Visual thinker, facilitator, trainer, author, speaker

Ben helps teams solve problems and generate winning ideas for strategy, products and services, with workshops, training, and sketching. Lots of sketching.

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Books

 

Book cover - Presto Sketching by Ben Crothers

Presto Sketching

A practical workbook for learning simple sketching skills (like people, faces, objects and scenes, storyboarding, journey mapping, and conceptual illustration) for better ways to explore problems, generate ideas, explain concepts, and persuade stakeholders.

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Book cover - Draw in 4 by Ben Crothers

Draw in 4

100 4-step sketches of various objects, animals and people — everything from lions to lava lamps — for you to try drawing, to boost your drawing confidence. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out, this is a fun way to amp up your visual vocabulary.

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Book cover - 50 Remote-Friendly Icebreakers by Ben Crothers

50 Remote-Friendly Icebreakers

Say goodbye to boring meetings! This book is made for anyone who runs any kind of online meeting, with 50 different fun, insightful and intriguing activities to try with your group. Guaranteed not to contain any cheesy ones. Comes with a companion website.

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Working

Ben is Principal Facilitator at Bright Pilots, his visual facilitation consultancy. Bright Pilots helps you work out the fundamentals of your business, product or service: your purpose, your strategy, and your value proposition.

But it’s not all abstract plans and nice-looking charts; it’s about raising your team’s innovation capabilities, for better idea generation, prototyping and business cases. Ben does this through facilitating all kinds of workshops, and bringing conversations to life with sketching and visualisation.

Visit Bright Pilots website

Speaking

Ben has two big passions in life. The first is drawing, in all its forms: for art, for provocation, for explanation, for communication. The second is using the mindset, skillset and toolset of design in teams, to solve problems and envision better futures.

Both are all about unlocking people’s potential to make a better impact for our communities and our planet, amidst the messiness and ambiguity of modern life. This is what drives him as a speaker, for conferences, corporate offsites, and podcasts. Topics:

  • Using drawing for business strategy, user experience, persuasion and creativity
  • Design Thinking, and using design for better innovation, business performance, and team performance
  • Unleashing creativity at work, in useful and non-awkward ways

Recent highlights

Drawing and illustration

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

See more sketchnotes and other illustrations at Ben’s Instagram accounts for himself, Presto Sketching, and Bright Pilots.

 

Writing

Ben writes from time to time on the Presto Sketching blog, and on Medium, with a few guest posts here and there. Recent posts:

 

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