This chapter sets the scene for the Visualising Essay Skills Project that is detailed in the following chapter. It grounds the project itself in growing personal interest in the potential value of visual approaches to the tuition of both course content and academic skills by capitalising on the different experiential registers engaged by verbal compared with visual mediums through their combination and integration. Subsequently, it outlines the aims of the Visualising Essays Skills Project and describes the preparatory work involved in formulating the project’s design, focusing on the development of visualisation skills through practice using previously submitted student work and the written feedback originally provided on it, and a student workshop to explore the feasibility of emerging ideas and student perceptions of their potential utility or otherwise. The chapter concludes by accentuating the value of each of these strands of preparatory work, highlighting the change in visualisation style with time and practice, and specifying both the perceived value and identified limitations of visual approaches to essay skills tuition that arose from the student workshop.