Visual language

Visual Language

Nancy, talking to Lion

Visual facilitation.  Someplace during a meeting that keeps people’s attention.  Then there’s narration.  Like story boarding.  Edward Tuft, is about how do you make a diagram with lots of information.  Then there’s Robert Horn, Scott McCloud, did a book called Understanding Comics.  It’s all about how we represent things visually, in the comic book world and beyond.

Cliffhangers on the bottom right, how we hold images in our heads.  There’s one other book, the Cartoon History of Non Communication that’s also brilliant.  It’s about how when we talk to each other we are on a soc intellectual level, but we have a reptilian brain that wants to do their reptilian brain.  And he draws that out, when you talk to a computer, and your reptile says, hey there’s no body here…

Facilitation

Narration

Diagrams

Visual language/ explanations

We’re so used to thinking math is done in lines and language of numbers and letters, but you can substitute diagrams.

I have a book on numbers that explains a lot of abstractions of number that visualizes them.  Mathematical Mystery Tour, is a good book for visual math.  Mark Wahl is the author. 

Lightmath is referred to. As a holistic tool for different learners.  Bernard Yankson is the inventor of lightmath.

Occult diagramming.  The Kabbala is a wonderful example, spiral dynamics.  Really good at explaining.  There’s no reason you can’t do this with chemistry. 

 
What is good visual language:

I was reminded of ASL, American sign language, and to give you a idea, this is an airplane, and moving it like this is over a long time, moving like this means repeatedly.   There’s a whole spatial visual language.  With all the modifiers of any language.  With a pen, I was taking in the verbal, and outputting visual/spatially. Sign language is more expressive than spoken because there is more permission for body language.

 
Sign language so interesting for wee controlling.

 
One thing I feel is very important in textbooks is fitting the part into the whole, and position the part into the whole.  You don’t get a sense that this idea is a part of this, it’s a detail…because it’s all the same size text.  There’s great book called “what is DNA” that has a map of contents, and at the beginning of each chapter has a map of what’s in each chapter.  There’s a school of thought called Constructivism.  That people are building and understanding in their heads.  I’m convinced the current generation is a visual culture.