A Creative Business

I have now been in business with my husband for over 20 years. It may seem an odd activity for someone with a degree in art and design but sometimes life takes an unexpected turn. I have learnt so much and it is safe to say there has never been a 'dull moment'! Along the way I have continued to develop as an artist and whilst I have not been able to practice as much as I would if I were a full time artist. I absolutely feel that my creativity has been encouraged and fulfilled within our business activities. I have enjoyed the obvious things like sneaking in hand drawn letterheads and greetings cards, indulging in some artistic license in powerpoint presentations and marketing material. However the feeling of creativity goes beyond that into the process of problem solving - and there is always plenty of that in a business. Luckily my husband - the founder of Motivational Maps, James Sale is also a writer - so we have always shared a creative and probably rather uncoventional approach to our business. I think that is why we are still in busness after all this time. Thinking 'outside of the box' seems to come naturally - much more so than neat systems.

Two years ago - with the encouragement of Kristina Abbots, James completed his book Mapping Motivation. This had been an ambition of his for some time and I was delighted that I could make a contribution by creating the necessary figures, diagrams and illustrations. And then - Kristina and James suggested I should create the cover... We chatted about ideas - and at that stage our son got involved too - another ideas person! It called for something rather different from my current art projects but as it happened James had recently given me an ipad for my birthday and I had already started to experiment with it to create images. I loved the way I could take an image and build on it to incorporate the Map symbols.

And now - on 12th April 2018 we will be celebrating the next book - the first in a new series of six. This time James has worked with co author Bevis Moynan. I was delighted to be asked to create the cover. We all agreed it made sense to build on the theme of the original book and after submitting a variety of versions and developing the work based on feedback from the editor and her colleagues we decided on the final piece. And there are five more to go... The next book Mapping Motivation for Engagement with co author Steve Jones is almost complete so perhaps I should stop typing, get my ipad and start creating...