VERY UNSCIENTIFIC THOUGHTS ON LEFT-HANDEDNESS

I found this book online.  It wasn’t all that long ago that left-handed children were the victims of attempts to “cure” them in their early years.  They were punished for using the wrong hand.  I don’t believe many, or any, of them continued to write with their right hand, once the pressure was lifted, but it couldn’t have been easy.  Nowadays there are products made for lefties, even stores that specialize in things like left-handed corkscrews, and left-handed can openers.  Even language is biased with words like gauche in French meaning both “left”  and “awkward” or “clumsy” and right  in English meaning both the direction and “correct” or “proper”.

But because of the division of the brain hemispheres,  it seems that left-handers’ brains are structured in such a way that benefits their language skills, and allows them to handle spatial relationships and emotions in more diverse and creative ways.  Which brings me to my own very unscientific survey that I have developed over the years as an illustrator.  Most illustrators I’ve known are right-handed, but a predominant number of designers are left-handed.  I always wondered if there was something about the preferred hand, that made the designers see patterns and shapes more clearly than right-handers.  It couldn’t be all that much of a difference, but enough that lefties gravitated toward design, and righties went with drawing.

I looked up pictures of Saul Bass, Raymond Lowey, and Charles and Ray Eames on Google.  And though it is difficult to tell, it appears that all of them were right-handed.  Does that blow my theory out of the water?  Not really, because like I said, most designers I’ve known were lefties.  And after all, I did say this wasn’t scientific.