Longhauser Again

I am rereading the first quote from William Longhauser I posted October 17, 2005. I do believe that Longhauser's thought is far reaching. Familiarity does breed indifference. The quick glance far too often neglects the detail.

This thinking can be applied to teaching in any visual medium. It is so very difficult to get a student to see past the obvious or the casual design effort--to SEE relationships, difference and theme.

Again:

Before we learn our ABCs, letters are abstract shapes with no meaning. As the letters become recognizable, the individual forms and structures become invisible to the eye. Familiarity breeds indifference, and the unique forms that define each letter are replaced with a name for identification, eventually revealing words, phrases, and sentences. This ritual, our earliest contact with graphic design, is the path to literacy, but it fails to develop and cultivate our eyes. The question is how does one transcend immediate recognition and replace it with observation and perception?