Engage Visually

19/03/2025

Here is a peek at how I am approaching creating original stuff (without using AI) alongside the AI revolution.

Welcome to Engage Visually's newest evolution.

There are huge leaps in Artificial Intelligence (AI) this is obvious to us all. Working in the creative industries I have been keeping my eyes and ears peeled to absorb the knowledge I need to develop and protect my work and the work I do for clients.

A straight forward example; an AI machine/tool cannot produce an image in the style of Picasso without a bank of Picasso images to build from. And, if a band wants to sample a piece of a Taylor Swift song they must gain permission first. But, the rub, AI is ' ' millions of images, songs or any creative output and mash it up to create 'X'. In so doing the AI takes - TAKES - fragments from many creatives outputs to create a novel output, AND, it does so with NO , no , and no . It literally steels the content.

I adore technology and with the right ethics in place I would embrace the developments underway. But, for now, the wild west of AI is, in my view, developing at pace by companies with huge huge resources, millions, billions of £$ etc. Individual creatives can never match these resources.

So, this leaves creative works in a conundrum. Share our work or not share our work... I would like to continue to share my work.

To this end I researched ways to protect creative outputs. I now have 3 or more methods for any visual image (sorry, I don't know the methods for songs!). I won't necessarily use all or any of them, it will depend on the need of a given image. Here's the most common ones I will be using;

1. Use Creative Commons licence to reiterate to anyone interested what the copyright status is of the image they are looking at. https://lnkd.in/e-8GzidC

2. Add an obvious Watermark to my personal creations/illustrations

2. 'Glaze' images - https://lnkd.in/eHcx4-Hv - in short small changes are made to the image through an application called Glaze. These changes are not visible to the human eye but they disrupt what an AI can take from the image.

And next.

3. There is 'NIGHTSHADE' (add to an image that has been Glazed.) This goes a step further, the artefacts it adds to images, which are also imperceptible to the human eye, not only disrupt but also CORRUPT the AI's learning. The rebellious child in me is very excited by this and other similar possibilities.

And so, below is one of my recent illustrations/drawings that I did for myself but would love to share. It is copyrighted through , and Glazed. Maybe a bit overkill for this random bit of drawing but it's about a process that will become a standard in my practice.

I'd love know your experiences, views etc

24/02/2025

Visual Summaries as a gateway for deeper exploration

One of the growing uses of hand-drawn visuals is ‘1 Page Visual Summaries'. These visual summaries can be derived from various source materials, and they aim to distil key information into engaging and visually appealing formats, serving as a gateway for deeper exploration.

To explain a little more, I er… have drawn a visual summary, which you can see here.

The evolution of our work in graphic facilitation and recording began with a focus on facilitating meetings with visual planning and tools, and, alongside this we created graphic records (or visual scribing), by capturing content live from meetings and events on large-scale visual maps. The growth in the digital potential then allowed the development to offer these same services remotely.

The work further extended into training sessions, creating animations and creating bespoke visuals. The visual summaries are a branch of the bespoke visuals, and a branch that we have seen a rise in demand for, due very likely, to their potential to convey information in a condensed and accessible way in a world where information overload is pressing on all of us.

If you would like to explore a Visual Summary for your work, book a live in-person or remote graphic recording or just explore the range of services please do get in contact, it would be great to hear from you.

02/06/2024

Last weekend we went to the Sainsbury’s Centre in Norwich where they had an exhibition by Jeffrey Gibson: ‘no simple word for time.’ It is part of Centres ‘What is Truth?’ Season.

https://www.sainsburycentre.ac.uk/whats-on/jeffrey-gibson-no-simple-word-for-time/

I found myself mesmerised by the colours and ideas he explores in the installations. As a response I found myself creating the image below across the last week, throughout the moments I was particularly thinking about the idea of ideas 💡

26/05/2024

In progress….
As are we all 🙃😊😉

20/05/2024

In the calm. A gentle and reflective time while 'gathering the nuts in May'.

The sun is shining, and the farmer has parked sheep and lambs in the field behind our houses. Things could be a lot worse, and I am all too aware that it is worse for many others in our world today.

Why do I mention this? For a simple reason, the work I have been able to do for the last decade and a bit has always been with people and organisations that strive to improve and make things better. And this is what we can do to effect change: continue to push in every pond we exist in and hope the ripples eventually make the waves we need.

Thank you to all past and present clients, customers, colleagues, and people who have brought us to work with them, and here is to the future.

A journey through some of the visuals we have created with incredible orgainisations

24/04/2023

My, it was good to be out and about with my pens with such a fine group of people. They came together from across a wide patch of London from all different lives with a single aim - to work together to support mental health services be ever more relevant to the real diversity of people the NHS dearly wants to serve - all the time under the constant financial and political pressures our daily lives and services face - the reality of coproduction is a task of genuine passion delicately and bravely taken by the daring who know how precious real inclusion and coproduction is - and also how it is likely the key to saving funds along the way by not mis-spending and by catching people’s needs earlier etc etc etc etc 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

20/03/2023

The kit. Never leave home without it. And, when beginning a piece of work, fine tune, tune in, prepare. I really love this part, consider the colours, the sizes, other equipment, rulers, rings, labels, scrap paper - think through the process, end to end.

For work I have, it could be said a giant pen case. Then again, my personal home pen case isn’t insignificant either - an old Gladstone bag 😉 and then there is always the ‘go’ pencil case, the one that is with me pretty much always and though relatively small and fits easily in any of my day bags, it still contains a remarkably versatile little pen kit.

And, speak to my colleagues and you’ll find I am not alone, we all spend an undue amount of time, care and yes, love and adoration on our ‘kit’. And just maybe that’s exactly as it should be.

And then there’s the paper….

04/02/2022

On a Friday afternoon for two years I have had in my diary to protect time for Creative downtime and I have rarely achieved this. However, this year I intend to give this a whole new priority as I believe it is an essential part of keeping that balance and being able to provide the energy in the work. Whilst I recognise it wont always be possible, this year, it will be a priority. And to kick it off a little playful look around the desk I spend so many hours at 🙂 I hope you enjoy it.

PS the idea inspired by others and namely of recent Raquel Benmergui

16/12/2021

Last week for the second year, due to covid, I was co-host and graphic recorder for an online conversation with Alison Faulkner, PhD. We hosted a conversation about Peer Support in mental Health for NSUN's (National Survivor User Network) annual meet-up.

NSUN have been my buddies for many a year now, it is a member-led organisation made up of individuals and organisations from across England, all striving to improve the mental health connections (and services) to make a bit more sense for people in their lives.

This graphic record was created during our online conversation and then I did a wee bit of colouring in and jiggling about to balance it up afterwards - but the core conversation is true to what was said in the room. 'Peering into Peer Support Together'.

17/10/2020

Ah! This graphic record of peoples thoughts about the future of neuroscience was a massive pleasure to create

How can we improve the way we do neuroscience as a community?
science... all your ideas expressed during and on in one graphic!

High resolution: https://bit.ly/3k3wwz2

Graphic by Engage Visually with the support of the Dana Foundation

10/10/2020

03/10/2020

Yep it’s Saturday, but released the graphic record for Karl’s lecture, he covered so much of the coming together of science across time and disciplines, a beautiful celebration of the current neuroscientist work and the journey of discovery to get here

Check out Engage Visually 's beautiful representation of Karl Deisseroth's lecture on the new approaches to studying intact structure & function.
Graphic available in high resolution on: https://bit.ly/34xzOEr

is gradually coming to an end: let us know what you're catching up on this !

Graphic made possible thanks to the Dana Foundation

07/08/2020

For the last wee while I have had my mind filled with brains and neuroscience, this is the latest release in a series of graphic records, visual summaries, of plenary’s from dedicated scientist unveiling the delicacies of our brains with the aim of helping solve or help in the quest to improve our lives and health.

I have found this community of neuroscientist to be phenomenal and not just because of their science, it is also their culture that strikes me, the how of how they behave is felt very strongly - the sharing of knowledge, supporting one another and acknowledging all around them that add to each new finding is felt very strongly. This in itself is a massive strength I hope they are proud of.

Now, back to work.
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We're starting this with the Fred Kavli Opening Lecture: "Differential resilience to perturbation of circuits with similar performance" by Eve Marder.

Check out the graphic recording by Engage Visually below & download it in high resolution from the FENS website: www.fens.org

With the support Dana Foundation
British Neuroscience Association Brandeis University

09/02/2020

A little quiet time and reflecting on work past, I see this and remember how proud was I to create this for the NHS 70th year! And also my own growth to have been able to create it! (as well as learning along the way to celebrate one’s own as well as others achievements 😊)

Below the imagery created was a hoard of design technicalities; to fit the images from floor to ceiling, to wrap them around the walls at the given points, the blank areas for the tv screens. And all in a time frame needed by the NHS team.

The top line of ‘yellows’ denotes NHS technology advances, the middle ‘pinkish’ line is the social line and the bottom ‘blue’ line is the NHS medical advances.

Hard, challenging but every bit rewarding

09/12/2019

Brilliant day, so very good to know this focus on the mental health and well being of Post Graduate Researchers is happening AND happening in a co-created way. 17 projects across the country.

11/11/2019

25/09/2019

Ink on the brink... Ink October or ‘Inktober’ is around the corner. This year my plan is to use the daily suggestions as just that, suggestions, but my key thing for myself will be to get the ink out at least once per day.