Visual Thinking

I’m not a visual person. Ok, not totally true. I’m a visual person, but I lack skills to express myself visually. I love concept maps. I thoroughly enjoy level images. I even signed up with Gliffy in a desperate bid to improve my ability to create visuals (I’ve been using Fireworks, but I don’t have the time or patience to perfect it). I’ve tried to increase visuals in my presentations over the last year. And I appreciate Robin Good’s injection of images and organization of text with my newsletter. See this edition, for example. I’m convinced of the value of visuals. I just don’t usually take the needed time to communicate well in visual manner. It is, after all, easier to simply state the facts than tell a story, or to write a paragraph than to create an image. The difference, however, is that “stating the facts” has a short life span. It’s not very memorable. A story lasts far long. And images can communicate far more effectively. Which is why I enjoyed reading this short article on Visual Literacy and Visual Thinking.