Writing For Visual Thinkers

Writing can be a challenge, especially for artists and designers who tend to be more visual than verbal. Writing for Visual Thinkers: A Guide for Artists and Designers is designed to help people who think in pictures—a segment of learners that by some estimates includes almost 30 percent of the population—gain skills and confidence in their writing abilities. Writing for Visual Thinkers approaches the craft of writing from many directions, all with the ultimate goal of unblocking the reader's verbal potential. It offers a guide to mind mapping, concept mapping, freewriting, brainwriting, word lists and outlines, as well as provides student examples, tips on writing grant proposals, reasons for keeping a blog and more. Critique methods, criticism, narrative and storytelling, hypertext, editing, graphic novels and comics, and many more topics round out this groundbreaking book. Both experimental and pragmatic, Andrea Marks's methods will result in stronger, more verbally confident artists and designers. Developed in partnership with AIGA, this book is for the visual learners everywhere who have always wanted--or needed!--to improve their writing skills, whether they specialize in graphic design, web design, industrial design, interior design, allied design, or fashion design. All of Peachpit's eBooks contain the same content as the print edition. You will find a link in the last few pages of your eBook that directs you to the media files. Helpful tips: If you are able to search the book, search for "Where are the lesson files?" Go to the very last page of the book and scroll backwards. You will need a web-enabled device or computer in order to access the media files that accompany this ebook. Entering the URL supplied into a computer with web access will allow you to get to the files. Depending on your device, it is possible that your display settings will cut off part of the URL. To make sure this is not the case, try reducing your font size and turning your device to a landscape view. This should cause the full URL to appear.

"Deliciously drawn (with fragments of collage worked into each page), insightful and bubbling with delight in the process of artistic creation. A+" -Salon How do objects summon memories? What do real images feel like? For decades, these types of questions have permeated the pages of Lynda Barry's compositions, with words attracting pictures and conjuring places through a pen that first and foremost keeps on moving. What It Is demonstrates a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive wish to write or to remember. Composed of completely new material, each page of Barry's first Drawn & Quarterly book is a full-color collage that is not only a gentle guide to this process but an invigorating example of exactly what it is: "The ordinary is extraordinary."

The idea that some people think differently, though no less humanly, is explored in this inspiring book. Temple Grandin is a gifted and successful animal scientist, and she is autistic. Here she tells us what it was like to grow up perceiving the world in an entirely concrete and visual way - somewhat akin to how animals think, she believes - and how it feels now. Through her finely observed understanding of the workings of her mind she gives us an invaluable insight into autism and its challenges.

"What’s going on in this picture?" With this one question and a carefully chosen work of art, teachers can start their students down a path toward deeper learning and other skills now encouraged by the Common Core State Standards. The Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) teaching method has been successfully implemented in schools, districts, and cultural institutions nationwide, including bilingual schools in California, West Orange Public Schools in New Jersey, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It provides for open-ended yet highly structured discussions of visual art, and significantly increases students’ critical thinking, language, and literacy skills along the way. Philip Yenawine, former education director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and cocreator of the VTS curriculum, writes engagingly about his years of experience with elementary school students in the classroom. He reveals how VTS was developed and demonstrates how teachers are using art—as well as poems, primary documents, and other visual artifacts—to increase a variety of skills, including writing, listening, and speaking, across a range of subjects. The book shows how VTS can be easily and effectively integrated into elementary classroom lessons in just ten hours of a school year to create learner-centered environments where students at all levels are involved in rich, absorbing discussions.

* Fresh approach to engineering design, innovation challenges, and stereotypical thinking; provides alternative methods that come closer to the heart of the visual creative process.

There used to be a time when designers were trained in the history of composition. Now you just buy a fuckin' piece of software and now you've become a designer. "Art Chantry . . . Is he a Luddite?" asks a Rhode Island School of Design poster promoting a Chantry lecture. "Or is he a graphic design hero?" For decades this avatar of low-tech design has fought against the cheap and easy use of digital software. Chantry's homage to expired technology, and his inspired use of Xerox machines and X-Acto blade cuts of printed material, created a much-copied style during the grunge period and beyond. Chantry's designs were published in Some People Can't Surf: The Graphic Design of Art Chantry (Chronicle Books), exhibited at the Seattle Art Museum, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian, and the Louvre. More recently, Chantry has drawn upon his extraordinary collection of twentieth-century graphic art to create compelling histories of the forgotten and unknown on essays he has posted on his Facebook page. These essays might lionize the unrecognized illustrators of screws, wrenches, and pipes in equipment catalogs. Other posts might reveal how some famous artists were improperly recognized. Art Chantry Speaks is the kind of opinionated art history you've always wanted to read but were never assigned.

Long to feel less overwhelmed? Wish for clarity in your decision making? Looking for lucidity in your thinking? Seeking confidence in your communication? The simple solution is at your fingertips. Paper and pen. In this guide, Brandy Agerbeck reveals drawing as your best thinking tool, making visual thinking attainable and enjoyable through a set of twenty-four Idea Shapers. Each concept combines fine art and facilitation to turn abstract ideas into concrete drawing that help you do great things.