Words are difficult. They need to be taught, and learned; that takes time. But looking? That’s different. The majority of us are born with the ability to look. From day 1, lightwaves are entering our tiny little pupils, and our brain is processing the incredibly vast amount of information. And yes, it’s VAST.
As language takes a little time for us to develop, we bridge the gap between birth and reading picture-free stories with tools like picture books; stories that can convey meaning without the need for words. We introduce really young brains to the ideas of beginning, middle, and end. They begin to experience the physical form of a book — the idea of pages, and sequence. Even if the child can’t understand us, we say the simple words that often accompany the pictures. We get them used to the sing-song sounds of the English language. We begin to help them connect what they’re seeing to what they’re hearing.
As language begins to develop further, they start reading the words along with us. And soon enough, a child is engaging with a picture book on their own. But picture book language is ‘simple’. The language doesn’t need to be complex because the images are telling half the story. So, what do we do? We begin to give a child books with more words; junior or middle-grade fiction. These are small ‘novels’ that start to make the child feel a bit more grown up. Because of the extra words, and the format of the physical form, something’s gotta give, and so we begin to remove the pictures from a story. Instead of an image on every page, there’s a simple line drawing every few pages or so.
As the child grows, so does their vocabulary and understanding of words. Soon enough, if they want to live in a world of books, those books are awash with words, and very little imagery. In fact, after about 13 years old, books don’t come with pictures anymore.
The slow removal of visual literacy from our adult vocabulary
If you don’t use it, you lose it. So this ‘progression’ of a small human’s story-interpreting ability towards the written word and away from the visual one probably has some ramifications. I don’t know this for certain, but anecdotally, I see it everywhere.
I’m lucky that I happen to be a strong visual communicator. I use this strength almost every single day in the work that I do as a software designer. People often remark that it’s a superpower. I’ve been explicitly asked on to projects *so* I could draw a diagram or workflow of something that others couldn’t find the words for.
Unlike most professional illustrators, I didn’t hone this skill from birth. I never spent my teenage years drawing and doodling like mad. Attending Art School never entered my mind. I took to Physics and Chemistry like a duck to water and so it wasn’t until later in life that my natural tendency to communicate ideas with pictures emerged.
But most people aren’t me. They don’t have a natural strength for colour and shape; for doing a quick drawing of a circle, two dots, and a line in a particular combination to form a face whose expression can cross language barriers and communicate human emotion in a much more intuitive way.
This isn’t about drawing
I can’t help but think that this difficulty that people have with ‘drawing’ isn’t that their hands can’t physically pick up a whiteboard marker and press it against a surface to make marks. I think this might be about the amount of time they’ve spent looking at stories that have been told in words, instead of pictures. It’s about familiarity and exposure, not about physical inability. I have plenty of people say to me, “I’ve written a children’s book, it’s really good, wanna read it?” but almost no one says, “I’ve drawn a wordless picture book, it’s really good, want to take a look?”
We’re living in an increasingly visual culture. Perhaps the rise of emojis and gifs are our response to our ever globalised culture as we seek ways to communicate across language boundaries. A smiley is a smiley in any language. Pictures are one of the most natural methods humans have for expressing their thoughts and feelings to the broadest group of people possible. Visual literacy is being set up to be one of the most fundamental skills of our time.
So, if this is all true, why is the road to literacy paved in words?