Personal journey

In 2024, I learnt about Aphantasia, the inability to visualise anything in the mind. Until then, I assumed “visualisation” was metaphorical. I’d never seen images internally, and didn’t realise others could. That moment shifted everything, giving me a new lens through which to understand just how differently we all experience consciousness.

A different inner world

I sit at the far end of the spectrum. No images, no sounds, no smells, no tastes. Nothing. If I want to experience something, I have to create it physically. This has shaped how I learn, build, and think, grounding everything in action rather than internal representation.

Making instead of imagining

Because I can’t visualise, I make. I build ideas through materials, systems, and iterations. My process is instinctive, formed through years of hands-on experience. I follow my gut and my hands, learning through doing, rather than through training and data recall.

Dyslexia and structural thinking

Alongside this, I’ve always been dyslexic. I see dynamic patterns, systems and macro relationships, rather than imprinted details. For me everything connects through material logic, applying this to material, environments, people and cultures.

Accidental discovery

Aphantasia only entered modern science in 2015, when a patient lost his mind’s eye after minor surgery. An academic paper documented it, and some people responded saying they had never visualised. Suddenly, the topic was brought to public attention, accidentally giving a fresh perspective on consciousness.

The spectrum of visualisation

Aphantasia sits on a spectrum, of how people visualise images, sounds, smells, tastes and touch. Some people can’t visualise anything at all. Others can form soft visualisations. Some experience vivid, film-like scenes. And at the extreme end, people with Hyperphantasia can hallucinate at will over their waking world. Artists like William Blake lived his entire existence with no real boundary between his imagination and the external world.

Time and consciousness

My theory is that imagination shapes our relationship with time. Without internal imagery, I naturally live very close to the present. Whilst others who visualise can revisit the past or project potential futures. Then at the far end, hyperphantasia enables a kind of mental time-travel across vast distances.

Presence as default

For me Aphantasia creates a narrow temporal window, as there’s no hardware to run internal simulations on. I don’t replay memories visually or visualise potential futures. I’m right here, right now, for all the good and bad. When I’m with people, I’m fully with them.

Memory and external systems

The trade-off is memory. Granular details don’t stick internally, I tent to just process them into macro learnings. I rely on external systems, notes, sketches and self-built frameworks. And my physical creative outputs become memory anchors. This is likely why I became a designer, my thought process is essentially the external act of making.

Trauma and processing

This subject raises interesting questions around trauma. If you can’t replay negative experiences, does that change how they affect you? For me, nothing can ever be replayed. They transform into instincts and learning. The emotional imprint exists, but without any ability to relive experiences.

Mental health and perception

I’m curious how the Aphantasia spectrum relates to conditions like schizophrenia, especially with regards to hallucinations. Western thinking heavily relies on American Psychiatric Association classifications, with narrow understandings of consciousness.
 I believe there's very dynamic relationships between visualisation and mental health conditions.

Neurodiversity and perception

With regards to experiencing consciousness, the Aphantasia spectrum seems to be a very base-level system. Other neural diversities seem to intersect and overlay with visualisation abilities, whether Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia etc. Aphantasia seems to be a very helpful lens when trying to understand diversities.

Psychedelics and perception

I suspect people with Aphantasia experience less visuals when on psychedelics like acid or mushrooms, as we’re not wired to visualise. However I propose that DMT is a different story, that this visual world is equally rich for everyone. It seems to bypass the Aphantasia spectrum entirely, suggesting the DMT functions on the absolute core level of consciousness, even deeper than internal visualisation.

Dreams and visualisation

Another area I’m drawn to is dreaming. How does visualisation differ between sleep and waking life across the spectrum? My instinct is that people with aphantasia experience lower-resolution dreams, compared to the vivid, immersive worlds reported by those with hyperphantasia.

Design and accessibility

We design for accessibility, typically across visual, auditory, motor, cognitive, and linguistic domains. But we rarely consider differences in internal visualisation skills, which has a massive impact on how we process information. Understanding Aphantasia more deeply could really open interesting questions around design in general.

The future of neural interfaces

As we move toward neural interfaces, the subject of Aphantasia will become critical. We won’t be designing screens or audio systems. We’ll be designing cognitive interactions direct to mind. At this point, I believe the subject of visualisation will become front and centre as new digital-neural language systems are developed.


Creativity without images

My creativity isn’t visualised. It’s felt, built, and discovered through doing. Like improvising music without seeing the notes. It’s instinct, rhythm, and feedback. Systems support it, but the core is intuitive. That’s how I navigate creative work and problem-solving.

Learning and teaching

I’m fascinated by this subject, and believe there are huge opportunities for research and new theories to influence learning and teaching. Especially with children, who are often more naturally in sync with their place on the Aphantasia spectrum, having developed fewer coping mechanisms for navigating the modern world.

The big question

Close your eyes and picture an apple. Now describe what you see. Ask friends and family the same question and you’ll quickly realise how differently we all experience consciousness. As technology evolves, understanding these differences won’t just be fascinating, it will become essential to how we design, teach, and build the future.