More about the Funky Diagram Part 1

As I mention in my previous post, asking good questions means changing your perspective, and seeing something in a fresh way to get your imagination moving.


For example, cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen and museum educator Philip Yenawine developed something called Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). This is a very simple way of looking at art and asking questions about what you see. It reveals a lot about how different people can look at the same thing and have different reactions. You can learn more about it here.


While VTS is aimed mainly at art in museums, I'd like to take it a step further and use it to look at advertisements. We are so covered in media and messages and SELLING these days it's hard to know where one ad starts and another one stops. And to me, teaching about art also means teaching about how to look at all the stuff that comes into our field of view with smart, savvy eyeballs.


So, here's something to try. Grab a magazine, and turn to an advertisement.


Now, answer these questions:

1. What is going on in this ad?

2. What do you see that makes you say that?

3. What else do you see?

4. Go back to #1 and repeat. Keep at it until you feel like you've given the ad the once-over.


Now that you've taken a really good look at the ad, you can try these questions from Common Sense Media:

1. Who made this ad?

2. Who did they make it for?

3. How does it get your attention (sizes of things, colors, pictures etc.)?

4. What is the message of the ad?

5. How does it communicate the message (pictures, words, celebrities, etc.)?


Asking good questions can turn you from a passive consumer to a smart, savvy, creative thinker and problem solver.

A couple of pointers:
- There are no right answers to the questions above - it's all about revealing what people see.
- Little kids will come up with really random answers to these sometimes! This can be great fun - and very enlightening as to how our ad-saturated world really looks to them.
- If you have more than one person looking, be sure to notice that everyone has their own answers and that's okay too.