A Deliberate Mistake

 

Albert Einstein, my most favourite scientist had put it very beautifully. “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift”. 

I offer a small correction. (Teachers can’t help their habit of correcting. Pardon me). ‘The faithful servant’ does not remain faithful always and many times overshadows “the scared gift”.

Myself and my book designer played a trick with the readers in designing the book “Design values”. Many people may not have noticed it. Well then this trick seems successful. Can anyone now tell me where we fooled them?

Open page 63 and you will find my pen and ink sketch of a lovely baby face. What is special about it? 

It is an upside down sketch. Many people thought it was just a print mistake and pardonable. 

But whenever someone is opening the book in front of us, there would be a glint in our eyes with expectation. Will this reader be smart enough to notice, ask or find out his own answer why it is upside down? It cannot be a print mistake because it was carried on the same way in the second edition printing too. 

I always like playing with my readers.

Those who read Betty Edward’s classic “Drawing on the right side of the brain” would understand why we did it. 

The upside-down drawing is ‘tricking” the dominant left hemisphere of the brain into dropping out of the task. It is an exercise to tickle your right hemisphere of the brain, the seat of the “intuitive mind”. It is very subtle but thrilling. Even designing could be boring routine task if there is no thrill in it.

Betty Edwards wrote:

“Familiar things do not look the same when they are upside down. We automatically assign a top, a bottom and sides to the things we perceive and we expect to see things oriented in the usual way – that is, right side up. In upright orientation, we can recognize familiar things, name them, and quickly categorize them by matching what we see with our stored memories and concepts.

When an image is upside down, the visual clues don’t match. The message is strange, and the brain becomes confused. We see the shapes and the areas of light and shadow, but the image doesn’t call forth the immediate naming that we are used to.

For reasons that are still unclear, the verbal system immediately rejects the task of “reading” and naming upside down images. The L-mode seems to say, in effect, “I don’t do upside down. It’s too hard to name things seen this way, and, besides, the world isn’t upside down. Why should I bother with such stuff?”

Well, that’s just what we want! On the other hand, the R-mode seems not to care. Right side up, upside down, it’s all interesting, perhaps even more interesting upside down because the R-mode is free of interference from its verbal partner, which is often in a “rush to judgment” or at least, a rush to recognize name, and move on”. 

Of course, it started as a deliberate mistake. 

I remember that day; as my designer was showing me the final proofs before sending the soft copy to the printer. When I turned to page 63; with the upside down sketch, I stopped. I stared at her sitting opposite me, meaning “What is this?” She stared back with a smile in her eyes. I could read “why not?” in that smile. 

I looked back at the beautifully laid out page in front of me. 

Silence. 

Then I grinned widely and said “let it be. It is a great idea”. That is all!

Aren’t all creativity applications deliberate mistakes?