Bryan Mathers has been a tireless supporter of Open Education and has produced volum,nous openly-licensed work for many years now. He not only hosts an archive of Visual Thinkery, but in the last few years has created, and added to, The Remixer Machine.
The Remixer Machine is a web app that aims to provide people with a visual voice, especially to those who might not consider themselves “arty” – or who don’t have the graphical tools to create.
About the Remixer Machine
It uses an SVG template that allows certain parts of the SVG to be modified. SVGs (Scalable Vector Graphics) describe an image by using markup language. This means that they provide the ability for someone to very simply change a discrete part of the image. In short, they provide the perfect scaffold for visual remixing
All of the visuals published through the Remixer project are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence, which makes projects like Remixer possible.
An individual brings their own context to a remix, their knowledge, experiences and biases. Different ideas become “obvious” to them when presented with a simple creative constraint. When pieced together, the variety of remixes from a diverse group can form a rich visual patchwork of meaningful art.
Anyone can remix. Everyone has a voice. The Remixer Machine is just a place to start.
This free-to-use tool allows for the remixing of pedagogically useful information in a whimsical way. Remixes themselves can remixed, showcasing the value of open licenses such as Creative Commons.
The design style will be very familiar for people who have been part of Association for Learning Technologies (ALT) programs and events, graphic elements in the GO-GN web site and publications, and the visual output of the We Are Open Cooperative (where Bryan is a member).
See also where Open Education Global itself makes use of a Digital Postcard Remixer used for previous conferences and Open Education Week activities.
Follow Bryan Mathers on Mastodon
It’s rare for someone with such a talent for drawing and illustration to make their work available so openly and freely. As Bryan also has a background in Computer Science, it’s almost unheard of for someone to create something so unique across the technical/artistic divide!
Award Nominator
This is a super fun project that both leverages and demonstrates the power of open licenses to encourage creative remixing of immediately useful visuals and infographics. It more than meets the award criteria of being an outstanding example of remix.
Award ReviewerAward ReviewerWith so much of the OER ecosystem being (understandably) focused on textual materials, it’s exciting to see a project that has more of a visual and artistic focus. I particularly like how it enables anyone to make remixes without needing to have particular tools or software to create them. While many open resources may be open from a licensing standpoint, they aren’t always open from a technical standpoint because they require users to have access to (and facility with) particular tools in order to adapt them. The Remixer Machine is designed to avoid that problem.
Explore more about this awardee…
Podcasts from Open Education Global
Join us for a visit inside to design studio Bryan Mathers, all from a “shed” outside of London, located on an “an island off the east coast of Ireland.” As you will hear in his voice, we are in a playful creative space, where amongst many outputs is the Fabulous Remixer Machine, recognized with a 2024 Open Education Award for Excellence in the category of Remix / Reuse /Adaptation.
The founder of Visual Thinkery, Bryan has an uncanny skill at identifying major ideas and concepts, which he then renders as an illustration, just in the process of an open conversation. This method is openly shared as the Visual Thinkery process of creating artwork from dialogue.
Listening is my superpower, and I love to tune into what people are saying, to capture and translate it visually. What are you trying to say? To whom are you trying to say it? Dialogue provides the viewpoints to explore what it looks like from multiple angles.
Bryan’s illustration style is readily identified in the outputs of the Global OER Graduate Network GO-GN (including penguins), the Association for Learning Technology OER conferences, the We Are Open Co-op, and more.
You will hear in more detail about the idea and wide spread use of the award winning Remixer Machine that allows people to “playfully” remix Bryan’s art for customized graphics, and the impact on its use enabled by the built in Creative Commons licensing of remixed outputs. We at OE Global have made use of the Digital Postcard Remixer for severalconferences as well as Open Education Week. Plus we just co-organized a Remixer Challenge for Open Education Week 2025.
As this episode was recorded for talking about Bryan’s OE Award, we brainstormed ideas for generating small scale recognition with an emergent idea of a “hat tip”– this is now a Hat Tip Remixer which anyone can use to create a visual recognition as a gesture of tipping one’s hat (with several hat options).
We could not resist remixing a hat tip (or “cap doff”) to Bryan for creating this Remixer.
at Descript.com
In This Episode
FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by the AI “Underlord” in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.
In this episode, host Alan Levine converses with Bryan Mathers about the creative and innovative journey behind the Fabulous Remixer Machine, a tool that allows users to dynamically remix graphics for various purposes. They delve into the importance of creative constraints, the impacts of open licensing, and the intersection of engineering and visual artistry. Bryan shares insights from his experiences, highlights the significance of conversation in the creative process, and discusses the broader implications of his tool in education and activism.
- Introduction: Alan Levine introduces the guest, Bryan Mathers, and sets the stage for an engaging discussion.
- Creative Constraints and the Remixer Machine: Bryan talks about finding the sweet spot between simplicity and creative freedom in the design of the Remixer Machine.
- The Power of Conversation: Insights into how dialogue and conversation play a critical role in Bryan’s creative process.
- Bryan’s Background: Bryan shares his journey from Ulster to London, his educational background, and how these experiences have shaped his work.
- The Role of Humor and Playfulness: A discussion on the importance of humor and playful elements in the creative process.
- Recognition and Creative Commons: The impact of open licensing and the importance of attribution in creative works.
- Brainstorming on Recognition: Alan and Bryan explore ideas for an ongoing micro-recognition initiative for the OE Global community.
(end of AI generated show notes)
Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 80
And that context– context is really important.. I created a remixer, based on the postcard idea, but I created it for a university in Germany. And it was a Field Note. So the idea is that it had a sort of a map that you could manipulate in the background so that it would have a point to a particular part of the world map. And then you’d be able to attach a photograph and basically add a couple of fields in terms of this place and they were into life sciences. They would be pointing out some plant in Chile or whatever else. So there’s different universities collaborating together.
But my wife used the same remixer tool to explore the heritage of her students in her classroom. She’s a primary school teacher. We live in a very multicultural area of London. But it was this idea where you could create a little a little pointer back to part of your heritage and you could see the diversity of heritage in the classroom.
So that worked really, well– same tool but completely different contexts.
Bryan Mathers on context
- 2024 Open Education Award for Excellence in Remix / Reuse /Adaptation for the Fabulous Remixer Machine (OE Global)
- The Fabulous Remixer Machine Challenge for OEWeek 2025 (OEG Connect)
- Bryan Mathers (website)
- Man Loves Potatoes (newsletter issue)
- Fabulous Remixer Machine
- Models (Templates to remix from)
- Recent Remixes
- Technologies referenced:
- A Typology of Interpersonal Recognition (Bryan Mathers)
- What is Open Recognition? (Doug Belshaw)
- N-TUTORR National Programme
We hope this conversation inspires you to create your own remixes using the Fabulous Remixer Machine and as well explore the many ideas and the popular items and larger archive of “thinkery” on Bryan’s website. And please consider remixing a hat tip for someone in particular and sending it to them.
Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called Tick Tock (Instrumental Version) from the album The Beautiful Machine by Josh Woodward shared under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).
Finally, this was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast, part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our shows. We have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descript, but our posts remain human authored except where indicated otherwise.
