Every designer should know that when it comes to senses, vision trumps them all. Half of the brain’s resources are dedicated to seeing and interpreting what we see. What our eyes physically perceive is only one part of the story. The images coming into our brains are changed and interpreted. The brain is really the one “seeing.”

What we see isn’t really what our brain gets.

You think that as you’re walking around looking at the world, your eyes are sending information to your brain, which processes it and gives you a realistic experience of “what’s out there.” But the truth is that what your brain comes up with isn’t exactly what your eyes are seeing. Your brain is constantly interpreting everything you see, and as a designer you should take advantage of that.

Let’s try a little exercise to show you what I mean. There is this optical illusion called Kanizsa triangle. Look at the image below. What do you see? At first you probably see a triangle with a black border in the background, and an upside-down, white triangle on top of it. Of course, that’s not really what’s there, is it? In reality there are merely lines and partial circles. Your brain creates the shape of an upside-down triangle out of empty space, because that’s what it expects to see.

The brain creates shortcuts

Your brain creates these shortcuts in order to quickly make sense out of the world around you. Your brain receives millions of sensory inputs every second and it’s trying to make sense of all of that input. It uses rules of thumb, based on past experience, to make guesses about what you see. Most of the time that works, but sometimes it causes errors.

As a designer you should know that you can influence what people see, or think they see, by the use of shapes and colors. The image below shows how color can draw attention to one message over another.

With just a change of the colored shape you can change the perception of the audience. Remember this when you are designing your next poster, website, etc.

We see what we already know

What we see is very much influenced by our life experience until that moment. For example look at the image below. There are two figures having sex or just dolphins? Actually both answers are correct but a child can’t see the two, male and female figures, and you are probably struggling to see the dolphins 🙂

What you think people are going to see on your Web page, or your poster, advertising banner, may not be what they do see. It might depend on their background, knowledge, familiarity with what they are looking at, and expectations, but you might be able to persuade them to see things in a certain way, depending on how they are presented.

If you already knew all of this it’s great, but many designers don’t know about these things. So if you think this is helpful share this post and contribute to a more educated world.

If you are a designer you might be interested in our website also : www.gfxnerds.com

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