Comments on: Left Brain, Right Brain

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:28:39 +0000

I’m strongly right-brained – I cannot get the dancer to reverse at all. In fact I cannot even ‘see’ how that could happen. I’ve given up on trying to build even the most basic website for myself as the endless frustration was making me almost ill. The phrase ‘why on earth does it have to be this difficult’ kept being uttered, along with noises of things breaking.
Photographer, Writer, History and Philosophy teacher – says it all really. Also right handed and left-eyed (photographers know these things).
I’ve known this problem from other contexts – in the printing trade, good printers are lousy designers – usually.
It’s time that we forced the right brained idiots who design things like web programs to do their job properly and design systems that – a) work in simple language, and b) forgive obvious and simple mistakes. What’s so hard about having a program with the instruction ‘if it doesn’t work with a comma, try it with a point’ ? I’m used to robust programs like Photoshop – web building programs are unbelievably fragile.

By: zoe

zoe — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:09:15 +0000

Hi, nice article. I do see the lady spinning both ways. easy. I am a developer and not a graphic designer. I am not a graphic designer because I have never spent any time on learning any graphic design tools. We do have people in the team who can use graphic design tools but I don’t necessarily think they are more creative than me. I can draw, I am pretty good. I spent my entire childhood with pens and paper (we were poor) and used to design wall paper, clothes, cards, draw people. the first time I used a computer was day 1 of my computing degree 11 or so years ago!! I do like my code neat and tidy though and spend too much time removing white space and line breaks from it

By: Amanda - Truly Ace Graphic Designer

Amanda - Truly Ace Graphic Designer — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:44:09 +0000

That’s about the extent of my ‘coding’ – .html is ok, css is very shaky and everything else makes my brain bleed when I try to understand it

I think whether design is harder to learn or not than coding depends on your brain. Some coders are always saying … “Oh it’s easy to do that” – well it’s easy ‘to them’ due to the way their brain works, but completely beyond me most the time.

By: Damian Web

Damian Web — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:24:39 +0000

Right brain! The dancer is always going clockwise but I focus really hard I can make it go anti-clockwise… guess thats what im doing when coding! Designing comes naturally but coding I have to think a lot! I have learnt a lot of coding over the years and I am very comfortable with CSS/XHTML but when it comes to adding more into my brain such as PHP and jQuery I just seem to flush it straight back out! Its not all bad though, design is a harder thing to learn that coding and codes can be found on helpful websites! So im happy with mine

By: Amanda - Truly Ace Graphic Designer

Amanda - Truly Ace Graphic Designer — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:34:42 +0000

That moving dancer hurts my eyes trying to turn her the other way – some people say that can do it, but I really can’t.

I find coding really frustrating personally. I don’t enjoy it when problem solving comes up (which it always does with coding), I just find it really irritating. The day I decided to not code for clients any more was a great day at Truly Ace, ha ha.

By: Danny Hinde

Danny Hinde — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:02:30 +0000

This article is REALLY interesting! Especially the moving dancer, I can’t possibly see that she’s turning anti-clockwise!

Unfortunately I’m the same with numbers…I failed my GCSE maths with a D which I had to resit, in contrast I got a A* in my graphic products course!

I don’t think anyone can be good at both web designing and the coding behind it all, I’d love to have both skills but with coding I’d feel like I was doing it more for the money than the enjoyment – but I do enjoy the problem solving that comes with coding.

Interesting article.

By: Amanda - Truly Ace Graphic Designer

Amanda - Truly Ace Graphic Designer — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:13:21 +0000

You know, I keep doing that, getting it the wrong way round thinking that ‘left’ is the creative side. I think it’s because we all equate ‘leftness’ to more liberal/relaxed type of people and we then relate that to being the creative side of the brain.

I am hideous with numbers, I was a complete idiot at maths in school. No sooner had I been taught something, literally 5 minutes later I’d forgotten how to do it – the teacher used to get really angry with me like I was doing it on purpose once!

And here’s a funny story. I took a maths test once when I was about 14yrs old and got 13%, the teacher was not impressed and made me and some other bad performer take it again … I got 6% the second time round – she was enraged and accused me of doing it on purpose!

I seriously wasn’t doing it on purpose, I did actually ‘try’ to get the answers right – my mind just really struggles with remembering mathematical formulas. They just slip out my head really easily.

Thanks for your post!

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:14:06 +0000

Should have mentioned that ‘handedness’ is the opposite way to how the brain is wired. Meaning I’m ‘right’ brained!

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:12:43 +0000

I’m a pure lefty, so I’m doomed to never understanding numbers or equations or any of that boring stuff. But I play a mean guitar Handedness is no doubt an identifier of which side of the brain is dominant. I am most jealous of people who are ambidextrous, they are probably be closest to being balanced…