Maybe you’ve been to an art gallery recently and been impressed with the works on display, or you’ve watched TV and noticed a particularly clever or unusual advert. That’s the human brain that does all that! Humans are skilled at creating and interpreting abstract concepts, something that AI will find a constant challenge.

The brain has different areas that work together to create abstract ideas, including the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and amygdala. It’s all about teamwork here, as these parts of the brain collaborate to extract, combine and evaluate all kinds of information, leading to the creation of abstract ideas which may include visual, auditory (hearing) and motor (movement) elements.

This collaboration continues as the left and right hemispheres of the brain work together, with the left hemisphere focusing on breaking down complex concepts into their components and generating abstractions from these parts, and the right hemisphere evaluating and refining the abstractions the left hemisphere produces.

When you reach out to your human illustrator with an abstract, unformed idea and ask them to come up with ideas for your project you’ll know that this is what’s been happening in their creative brain when they come back to you with their ideas. Much more effective than spending time wrestling with AI.

At Inky Thinking we’re interpreting abstract ideas daily. Take our work in the automotive industry for example, where we have partnered with clients to develop visual tools to convey often complex and inaccessible topics. We’re currently working with a global brand to bring to life their organisation wide culture and values. With another global brand we are creating decks to concisely demonstrate the complex value of integrated IT systems. Both topics can be difficult to understand, and that’s where human illustrators come to the fore in the opportunity to build understanding and generate buy-in.

In Part 5 we will be exploring how the human illustrator draws on insights and experience when working on your creative project.

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