We think in pictures. 60-65% of people are visual learners. Exercising your visual thinking skills can enhance your creative process, how you solve problems, and the way you communicate with others. But many people become inhibited because they believe “I can’t draw.” How can you become a better visual thinker? What are some visual thinking tools? 

Join #ideachat Saturday, November 12th at 9 am, as we are joined by Tyler Weaver and Dean Meyers to explore visual thinking. You can read more about visual thinking on Dean's site. Here, I share some ideas from an interview with Tyler.

Tyler Weaver is a 21st century renaissance man. After “escaping music school,” Tyler became a writer and transmedia producer. He and Paul Klein created Whiz!Bam!Pow!, and Tyler is currently writing a book, “Comics, Film, Games and Animation” for Focal Press.

What is “transmedia”?

One story told across multiple platforms in one storyworld. Each piece interacts with the others to deepen the whole - but is capable of standing on its own - giving the audience the choice as to how deep into the experience they go.

For example, with a comic book at its core, Whiz!Bam!Pow! uses radio shows, short films, prose, web serials, advertising – all media to tell stories – both of the heroes and the people reading and creating them.

How did Whiz!Bam!Pow! come about?

I’ve loved comic books since I was seven. I was always drawn to the Golden Age of Comics [1939], because that’s when noone knew what the hell they were doing. They were just making it up as they went along. They’re better I think than most of today’s stuff. I was just drawn to the aesthetic.

And that led to your new book project?

I had been reading a lot of blog posts by screenwriters and others about “take your screenplay and turn it into a comic book so it will be bought as an adaptation” – and I just raged against that.  So I wanted to write a book about comics for creative and other medium, so they could use comics, not as an adaptation of a screenplay, but as a component of a storyworld. With my music composition background and studying music history, I came to the point that the only way you can work within a medium is to know the history of it and love it. It is a transmedia book that focuses on comic books.

Do you think people can learn to become visual thinkers?

I absolutely do. I think everybody has the ability to at least doodle and draw. Where people stop themselves is because they start judging their own artwork as “art” instead of using it as a tool. When people start drawing something to demonstrate a point, and if the first thing they think is “that sucks, that’s an awful drawing” – they’re obviously not going to keep going. But if you can make it simple and iconic, then people will get ahold of it. That’s one of the things I love about comics, they take realistic things and turn them into icons and symbols. Everything is visual. Comics are a very simple communication tool, there are not many elements to them. And if people can look at it that way, or doing cartooning to think, they will be fine with it. 

Join us this Saturday, November 12th at 9 am, for #ideachat and learn more about Visual Thinking!