fear, computers, Canadians, etc.)  Contributors can make a new page by drawing, painting, writing, collaging, etc.   Or they can modify a previous page by someone else. 

October 27: Collaboration!

As visual thinkers how might we collaborate?  And when we collaborate, what might we produce?  During this session of Visual Thinkers we will share in creating images and meaning by drawing and writing together.

We will also launch a continuing group project we call “Book Club.”  What’s Book Club?  Instead of reading books, in this Book Club we will create the contents–words and visuals– in sketchbooks, then pass our sketchbooks along to others who will continue the process.

How do we participate in book club? Bring a blank sketch book, your favorite drawing tools, materials for collage and ideas. What will the books be about?  That’s up to you! Some of the books might be shared sketchbooks on a theme, some might contain fiction, some might be alphabet books, icons for graphic recording, infographics, comics, or maps. The content is up to you.

Bring a sketchbook…or not. Participation in Book Club is of course optional, and there will be collaborative games and activities during the evening. Bring your ideas. Come ready to create.

Each Visual Thinkers meeting starts with “Show and Tell”. Anyone can share an image or idea, a toy or tool, for the group to discuss for 5 minutes. (We have a laptop, projector and Internet. Bring your image on a USB stick if required.)  Bring drawing materials and you can practice your live drawing skills with us.

Join us on October 27, 7-9pm, at OCADU’s Lambert Lounge, 100 McCaul St., Toronto. Free to attend, and wheelchair accessible.  After the meet-up we usually go for interesting food and beer at Sin & Redemption nearby.