20130823 - Impact of visual communication

As you may have noted, the power of visual communication fascinates me. From my days doing presentations, I know that the most effective presentations often included few if any words. HP has a brochure about The Power of Visual Communication that discusses this.

It seems that the act of distilling information into visual format greatly increased the comprehension and retention of the audience. Why is that? Does it involve more portions of the brain? Or do we actually learn more by seeing and doing. That would seem to be the case. We retain more when there is both visual and oral communication.

Not only does retention increase with visual and oral communication, but we retain skills at a high level when we both see and do. People are hardwired to learn from others.

What does this have to do with a blog about watercolor and sketching? Well think about the act of communication via sketching or a watercolor painting. We can reduce the amount of detail to a bare minimum. Yet, the content of the scene comes loudly through the visual presentation. Our brains actively seek to understand the world we face. They see the sketch or painting and add the detail.

It's as if the sketch / painting taps into some secret pathway to your soul.

So, take the time to note the world around you. Note how much of the detail you actually see. I suspect it's a lot lower than you suspect.