Visual Literacy: Are You Fluent? Design and discovery in the visual domain are akin to writing and reading in the verbal domain. As verbal literacy assesses fluency in writing and reading, visual literacy assesses fluency in designing and discovering visual content. Your verbal literacy is probably fine, but how is your visual literacy? For example, are you able to sketch out the floorplan of your house, or follow IKEA's visual assembly instructions? The visual half of your brain is very powerful, and, when engaged, can help you think more strategically and communicate more impactfully
at work, and create a more artful, inspiring home.
What Is Visual Discovery? It's not just looking at an image or graphic, but seeing
and noticing
what is going on, whether it's a face, a scene, or a diagram. Words alone can be inefficient and ineffective in fully conveying
a reality. For example, compare the two versions of the Visual Design/Discovery definition at the left. One is purely verbal, and the other a combination of visual and verbal, what I call a Cognitive Framework. Which one is more impactful? More memorable? Reveals flow and learning?