Business designer, illustrator, trainer, author

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

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.

Buy online Find out more

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.

Buy online Find out more

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.

Buy online Find out more

 

Working

Ben is Principal at Bright Pilots, his business design consultancy.

Bright Pilots helps you and your team solve gnarly business problems, generate better ideas, and work out your purpose, your strategy, and your team values.

Ben does this using workshop activities and visualisations that combine the best of new (and old) ways of working – including Agile, Lean, Design Thinking, and Systems Thinking – plus dashes of discovery and novelty.

Visit Bright Pilots website

Speaking

Ben has two passions that he speaks about at conferences, events, and podcasts: drawing for work, and using design and facilitation to solve problems and envision better futures. Topics:

  • Drawing for business strategy, user experience, persuasion and creativity
  • Design Thinking for better innovation and team performance
  • Unleashing creativity at work, in surprising and useful ways

Recent talks

Podcast interviews

First Time Facilitator podcast
First Time Facilitator

June 2023

Call the Game: Ben Crothers Shares His Tips on Being Bold in Your Next Workshop or Meeting

The New Way podcast
The New Way

December 2022

How To Use Visual Communication To Align, Collaborate And Share Stories with Ben Crothers

The Sketchcast
The Sketchcast

May 2020

Winning at online facilitation, with Ben Crothers

Visual Thinking podcast
Visual Thinking podcast

April 2020

An in-depth interview by Yuri Malishenko, with Ben Crothers

The New Way podcast
Prodpod podcast

October 2019

People, not Pixels - an interview by Adrienne Tan with Ben Crothers, brought to you by This Is HCD

Graphic recording

Ben helps make any event more impactful with live scribing. Seeing a talk or group conversation graphically recorded as it unfolds is highly engaging, and helps people connect with the content in more meaningful ways.

Whether in-person or online, analog on the wall or digital on an iPad, Ben captures what’s said in real-time, summarising on the fly.

Want to learn how? He teaches it too...

See some examples

Drawing and illustration

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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

 

Writing

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

 
 
 

Get in touch