Dilip Mukerjea writes:

VISUAL LITERACY TO INTERPRET AND AUGMENT TEXTUAL LANGUAGE

Visual Literacy is the gateway to better thinking, learning, communicating, creating, designing, and bonding. The shared experience of metamorphosing a jumbled discussion or lecture into a crisp sketched image on a screen (paper, whyteboard, wall chart, etc.) is nothing short of extraordinary. 

That’s visual synthesis in action, through the morphing of text into imagery...and even better, combining the artwork into an integrated word-image composition. 

You will begin to appreciate how sketching, doodling, drawing, and more expansive forms of art can help transform your ways of perceiving problems, inventing solutions, communicating concepts and ideas, and reimagining possibilities to inspire the emergence of a better world.

Pictures are received information. We need no formal education to “get the message.” The message is instantaneous. Writing is perceived information. It takes time and specialised knowledge to decode the abstract symbols of language. ~ Scott McCloud, virtuoso cartoonist and visual communication maestro, author of Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art

Visual Literacy is crucial for modern management and vital in the context of leadership, especially when humankind is confronted with the high cost of confusion in a world deluged by tsunamis of data. 

In his book, Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century, Robert Horn defines visual language as the integration of words, images, and shapes into a single communication unit: this new language is efficaciously evolving in the world today. 

In all domains and disciplines, people have come to realise the increasing importance of visual thinking in this age of globalisation. Few of us are trained to use it, as senders or receivers. In most instances, we are simply consumers. But if we acquire skills as creators of visual expression, when we are fluent in this ‘tongue’, we can be more effective communicators and collaborators. 

On the next three pages, I have depicted a blend (conjunction) of text and imagery to bring out the meaning of passages, for the purpose (1) on the next page, of simply showing how key words can be portrayed as images and (2) on the two pages after that, how images can be used to help in memorising and recalling passages of text.

Aristotle spoke of three lives: the life of action, the life of contemplation, and the life of enjoyment. The practice of Visual Thinking evinces a blend of all three lives. Visual Thinking and Visual Mapping (later in this book) are dual processors that inform a search for truth and lead us toward intuition, insight and illumination. 

The single most important change in The Learning Economy will be the centrality of independent exploration and knowledge creation by Learning Leaders and Leading Learners. YOU, the reader, can be one such role model for this New Age of Enlightenment.