I want to tell you why those visual skills are important and why they're not really art related. So you don't need to be great at illustration drawing and anything like that to have better visual skills. And the reason for visual skills and their importance is that right now the attention span of most humans is shorter than a goldfish. And the study done on that was done in the year 2000, around the year 2000. So it's been 20 years after that.
So we're probably even lower right now. We might be on like the attention span of an end. So it dropped from 12 seconds to just 8 seconds because we are bombarded constantly by stimuli from every direction. And this also led to a lot of very odd color choices by some companies that are pushing colors that are clashing on purpose. And those colors are interpreted by our brain as something ugly. But at the same time, they are so contrasty
that we kind of notice them faster. So we are basically being forced cognitive overload just to to notice something. The reason for that, the whole attention span and why it's important is that everything that you do competes for attention. So there's like a lot of designers right now that are sending their resumes and portfolios to those same recruiters and the same companies and the same clients. And you need to stand out from that crowd to be able to even compete because people
don't simply have the time to to actually thoroughly read when you send them. And also looking at it this way, the standard heatmap kind of way. As you can see, the biggest hit on this image is on my face because I'm looking directly at the camera here. And this is a primal instinct that actually focuses our attention on the eyes because we want to see if that person actually means some harm to us or is in any way threatening. So it's like a primal instinct.
And also my finger catches a little bit of attention because if we're pointing at something, it might be important for you to understand that as well. So you need to check it out. And then the text is probably the least important part, but it's big, so it gets a little bit of attention. But if I changed one little thing in this image, just looking to the side note, front and center, just to the side like this and looking at the text, then this text will actually get most of the attention here. That's because we also need to know what other people
are looking at this Also, that primal instinct, we need to be able to see what they see because they might be looking at a predator or they might be looking at something that we want some food or shelter or whatever. So something that is really important to us. And of course, if we kind of dumb it down to the most obvious scenario in our case, we want to be effective in reaching recruiters and clients, but in reality is for everyone. So if you're doing anything visual, other people are going to look at it.
Are those people are that people are going to see it and they're going to evaluate it and paid enough attention or not enough attention, depending on how good the visuals are. That is all because people buy with their eyes. We might say that of course merit is important and knowledge is important, but in reality we look at shiny new Apple products, for example, and we get that craving like, Do I really need that new laptop with a notch? I don't think so, but it's so shiny and so nice
and we get this subconscious crave to to write a note to get the thing or to be interested in it more just because it looks good. So good design, good visual design is something that can actually influence our decisions in in a big, big way.