E-Book Overview
This is a wonderful treatment of the research behind visual design and perception. Dr. Ware certainly knows his stuff, and the design of the graphic elements within the text is in keeping with what the author describes as visually effective.
E-Book Content
Preface
There has been a revolution in our understanding of human perception that goes under the name “active vision.” Active vision means that we should think about graphic designs as cognitive tools, enhancing and extending our brains. Although we can, to some extent, form mental images in our heads, we do much better when those images are out in the world, on paper or computer screen. Diagrams, maps, web pages, information graphics, visual instructions, and technical illustrations all help us to solve problems through a process of visual thinking. We are all cognitive cyborgs in this Internet age in the sense that we rely heavily on cognitive tools to amplify our mental abilities. Visual thinking tools are especially important because they harness the visual pattern finding part of the brain. Almost half the brain is devoted to the visual sense and the visual brain is exquisitely capable of interpreting graphical patterns, even scribbles, in many different ways. Often, to see a pattern is to understand the solution to a problem. The active vision revolution is all about understanding perception as a dynamic process. Scientists used to think that we had rich images of the world in our heads built up from the information coming in through the eyes. Now we know that we only have the illusion of seeing the world in detail. In fact the brain grabs just those fragments that are needed to execute the current mental activity. The brain directs the eyes to move, tunes up parts of itself to receive the expected input, and extracts exactly what
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1/24/2008 12:09:43 PM