Probably more on imaging / as going up and \ as going down.

I'd think that associating pitch increase/decrease with up/down works for the vast majority of people without any second thought.

My first French teacher drew a picture of a smiling triangular-topped tombstone with long eyelashes on the blackboard, the word "acute" written up the left (ascending) side of the top and "grave" down the right hand side. A cute grave. Easy to remember. And fairly useless, since it doesn't help a whit with how to pronounce those accents.