For what it’s worth, it probably began in my university days when studying Computer Science, almost twenty years ago now, when I found myself particularly drawn to the modules of visual modeling in the design of business information systems; with particular emphasis on software design. Indeed it feels like a rather grandiose title to proclaim scientist, I was more a lover of analyzing and designing ways to think about information. To store it, make sense of it and then do something useful. 2 + 2 in an intelligent system should lead to 8, 10, or 12, depending on what we want of its sum. Sometimes my own, inspired by others when so; diagrammatic schemes always the way forward.

Another milestone came a couple of years later when stumbling upon beautiful Mindmaps by Tony Buzan. They clearly made quite an impression, I bought the book and began playing with them whenever, which was and is quite often, I found the mind to understand something new. So convinced was I (within a newfound love of the cultural value of education) that I must share such methodic wisdom with high-school students, but I usually think of Diagram Of Lifes’ inception on a bright summer afternoon when I found myself sitting with the usual blank sheet of paper, pencil in hand, with an intention to represent the rather pleasing concept of life’s relativity (which is at least more pleasing and is certainly more interesting and enjoyable than nothingness), to see an image jumping to the sheet. Call it a hunch, I presume, but I knew right there that it would become the core of a special design. Two years later I decided to devote a reasonable portion of my life to this; sixteen years, as it’s turned out (at the time of writing). 

There were many worried, startled looks, which was understandable, it was to bring an end to yet another career adventure, just after completing post-graduate teacher training on this occasion, but I set out with excitement: I would make it my utmost endeavor to connect the dots into as simple an answer as I could manage. So I was pleased, to put it mildly, to meet many others loving my design when I used it to fill my small rented shop-come-exhibition in the heart of Old Town Edinburgh as a registered part of its Arts Festival. And decided that I knew I must create this book.