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I’ve recently made an interesting comparison of my mind and that of my wife’s. Apparently she does not “see” images in her mind as I do. Instead she describes her thoughts as words and sentences in voice form. I too can think in “voice form” but I also experience a vivid “visual” thoughts which are sometimes not consciously made. This is most prevalent when on the edge of sleep when the subconscious brain is coming to the fore as the conscious mind well…goes to sleep. I can sometimes just sit back and be entertained by my own brain, not knowing what images I will be shown. All these images appear from the darkness of my closed eyes and disappear just as fast as they appear. It might be a show of colour, followed by a bizarre looking horse, a child’s slide, a mountain range, people faces I have never seen before. I am definitely not asleep as I can hold a conversation with my wife and narrate on what I am “seeing”. Now I know enough about how the brain works to understand that the more you relax, the more access to your subconscious you are “allowed”. This is why I can see these fascinating, un-prompted images and this is why some people meditate.
I wonder if this is something that all creative-types can experience? And is this an evident difference between the way a designer’s mind thinks and the way an accountant’s mind thinks…(*)
I have long been fascinated with the unknowns of the brain, particularly the subconscious and the potential capacity the human brain. This has become quite a popular genre in the movies in recent years with productions such as Limitless and Lucy (both of which I recommend).
I am lucky enough to be able to access my mind’s eye on a daily basis for my clients and then work the images up into tangible designs, illustrations and graphics so they can see them with their own eyes. After speaking to a fellow designer we discovered we both share the same frustration that this client-visualisation can bring. Let me explain: as a designers, we have the ability to read a brief or talk to a client and then conceptualise in our minds exactly the creative solution they need, whether it be a logo, a website or a brochure. We can “see it”. It’s there, in our mind, done. It’s done! It’s there, in our mind’s eye, exactly how we want it….it’s now just a case of getting it out of the mind and onto paper (or code!) and this can mean several days, weeks, months of creating those images in the software with our conscious minds. Frustrating. Oh for the day when we can download the images from our mind’s-eye. Can someone get on this please? Google MindDrive or Apple’s Mind-i perhaps…
An after thought to leave you with: If I “see” images in my mind and go on to produce real-world images, do musicians and musical artists “hear” in their mind to produce sounds in the real world?
(* my wife is not an accountant I just picked a job role that has [arguably] nothing to do with creativity!)