Marks and Meaning: Version Zero by Dave Gray

I have been reading several books over the past few weeks including: Seeing Voices by Oliver Sacks and Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen but I have found that these books like all the other books I have been reading about visual thinking and visual learning have been missing one very key element: VISUALS. This may seem like a ridiculous and obvious thing but all the literature I have had to read without being able to interpret any of what I have been trying to learn through visuals. This has been very frustrating to me as I am a visual thinker who wants to learn about visual thinkers. It's almost as if the people writing the books can never truly understand what they are talking about because they won't engage in it.

So, assuming that I was going to find yet another book full of words, words, and more words I was delighted to find a book that talked about visual thinking in a visual way. The book is of course Mark and Meaning: Version Zero by Dave Gray. Dave Gray is the head of XPLANE a visual thinking company and is a man who seems to be able to put his money where his mouth is when it comes to talking AND showing visual thinking. In the same place even. Something that seems totally unheard of in the world of academia.

As I have been searching long and hard to find visuals that could act as guides when crating visuals for my own work I kept coming up empty handed until now. Although his book is essentially a work in progress I think it is an excellent example of explaining visual thinking in visuals and it has renewed my sense of hope in finding visuals.

Unfortunately his book, as of right now, is only available on Lulu. I highly recommend it for visual thinkers or people interested in visual thinking and he seems very open to discussion and feedback making it more like a living document than anything else (meaning it will change over time with feedback and conversation).

I know this may seem like a book review but it was really about finally finding some sort of visual output for visual thinking for the first time in my research and although it is quite rough it is a refreshing thing to help break the visual-less slump I've been in.

Qualities of Visual Intelligence

These are the qualities that I have decided on (after much research) to be the main qualities of people who possess visual intelligence.

• They try to take in everything visual/they are always looking around.
• They are sensitive to minute changes. This can be in appearance, behavior, mood, etc.
• They have excellent spatial awareness.
• They have a strong ability to visualize objects, scenarios, etc.
• They must be emotionally invested in something to fully engage in it.
• They need to see the whole picture so that they can understand the details.
• They can easily visually demonstrate concepts and objects.
• To retain information they need a strong kinesthetic connection. This may be in the form of notes, pictures, or physically interacting with the object.
• They need visual cues to recall information.
• They often use different solutions to come to the same conclusions.