Check out this twisted picture above! I have no clue whatsoever, what should these little figures stand for. They are probably munchkins of kind, or some strange fertility symbols of once great civilization. But the best part is that this doesn’t concern us at all! The strange illusion that comes into play, has much to do with relative sizes. Apparently, if you look at the above photo from left to right, you’ll get impression that the slimmest figure on the left is taller in size than the fattest figure on the right. I hope this will work for you, as it has worked for me!

Those of you who got to know me by time, probably noticed how great deal of my concentration is orientated towards graphic design of this blog. It takes more struggle than you think to keep the visual minimalism, while in the same time staying in race with internet trends, providing more and more additional features for you to play with (rating widgets, share buttons, comments, links, etc.). Often I rule out some hefty features that could help push our traffic sky-high, just because they would hurt our graphical zen. I’m talking about “Digg this” and “Retweet” counters. Somehow I find blogs cluttered with share widgets – annoying at best.

But yesterday, though, I have found acceptable and non-intrusive solution to implement “Share on Facebook” option. I’m sure you’ll agree with me how discreet this new button really is. In fact, if I didn’t point it to you, I’m certain you wouldn’t even notice it. It’s located just beneath the title of each article, and if you click it, a new pop-up window appears where you can easily share the current optical illusion with your Facebook friends. I hope you’ll get accustomed to this new feature, and I would maximally appreciate if you tested it for me, and then shared your experience.

Optical Illusion by Yamaha

Suzanne pointed me to this video commercial recently, created exclusively for Adelaide’s leading motorcycle superstore – Coast Yamaha. The motorcycle featured in video below was loaned from Clive Langley. I have to admit, I never expected such a twist!

I have to give credit to this motorcycle company – They truly understand the power of optical illusions in advertising. In a few years, when I’m done teaching marketing PR’s how illusory campaigns easily become viral, and how powerful impact they have on their audience, hopefully I’ll manage to shift on to the next level.

Next task: lure them to send in their content to Mighty Optical Illusions website, resulting with more fresh content for our audience (You), and wider reach to their brands. My ultimate goal for near future is to get quality, professionally created illusions, while in the same time being payed for the actual content. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not getting payed for this article. But just think about it for a second. Wouldn’t it be a “win-win-win” situation (visitors-me-advertisers), if for example Yamaha had previously recognized the size of our audience, and contacted me with offer to publish this video? Perhaps they don’t need to, as this kind of stuff is virally posted across the net, free of charge. But maybe, just maybe this will change in the future! Check the Billboards section for example – wouldn’t it be logical I got payed for each of those posts?  Unfortunately, I wasn’t…

Now admit it, how many of you saw that coming? Big thanks goes to Suzanne Green for sending the clip! “Firstly I have been a fan of Mighty Illusions for a few years – and I love them. I thought of you when I saw this, done by a local ad agency and very impactful. I hope you agree.”

Sine Line Optical Illusion

SINCE by now all of you are ware that English isn’t my mother language, there are still some minor details I’d like to check. One of the major steps I surpassed recently is learning the difference between it’s and its. Yeah, it may sound dumb but this little thing made me uncertain for quite some time. It took years before I finally understood how the hell verb read can be written the same in present and past form, even though in each case it’s pronounced differently. I think some of these rules were explained to me by one of my readers. Next on my quest of knowledge is to distinguish the difference between color and colour. Anyone cares to explain? I’ve seen both of them in use.

Concerning the illusion of the day, I posted it to the left. The line you see fluctuating is composed of many vertical lines. Do some of those vertical lines seem to be unequal in length? The strange case here, is that all of the vertical lines in this example are identical! Strange, ayeh?

Concerning the illusions, I found this one through Google image search. I really liked it. Now, if I started talking too much about it, the answer would become more than obvious. I wouldn’t like to ruin this one for you, so I’ll let you solve this by yourselves. All I can say is that it has something to do with Relative Sizes. Shouldn’t be too complicated, though.

Are these cups different in size?

Which one is largest? - Illusion of 3 Audi's

Click To View the Solution Animation

One thing I need to ask you is to have patience, and report all the broken and missing stuff on the new website, as it will take few days to fix everything properly after I redirect moillusions.com domain to new destination. I found this nice little illusion, and set it to appear in all your widgets. Your assignment is to tell me which of these two boxers is taller? The one who won, or the other poor one – laying on the floor? If you have experience with this kind of illusions, you’ll know the answer before you even finish reading this post!