I didn’t manage to finish this brilliant course the first time around in 2024, fortunately PJ Milani allows alumni to come back! I was so inspired by his work that I took the chance to learn how to express myself more visually. PJ’s course is designed brilliantly in a cohort structure, with both asynchronous and synchronous work on the Maven platform.
I discovered I would rather sketch an idea on paper than fiddle with a digital tool like Canva or Figma. I work on screens all day and being able to sketch, not worry about whether it looked good, and iterate several ideas, was really rewarding for me. No judgment for those who like a more polished/digital approach!
I don’t quite feel my stuff is ready to show on LinkedIn just yet but my aspiration is to start a more disciplined practice around drawing so I can express these ideas in a more confident way. Here are a few of my assignments:
This was an exploration of the classic “iceberg” theme… who of us hasn’t felt like this little duck?
We had to explore “timeless formats” like bar charts, line graphs, pie charts etc to visually communicate an idea. I like this one but this convinced me I didn’t want to work with Canva anymore, at least not for now. 30 minutes of fiddling for something that takes me 30 seconds to draw by hand? NOPE…
I have several iterations of this idea: I’m working on how to show that breathwork is the key to optimising mind and body practices. In this one I was trying to show that breathwork amplifies mediation and working out… not sure it landed.
We learned how to create a cuter version of a stick figure, I think mine was sort of adorable–
Then I had to make my avatar do something, still working on the mind-body balance idea, with the breath being a bridge between the mind and the body… I also made some choices about how I want to work with my visuals for now. Black on white, block capitals, and simple “rainbow” colours for accent.
We were challenged to use some “timeless” visual formats usually used for conveying data, about the concepts that we are most interested in. I actually love a nice bar chart so I tried these two:
