Terri Lonier
Exploring how ideas are built, communicated, and sustained.
For decades, my work has taken many forms. It all traces back to four threads:
- creative self-employment
- visual thinking
- innovation
- craft
My current focus is historical fiction about the Lunar Society, the thinkers who sparked Britain’s Industrial Revolution.
The Work
A collection of past and current work.
NOW
The Lunar Society Project
Step into England, 1776, as the Industrial Revolution stirs.
A behind-the-scenes look at my historical novel in progress, set among the inventors and thinkers of the Lunar Society of Birmingham.
Solo Business
Come see where independent work was first taken seriously.
Five books, the Solo Field Notes newsletter archive, and the Solo Business School, still guiding people who choose to work on their own.
Visual Frameworks
See how complex ideas become something the eye can hold.
Frameworks, diagrams, and visual models built over a career, including in Authority By Design, my cohort course on making expertise visible.
Innovation
Explore how innovation actually takes hold.
A curated set of articles drawn from more than a decade of advisory work with Fortune 500 companies and corporate innovation labs.
Foundations
Where the thinking comes from.
Research
My MFA thesis on Earthwork artist Robert Smithson, and Alchemy in Eden, my doctoral dissertation on the origins of branding and food marketing. Alongside them, academic articles published across journals and books. The scholarship that runs beneath decades of applied work.
Artworks
Ceramic sculpture from an MFA, and work from a later phase as a studio potter. The maker’s practice that shaped how I see structure, form, and the shape of an idea.