Trained eyes don’t function like untrained eyes, because they are trained to see more. It is never simply a chair, a website, a ketchup bottle, or a printed word. It is grids and geometry. It is a series of decisions made by someone else. It is technical limitations in a world that inherently hates limitations.

Visual training is a strange process with no expiration date. You are not born with the ability to see. Yes, your system perceives shapes and colors around you, because your biology is built that way. Inherently though, you are blind, because your brain fills in what it wants to see, ignoring everything else.

Growing up with an artist and an art educator for a mother helped me develop my visual skills from a young age. I don’t remember when I started drawing, and I took my first advanced painting class at the age of 13. I would spend days trying to imitate the light play taking place on the faceted surface of a crystal water vase.

Yet, even with that, when I was a freshman art student, I sat in the studio of Jordan University horrified at my own blindness. I could see that the surface of the Venus I was trying to replicate on paper was more curved at the bottom because of the light and shade, but my eye perceived it as straight, because the actual sculpture was straight. I yelled at my brain a lot that semester, going into conversations with myself about the insanity of how humans are built. The brain imagines the way things look based on per-conceived notions, and it’s hard to unimagine. Drawing is actually really easy when you convince your stupid brain to stop seeing on its own. It took a while, but I was eventually successful.

You are not born with the ability to see. Your eyes don’t see anything. Your brain is the one working.

I am lucky to be able to see how the beveled shadows beneath modal boxes on websites give an impression of depth. I am lucky to be able to see how the serifs on that sign make it more legible from a distance. I am lucky to be able to see that that color isn’t orange at all, it’s actually a combination of cyan, white, and magenta.

Being able to see is poetic. Life becomes much more beautiful, and much more ugly. Start training yourself, because you could be blind right now.

The best way to start training is to add a layer of “why?” to your thought process. Of course, not everything around you is built with intent, but many things are, especially in nature, thanks to evolution. Why is the tree curved like that? Why is the website based on three columns? Why is the poster using that particular typeface? Why does the shadow look like it’s curved?

Why?

I was exploring Facebook’s new user interface for profiles, and my eye kept drifting to the avatars of the pages that people “Liked”.

Then I found myself becoming obsessed with how the people, brands, and musicians of Jordan represent themselves visually on Facebook. So I started collecting, drawing completely unscientific parallels, and looking for patterns where they probably don’t exist.

So much red
So much rage in the icons of people
So much black and white, together
So much text set in circles
So much typography
So much grunge

Stark white (with blue or gray undertones).

Any color with the word “baby” before it. That’s not an actual color – don’t use it/wear it.

Brown. In most cases.

Most shades of green (notable exceptions: lime and bright green).

Asfar khnani (translated as booger yellow, and no, I am not referring to mustard, that’s a perfectly nice color.)

Web-safe teal. Specifically the teal from the limited color pallette of computers in the early 90′s; think Netscape. I’m not sure why I dislike it so.

I am not sure why I am sharing my least favourite colors either.

Yes, I know I have very strong feelings towards color.

I have blogged several times about Daftar Tajreebi, the awesome design monthly curated by Omar Al-Zo’bi. November’s theme is censorship.

If you look hard enough, you can even find a submission by yours truly.

The next issue is about the end of the summer. Yalla, submit.