How to Unlock Your Creative Potential Through Visual Thinking

How to Unlock Your Creative Potential Through Visual Thinking
Nayomi Chibana

Written by:
Nayomi Chibana

Sep 08, 2016
unlock creative potential visual thinking

Everyone is born creative. If you don’t think so, just recall how you were as a child.

You probably did crazy things like draw hairy, six-armed monsters, make up stories of being a mighty warrior or try to build an amazing contraption that would fly you to the moon and back.

Then you grew up, and like the rest of us, learned to suppress your wildest thoughts and most ambitious dreams.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Even executives and CEOs have realized that creativity is one of the top five skills of the future. It’s so essential that top leaders have resorted to these creative exercises that look a lot like grade-school work: Making conceptual diagrams, translating words into images, creating mind maps...

It’s no coincidence that each of these activities have one thing in common: visual thinking.

When we visualize a problem or concept, we’re activating a completely different part of our brains than when we use language or words alone.

Visual thinking helps us “see” something in a totally different light and allows us to communicate our ideas more clearly to others.

RELATED: How to Unlock Your Creative Potential Using the Flow Method

 

So, How Do I Unleash My Inner Creativity?

unlock creative potential visual thinking

Combine shapes and icons just like this using Visme

Tapping into your hidden creativity through visual thinking doesn’t happen overnight: You have to practice it.

This is why the team at Visme decided to launch a unique challenge for those yearning to discover a part of themselves they hadn’t known before.

It’s called the “Visualize Me” contest, and it consists of the following: Participants from all over the world will have the chance to create a unique and appealing visual of their life story or resume using Visme, a simple drag-and-drop online tool.

Since Visme's visual thinking revolution starts at home, a few of us on the team decided to visualize our our own lives and careers using the tool.

As a non-designer, I had my reservations at first, but soon found myself enjoying the challenge of thinking visually about my life and career goals.

For example, how often do you visualize your priorities and the way you spend your time? It says a lot about you and can even compel you to make some changes in your daily routine:

visme visualize me infographic contest visual life story

Or, how about visualizing the most important events in your career or life through a visual timeline, like this one?

visme visualize me infographic contest visual life story

Instead of talking about my globetrotting adventures around the world, I can simply show them through a map:

visme visualize me infographic contest visual life story

Rather than describe my strengths and weaknesses, I can visualize them like this:

visme visualize me infographic contest visual life story

And instead of writing out my life goals, I can visualize them, which is a widely used technique among athletes and performers for attaining success:

me-2

Combine text and icons just like this using Visme

If you're wondering whether this will be too much of a time-consuming task or perhaps too challenging for someone with little-to-no design skills, here is a short step-by-step tutorial demonstrating how easy it is to customize a life story template within Visme:

 

But I'm Not a Designer?

Contestants can start their design from scratch or customize any of Visme’s professionally designed templates, including 60 resume designs across 30 job categories.

They can use the tool’s built-in assets--such as a vast searchable icon library, millions of images and over 100 fonts--and even record their own voice overs within the platform and insert videos.

No design skills or experience are required--just a newfound hunger for visualizing ideas and events, starting with your own life story or career.

The best part is that you not only get to create a visual story you can download and use as you wish, you also have a chance to win $2,000 and other cool prizes.

The top 30 most-voted entries via Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest will enter the final round, in which a panel of five judges will choose the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners.

If you’re wondering whether those with advanced design skills will have an advantage, don’t worry! To encourage non-designers to participate, the judging criteria actually favors originality and the creativity of your content over aesthetic quality:

visualize me infographic contest

What Can I Win?

The first-place winner of the contest--which is sponsored by Iconfinder, the world’s leading icon provider--will receive a cash prize of $2,000, a 1-year membership to Visme’s Complete Premium Plan and a 1-year membership to Iconfinder Unlimited Plan.

The second-place winner will be awarded a new GoPro Hero4, as well as a membership to Visme Premium and a 1-year membership to Iconfinder Starter Plan. The third-place winner and the most-voted project will also win the latter two membership prizes.

 

How Do I Enter?

header-contest

For a chance to visualize your life story and career and win great prizes, simply do the following:

  1. Sign up at www.visme.co with your name and email. (No costs involved. All participants will get immediate access to Visme Premium for the duration of the contest.)
  2. Create your design from scratch or use one of our customizable templates.
  3. Publish your design on Visme and share on Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest between September 20 and October 5, 2016. (Don’t forget to tell your family and friends to vote for you!)
  4. The top 30 most-voted entries will enter the final round in which a panel of five judges will choose the winners.

The winner will be announced on October 15, 2016 on Visme’s contest page at: http://www.visme.co/

Enter today for a chance to win and start visualizing yourself!

Create Stunning Content!

Design visual brand experiences for your business whether you are a seasoned designer or a total novice.

Try Visme for free

    We’re stingy and don’t share emails with anyone.

    About the Author

    Nayomi Chibana is a journalist and writer for Visme’s Visual Learning Center. Besides researching trends in visual communication and next-generation storytelling, she’s passionate about data-driven content.