The Visual Alphabet

So why is the concept of drawing so daunting to people, designer or not? I believe it may be because at some point in our education we stop nurturing visual thinking and creativity and instead focus on reading, writing and arithmetic as the core curriculum. 

Now as a designer it is part of my role to help others think freely and creatively. To facilitate groups of diverse people, subject matter experts, stakeholders, users or project teams to take the knowledge and ideas in their heads and bring them to life. 

At one point I discovered the visual alphabet. Like mathematics and written language it is a set of simple symbols that could be easily learned, (like ABCDEFGHIJ, 0123456789) these foundations serve as basic building blocks that can be used to teach spelling, vocabulary, grammar, addition, multiplication, division, and so on. The visual alphabet serves as basic building blocks that can be used to teach drawing. 

The set of symbols once learned should work to eliminate the excuses such as:
“I’m no artist”

“I can’t draw a straight line”

“I can’t draw a stick figure”

So if you feel a little intimidated by putting pen to paper and visualising your ideas. Start with the visual alphabet! 

References:
http://www.xplaner.com/visual-thinking-school/
https://medium.com/the-xplane-collection/in-defense-of-the-visual-alphabet-a8dcca7cf151