Visual thinking school Visual thinking is a way to organize your thoughts and improve your ability to think and communicate. It’s a way to expand your range and capacity by going beyond the linear world of the written word, list and spreadsheet, and entering the non-linear world of complex spacial relationships, networks, maps and diagrams. It’s also about using tools — like pen and paper, index cards and software tools — to externalize your internal thinking processes, making them more clear, explicit and actionable. Why is visual thinking important? There’s more information at your fingertips than ever before, and yet people are overwhelmed by it. When faced with too much information we shut down. We think in pictures. Think you can’t draw? Squiggle birds (I learned squiggle birds from my friend Chris Glynn). So why is visual thinking important? The whirl. Visualization is increasingly used in business and science to simplify complexity: a picture is worth a thousand words. This is a fallacy. How to draw a car.
Name Every Shade of the Rainbow With This 'Color Thesaurus' Driving along the highway in Didcot, England, you may notice something strange: the road signs point the way to places like Neverland and Middle-earth. The names of these and other fictional locales from literature were seamlessly added to road signs by an artist/prankster using Transport Medium, the official font of British road signs. After some sleuthing, BBC News found the man responsible, who spoke to the outlet on the condition of anonymity. Oxfordshire County Council isn't laughing; it told the BBC that although the signs were "on the surface amusing," they were "vandalism" and potentially dangerous, since it would be hard for a driver who spotted one not to do a double take while their eyes were supposed to be on the road. Jackie Billington, Didcot's mayor, recognizes that the signs have an upside. There are five altered signs in total. See the signs here and in the video below. [h/t BBC News]
Identify a Lie with 6 Simple Questions post written by: Marc Chernoff Email We all fall victim to at least a few lies during the course of our lifetime. A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.- Mark Twain How do you know this? If you enjoyed this article, check out our new best-selling book. And get inspiring life tips and quotes in your inbox (it's free)... Color Psychology by David Johnson Like death and taxes, there is no escaping color. It is ubiquitous. Yet what does it all mean? Colors often have different meanings in various cultures. Black Black is the color of authority and power. White Brides wear white to symbolize innocence and purity. Red The most emotionally intense color, red stimulates a faster heartbeat and breathing. The most romantic color, pink, is more tranquilizing. Blue The color of the sky and the ocean, blue is one of the most popular colors. Green Currently the most popular decorating color, green symbolizes nature. Yellow Cheerful sunny yellow is an attention getter. Purple The color of royalty, purple connotes luxury, wealth, and sophistication. Brown Solid, reliable brown is the color of earth and is abundant in nature. Colors of the Flag In the U.S. flag, white stands for purity and innocence. Food for Thought While blue is one of the most popular colors it is one of the least appetizing.
Today Is Your Day To Win Collection: Visual thinking Time on the Brain: How You Are Always Living In the Past, and Other Quirks of Perception I always knew we humans have a rather tenuous grip on the concept of time, but I never realized quite how tenuous it was until a couple of weeks ago, when I attended a conference on the nature of time organized by the Foundational Questions Institute. This meeting, even more than FQXi’s previous efforts, was a mashup of different disciplines: fundamental physics, philosophy, neuroscience, complexity theory. Crossing academic disciplines may be overrated, as physicist-blogger Sabine Hossenfelder has pointed out, but it sure is fun. Like Sabine, I spend my days thinking about planets, dark matter, black holes—they have become mundane to me. But brains—now there’s something exotic. Neuroscientist Kathleen McDermott of Washington University began by quoting famous memory researcher Endel Tulving, who called our ability to remember the past and to anticipate the future “mental time travel.” Tellingly, not only can he not recall the past, he can’t envision the future. Alas, they couldn’t.
10 Tips for Designing Presentations That Don't Suck: Pt.1 | Design Shack - StumbleUpon Powerpoint has produced more bad design in its day that perhaps any other digital tool in history with the possible exception of Microsoft paint. In this post we’re going to address the epidemic of bad presentation design with ten super practical tips for designer better looking and more professional presentations. Along the way we’ll see a number of awesome slide designs from Note & Point along with some custom examples built by yours truly. Let’s get started! Also be sure to check out 10 Tips for Designing Presentations That Don’t Suck: Pt.2! Not a Designer? Most of the content on this site is targeted specifically towards professional designers and developers, or at the very least those interested in getting started in this field. You’ve chosen a visual tool to communicate and should therefore take the time to learn a thing or two about visual communications. Follow the ten tips below and see if you don’t start getting comments about your awesome presentation design skills. Kuler Piknik
60 Small Ways to Improve Your Life in the Next 100 Days Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to make drastic changes in order to notice an improvement in the quality of your life. At the same time, you don’t need to wait a long time in order to see the measurable results that come from taking positive action. All you have to do is take small steps, and take them consistently, for a period of 100 days. Below you’ll find 60 small ways to improve all areas of your life in the next 100 days. Home 1. Day 1: Declutter MagazinesDay 2: Declutter DVD’sDay 3: Declutter booksDay 4: Declutter kitchen appliances 2. If you take it out, put it back.If you open it, close it.If you throw it down, pick it up.If you take it off, hang it up. 3. A burnt light bulb that needs to be changed.A button that’s missing on your favorite shirt.The fact that every time you open your top kitchen cabinet all of the plastic food containers fall out. Happiness 4. 5. 6. How many times do you beat yourself up during the day? 7. Learning/Personal Development 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
How can I improve my short term memory? Q: How can I improve my memory? Is there a daily exercise I can do to improve it? A: The most important component of memory is attention. By choosing to attend to something and focus on it, you create a personal interaction with it, which gives it personal meaning, making it easier to remember. Elaboration and repetition are the most common ways of creating that personal interaction. Elaboration involves creating a rich context for the experience by adding together visual, auditory, and other information about the fact. One common technique used by students, is actually, not that helpful. These techniques do help you improve your memory on a behavioral level, but not on a fundamental brain structure level. Focus Alertness, focus, concentration, motivation, and heightened awareness are largely a matter of attitude. If you want to learn or remember something, concentrate on just that one thing. Keep reading…
Home - Visual Thinking Strategies The Visual Leap - About Visual Thinking >> Home • About Visual Thinking About Visual Thinking Visual thinking, also called visual learning, is a proven method of organizing ideas graphically - with concept maps, mind maps and webs. Visual thinking is an intuitive and easy-to-learn strategy that works for many academic and professional projects. Visual Leap programs use visual thinking software as a learning tool, and this software accelerates the learning process. According to studies conducted by the Institute for the Advancement of Research in Education, visual learning techniques improve: Test scores Writing Proficiency Long-term Retention Reading Comprehension Thinking and Learning Skills Visual thinking is intuitive. Visual thinking is easy to learn. "Concept mapping has been shown to help learners learn, researchers create new knowledge, administrators to better structure and manage organizations, writers to write, and evaluators assess learning." Joseph D. 37% of people are visual-spatial learners.
100+ Awesome Open Courseware Links for Artists | ArtCareer.net Posted by Site Administrator in Learning Tools Nov 20th, 2008 By Kelsey Allen Whether you’re into art theory, studying ancient art or making art yourself, you can find a range of online courses and lectures that can help educate you on your field of interest. Check out these open courseware resources to learn more, get fresh perspectives and expand your artistic horizons. Introductory Courses Learn the basics from these courses geared towards the beginner. Introduction to Sculpture : This course will deal with issues central to modern sculpture like site, context, process, psychology and aesthetics as well as helping students to work with some more non-traditional materials. Images and Online Exhibits These museums and online exhibits are wonderful places to find free and public domain images for inspiration or scholarly art study . Smithsonian American Art Museum Online Exhibitions : The SAAM has a number of online exhibits that range from landscape painting to modern photography.