It taught me a new way of thinking
Scriberia's Diploma had a huge impact on Richard's way of thinking.
As the Scriberia Diploma opens its doors to a new cohort, our co-founder Dan Porter shares the thinking behind the course — and what creating and teaching it has taught him.
In the early years of Scriberia, we were mostly focused on doing: responding to problems, translating ideas into visuals and learning through experience what made information stick.
Over time, that built up a strong internal sense of what worked. But it wasn’t something we had formally articulated. It was instinctive. As the team grew and we welcomed new people, that started to change.
We found ourselves needing to explain not just what we did, but how we did it. What had once been intuitive needed to be shared and, in the process, we began to examine our own practice more closely.
How did we approach complex problems? How did we decide what to include and what to leave out? What made something clear, memorable or genuinely useful?
Underpinned by instinct
That reflection led to an important realisation. There was a consistent way of thinking underpinning our work — even if we hadn't named it before.
We weren’t simply drawing. We were distilling ideas, prioritising information, uncovering structure and using metaphor to make complexity easier to understand. In other words, we had developed a methodology.
The Scriberia Diploma grew out of that insight. It's our way of capturing those principles, turning something instinctive into something teachable and making that way of thinking accessible to others.
It’s not really about drawing
“Great visuals don't come from complex drawings. They come from clearer thinking.”
Dan Porter, Co-founder, Scriberia
One of the biggest shifts in our thinking came through years of live graphic recording. When you're working in real time, often in front of an audience, you quickly discover where the real challenge lies.
It isn't the drawing.
It's understanding what's being said, identifying what matters, finding the structure within it and expressing those ideas clearly — all while the conversation continues around you.
In fact, when we bring new people into Scriberia, we rarely focus on improving their drawing technique. If anything, we encourage the opposite: draw less. Strip away unnecessary detail. Focus on clarity, efficiency and strong ideas. Because great visuals don't come from complex drawings. They come from clearer thinking.
Why this matters beyond illustration
Over time, it became obvious that these principles weren't just useful for illustrators. They apply to anyone working with complexity — which, in reality, is most of us.
Whether you're shaping strategy, communicating change, explaining systems or building support for an idea, the challenge is the same: how do you make something clear? How do you help people understand it quickly — and remember it?
These are thinking problems, not drawing problems.
The advantage of not being able to draw
One of the more surprising things we've learned is that people who lack confidence in drawing often have an advantage.
If you're comfortable with a pen, it's easy to overcomplicate things — adding detail, decorating or drawing your way around a problem instead of solving it.
People who feel less confident tend to approach visual thinking differently. They can't rely on artistic flair, so they focus on the idea itself: what's essential, what can be removed and how to express something as simply as possible.
That constraint often leads to greater clarity. And clarity is what makes communication effective.
What the Diploma is really about
The Scriberia Diploma wasn't created to make people better artists. It was created to help people become clearer communicators.
Over six weeks, participants learn how to break down complex ideas, uncover structure and hierarchy, use visual thinking to explore and communicate concepts, and build confidence expressing ideas simply.
For some, that means picking up a pen for the first time in years. For others, it's about refining an existing skill. But for everyone, the goal is the same: communicating with greater clarity, confidence and impact.
A different way of seeing
At its heart, visual thinking isn't about drawing. It's about learning to see ideas differently — simplifying without losing meaning, revealing connections and communicating in ways that people can understand, remember and act upon.
That's what we've been helping organisations do at Scriberia for years. The Diploma is simply our way of sharing that way of thinking with others.
