Creative Thinking, Design Thinking
Charles Leon
Why Designers Think Differently

When someone eats your last Rolo, you feel a totally disproportionate sense of loss. It’s not about the chocolate. It’s about the gap. The narrative was broken.

So, we became wired not just for survival, but for pattern and narrative. We became restless, creative creatures—itchy with the need to make meaning. We drew patterns in the dirt, scratched stories on cave walls, and eventually, designed complex systems, cities, and even shoes that glow in the dark. All of this because our brains, forever uncomfortable with uncertainty, keep asking, What happens next?

Why Designers Think Differently
Charles Leon
The Transformative Power of Sketching & ...

Sketching has enormous benefits for mental health and for problem solving.

The Transformative Power of Sketching & Creative Pursuits
Charles Leon
How Picasso Helped me publish my Book

There is a very famous film of Picasso painting live. About halfway through creating an effortless masterpiece he says “ Ca va tres mal” (it’s going very badly). Even someone like Picasso struggled to get a painting to go where he wanted it to go. It’s his self-belief, confidence and self-trust that allows him to work through the “bad” stage and experience that tells him that he can make it right. I’m certainly not in that league, but that helped me to understand that I should push through (although sometime you can try too hard and take a sketch too far) and trust my instinct.

How Picasso Helped me publish my Book
Charles Leon
A Cotswold Recce

I don't think many places in the UK have so much condensed beauty in such a relatively small area as the Cotswolds.

A Cotswold Recce
Charles Leon
What you “See” is what you "Get".

Learning to see clearly through daily sketching

What you “See” is what you "Get".
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Human-centred Design.

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Human-centred Design.

Human-centred design leads to breakthrough innovations because of its empathy towards understanding and identifying with the target audience. It is intrinsically optimistic in its outlook but requires courage to hold back judgement, move outside the status quo and cliche and step into uncertainty.

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Life is just one thing after another. Pattern, predictability, and Jelly.

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Life is just one thing after another. Pattern, predictability, and Jelly.

Our brains are built for pattern-making, and pattern-making allows us to predict. To say what will happen next and act accordingly. It's a survival and a learning mechanism. Predictability of pattern or sequence gives us the power to accept or change our future. It’s all part of our creative thinking minds.

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How to get what you want! Your Reticular Activation System

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How to get what you want! Your Reticular Activation System

I have often wondered how it is that we can focus on one thing rather than another, why we can sometimes focus so clearly that we exclude all other distractions. Like internet algorithms, It turns out that we have a system in our brains that does just that. The Reticular Activation System.

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The Four Laws of Habit Change

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The Four Laws of Habit Change

In his remarkable book “Atomic Habits” James Clear suggests that the solution doesn’t lie in trying harder, but instead trying smarter and working with how our brains work. Working in small, simple, and achievable steps is the way to achieve successful and lasting habit change.

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How Creative Thinking Happens.

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How Creative Thinking Happens.

Creative thinking involves risk and uncertainty, but it is how we grow as individuals, as communities and as societies. We share information and then step up on the knowledge ladder and add a further step for those following in our footsteps.

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The 5 Stages of a Design Thinking process.

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The 5 Stages of a Design Thinking process.

Design thinking is a structured process for creatively approaching complex problem solving and product development by understanding, deconstructing, reasoning and reconstructing the problem. There are 5 basic stages: Analysis, problem framing and defining, ideation and creative thinking, modelling and prototyping, and testing and evaluating.

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