How to visually learn anything
by: sas_patrickalgrim
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Word Count: 595
I am going to get a little personal here and let you guys in on something I have been able to do since I was a kid. It’s something you can easily learn on your own, but often people don’t think to use visual learning tools to design. College students often use this very same trick to create photographic images in their mind of the material they are trying to study. But we want to give you some simple steps that you can take to visually learn any art form. It might take some time and practice, but if you are compelled enough you should have no problem taking these steps above and beyond.
Find an object, image or design (could be Web or anything, really) and take a really good look at that object. I mean, take a really good look at it. You can’t just stare at it. Look at the fine points of the object. What are the small things that you might miss? If you’re examining designs, ask yourself if there are borders, shadows or gradients that others might not typically notice.
Now close your eyes and picture that object. In your mind, recreate that image and get very detailed about it. You need to recreate the object as if you were seeing it for the first time. If you can’t, look at the object again until you can. You can be doing this at a computer screen if you are trying to visually learn designs. Do you think you have the perfect image in your mind?
There is no ChairNow take that object and deconstruct it. If you’re looking at a chair, picture the chair from the opposite side of where you first imagined it. Picture that chair from all angles and deconstruct the legs, thinking about the first things you would take off to deconstruct the object. Let’s say you’re looking at a Web site. Start deconstructing the CSS in your mind. Take the borders, divs, padding and margining apart. The key point here is to take your time and do it slowly, since at this point you’re actually teaching yourself how to recreate it with the current knowledge you have.
At this point you might be thinking this is complete bullshit, but it isn’t. Logically speaking, this makes complete sense. During the deconstruction process your mind is concentrating on recreating the object with the knowledge it currently has. Obviously there could be small portions of the object that you don’t see (that only the creator would see), but that doesn’t matter. You are able to take that object (especially Web designs and layouts) and skew it into your own creation.
The other key point to this exercise is to create a “photograph” of the object you want to recreate in your mind. Having a good mental picture of your object will be beneficial to you while recreating your NEW object. You will be able to concentrate on your goals for that new creation. If you get stuck in recreating that new object, you will be able to go back and “review” the photograph that you made in your mind.
If you take all of these steps, you will easily be able to visually learn any object. I find this very helpful in creating new designs, and eventually you won’t need to concentrate so hard on creating those photographic images. You will become very quick at making “snap shots” in your mind and be able to browse and learn at very high speeds.
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