Episode 4: The Power of Mindmapping and Igniting New Passions w/ Keith Tatum of Visibility Experiments

Life On Brand with Keith Tatum

Letters are sexy to us here at Life on Brand so today we are excited to welcome the Type Hunter himself, Keith Tatum. For those of you who don’t know what that is, the Type Hunter Co is an Instagram stream of antique typography from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With over six thousand posts of beautiful lettering and unique advertisements for things from the familiar Bicycle playing cards to German hair tonic, it’s obvious that this passion Keith explored is shared with his over 40,000 followers. At the height of the page’s popularity, Keith decided to shut down the stream and move onto to a new project called Visibility Experiments.

The Type Hunter Co was a passion project Keith started long after becoming a self-taught digital design expert and full-time creative director. With a creative background that combines illustration, interface design, along with high-level director level experience, Keith draws on his skills to shape and improve digital design experiences, while finding a balance within his professional life, his passions, and his personal life. Visible mind mapping is Keith’s current passion project as he now spends a good deal of his free time pursuing ways of exploring the power of pulling ideas out of the brain using visual prompts.

Episode Highlights:

• • 11:18 How as a creative director Keith felt he was getting further and further away from being creative.
  • 17:58 Keith explains he was not trying to actually create a business nor become an overnight success.
  • 20:16  Why at the end of the day business is not always about making money.
  • 24:13 The moment when Keith realized that things were getting a bit bigger than he originally intended and what started to attract brands to Keith’s project.
  • 29:20 How Keith started to share the work being pitched to him and formed partnerships with other designers to whom he then passed the work along.
  • 35:35 What Keith truly dislikes about the design process.
  • 39:19 Why Keith views himself as a “multipotentialite” and why it can be dangerous to think you are meant to only do one thing.
  • 48:25 What it would look like if students had a semester to study the “Art of Exploring your Curiosity and Interests.”
  • 54:59 Keith’s experience in giving up the Type Hunter and how that affected him, his followers, and his social media habits.
  • 1:12:45 The Visibility Experiments and how he found himself starting a new project which involves experiments for seeing thoughts, connecting ideas, pictures and words in order to bring real ideas to light.
  • 1:25:07 How Keith got started with mind maps and his plans to spread the idea to businesses and schools.
  • 1:33:04  We hear about the 100-day mind map challenge Keith has undertaken, his expectations are of the experiment, and his favorite mind map thus far.
  • 1:53:33 Why we should all use mind maps rather than lists!
  • 1:55:00 How Keith defines success.
  • 1:58:04 One thing he would do differently.
  • 2:01:48 What the education system would look like if educators could start to incorporate visual thinking into the classroom
  • 2:03:57 Things that Keith found surprisingly easy and difficult on his journey.
  • 2:11:01 The one musical piece that defines Keith as a person and what he loves about mixing music.
  • 2:19:08 One question Keith wants to ask of other business owners and leaders.

Links and Resources:

The Type Hunter Instagram

Visibility Experiments Instagram

Multipotentialite Ted Talk

The Art of Asking

Life On Brand Webpage