“Many of the super creative designers I have worked with seemed to have one thing in common; they suffered from dyslexia.”- Soren Petersen, Design Research Ph.D
As someone with Dyslexia, I found the explanation of the learning disability in Make it Stick incredibly personal and relevant. Individuals with dyslexia have a hard time linking letters to sounds, identifying phonemes, and recognizing words. According to the authors of Make It Stick, many people with dyslexia tend to have a greater capacity for creativity, and this could be a result of either “neural wiring” or the need to think divergently to overcome challenges associated with the disability (Brown et al., 2014, p. 142). Brown et al. spent time examining the neural differences of people with Dyslexia in order to underscore the importance of learning strategies, such as compensating skills or intelligences and motivation, in achieving success (2014).
As a child, I lagged behind my peers when learning reading, writing, and math, and would often write letters and numbers backwards. Many of the art projects that I did are the physical representation of my dyslexia, because they are riddled with backwards symbols. I was able to overcome my dyslexia in middle and high school, likely because I developed an ability to see the bigger picture, rather than focusing on the components of the problem (Brown et al., 2014). I didn’t notice the presence of my disability until I went to University. I double majored in undergrad in Fashion Design and French language, and I noticed that I was doing really poorly on my exams in French Phonetics. My professor at the time had noticed that I was writing many of the symbols backwards, even though the phonetic formation was correct. This was a revelation for me; It suddenly made sense why I was struggling so much on my phonetic exams. I had forgotten about Dyslexia for my middle and high school years, but many of my issues in school were suddenly enlightened.
After reading into Dyslexia this week, I found that many of the world’s top fashion designers and architects have dyslexia. This is likely because dyslexic people have advanced spacial understanding, peripheral vision, and visual thinking. Even though in my childhood I could never remember my times tables and struggled to differentiate the orientation of letters, I could draw a human face from memory. My dyslexia actually ended up helping me in my adult career as a fashion designer, and now I view it more as a super power than a disability.
Comments
Post a Comment