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Talk7 min

How doodling unlocks your imagination

Joe Whale · TED

Watch At TED

About

Artist Joe Whale used to get in trouble for doodling in class, until a local restaurant let him cover an entire wall with his artwork … and the internet took notice. He traces his unlikely beginning to a bigger story: your imagination is a muscle, and it weakens when you hand it off to AI. Through a live doodling demo, he shows in real time what it looks like to let a thought become a drawing, one line at a time.

The talk

  1. How doodling unlocks your imagination 7 min · TED's player

Credits and licence

Institution
TED
Department
Play@TED
Speaker
Joe Whale
Year
2026
Level
For everyone
Language
English
Subjects
Art, architecture and design
Source
TED
Licence
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, as TED states it. Non-commercial use only, and no changed versions. TED's terms
Attribution
TED Talks are licensed by TED under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International and are shown here in TED's own player, as TED's usage policy asks.
Who can watch
TED gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Tweens profiles and older, judged from what the source says about it. How courses are placed