Thanks to Zach Graham for sharing his photos (this one from Tokyo).

As a follow-up to the "learning from comics" post, I'd like to point you to a compelling new blog which offers some wonderful information about comics, or "the art of storyboarding." Like the Scott McCloud book, this blog, called the Temple of the Seven Golden Camels, need not be for comics artists or animators only. Anyone interested in improving their own "visual literacy" or "design IQ" will want to add this site to their RSS feed. The author of the blog, storyboard artist Mark Kennedy, has several extremely interesting posts that anyone with an eye for graphics and storytelling will benefit from. Open your mind and let the learning begin. You may want to start with this one, "Design and Drawing":

"It only took me about fifteen years to realize that design is the key to everything in our business, especially being a big-time animator. People who can draw well are good designers. Much of what we think of as 'good draftsmanship' is just good design."                                                                                                     — Mark Kennedy

Mark has posted scanned copies of the 7-page "Comic Strip Artist's Kit" created by famous Disney artist Carson Van Osten in 1975. Mark calls it "...probably the best thing I've ever seen about practical staging and drawing for storyboards or comic books." Thanks to the generosity of Mark — and of course, Carson — we can download good copies from the original sketches. This stuff is gold. Another great post with many large visual examples (suitable for printing) is this one entitled "D&D7: Rhythm (part one)" which explores rhythm as it relates to drawing. (See the August archives for more D&D tips). Checkout the 5 Minute Art School: Composition 102. I love the simple insights here on composition, much of which I believe can be applied to photography and slide design, etc.

In a post on proportion Mark shows some good examples. "They are a good example of how much you can do with very few elements! Less is more," he says.  Actually, this young blog is filled with little gems so do not forget to explore the archives.

The life of a salaryman in 30 seconds
While watching the TBS channel yesterday I stumbled upon a short segment discussing the popularity (on the web) of two short commentaries by Japanese artists. One of them is "Sushi," a great video with lessons for presentation designers. I linked to this in a post back in January. The other is a 30-second animation called "run" (hashire). This simple animation is brilliant and does a good job of "summing up" the life of a so-called "typical salaryman." The power of the simple drawings in the animation is that they allow us to see ourselves in the salaryman's shoes. It's also a good example of McCloud's "amplification through simplification." Anyone who has visited Japan or knows anything about Japan and its culture will get a kick out of this clip.

Sample (sort of)
Several months ago I used these slides below as part of a presentation on blogging. Here I was talking about the idea of "buzz marketing" and building WOM (word of mouth). This was the first time I used a "cartoon" character in a visual I think. In this case, the character is a drawing of me made in about 30 seconds in Adobe Illustrator by my artist/designer-turned-PR-pro wife. I could have used a photo of myself, but since I was the one doing the talking, it just seemed weird to have a pic of myself on the large screen behind me. Besides, I am just using myself as a kind of representation of any individual or organization, brand, etc.

1   2

3   4
As you can probably tell, my point was that what I say about me (advertising) is far less important than what other people say about me. That is, I can (1) say I am great, but (2) who would believe that? <Sigh>...a lonely place. On the other hand, if (3) others say good things about me, well, *that* you just might believe. And (4) so-called "buzz-marketing" or WOM is giving people something worth talking about. Famous brands like Apple, Starbucks, Harley-Davidson, etc. know all about how to generate buzz and word-of-mouth by giving people something worth talking about. Us "little guys" can't spend the millions needed to make advertising begin to (maybe) work, but anyone with a compelling story to tell — a product or a mission worth talking about — can generate buzz and word-of-mouth worth far more than the ephemeral influence of traditional advertising.

Link
• Tons to learn from drawn.ca

You know my philosophy: Keep reading and keep looking — we just never know where we'll find inspiration and knowledge if we open our eyes and go off the beaten path. If we embrace the "beginner's mind" and keep our mind "empty" then it's ready to accept anything for examination. It was in this spirit, then, that I purchased a book on (gulp) comics. I first heard of the book from Cliff Atkinson about two years ago. Dan Pink also mentioned the book in A Whole New Mind which I just read a few weeks ago. The book is called Understanding Comics: The invisible Art by Scott McCloud. I highly recommend that you get this book. Frankly, you're nuts if you don't add this book to your library. Seriously, stop what you are doing right now and buy this incredible book. I'm serious — do it right now. (I'll wait....) You back? Good. Believe it or not, many of the principles and ideas discussed in this wonderful and highly visual book parallel the art of presentation. Now, comics are not the same as a presentation enhanced by slideware, but if you read McCloud's book with an eye toward presentations or any other form of storytelling and graphic design, you will find many fundamental concepts and techniques that will surely help you think differently about the power of visual communication and the art of combining words and images. This book is not just for fans of comics — not by a long shot.

Amplification through simplification
McCloud explores many key concepts in his book. Chief among them from my point of view is the idea of "amplification through simplification." McCloud says that cartooning is "...a form of amplification through simplification" because the abstract images in comics are not so much the elimination of detail as much as they are an effort to focus on specific details. Says McCloud,

"By stripping down an image to essential 'meaning,' an artist can amplify that meaning..."
                                                                    — Scott McCloud

McCloud says that "Cartooning is not just a way of drawing, it's a way of seeing! The ability of cartoons to focus our attention on an idea is I think an important part of their special power, both in comics and drawing in general."  Specific applications will vary, of course, but we can apply the spirit of "amplification through simplification" to creative disciplines outside the art of comics.

A key feature of many comics is their visual simplicity. Yet, as McCloud reminds us, while casting an eye to the wonderful world of Japanese comics, "simple style does not necessitate simple story." Many people (outside of Japan) prejudge comics by their simple lines and forms as being necessarily simplistic and base, perhaps suitable for children and "the lazy," but not something that could possibly have depth and intelligence. Surely such a simple style found in comics can not be illustrating a complex story they say. However, if you visit coffee shops around Tokyo University — Japan's most elite university — you will see stacks and stacks of comics (Manga) on the shelves. There is nothing necessarily "stupid" about the genre of comics in Japan at all, in fact you'll find "brainiacs" in all shapes and sizes reading comics here.

Still, most people in, say, the U.S. have a visceral reaction to seeing comics and fail to understand them as anything but "low" art at best. Perhaps this reflects a hole in the education system in the U.S. Perhaps visual literacy needs to be taught along with other fundamentals. In any event, the situation today is that most people have not been exposed to the idea of making an idea or a visual stronger by stripping it down to its essence. Less always equals less in most people's eyes. If we apply this visual illiteracy to the  world of presentations, you can imagine the frustration a young "enlightened" professional must feel when her boss looks over her presentation visuals the day before her big presentation and says "No good. Too simple. Good lord! You have not said anything with these slides! Where are your bullet points!? Where's the company logo!? You're wasting space — put some data in there!!!" She tries to explain that the slides are not the presentation but that she is the presentation and that the "points" will be coming from her mouth. She tries to explain that the slides contain a delicate balance of text and images designed to play a supportive yet powerful role in helping her amplify her message. She attempts to remind her boss that they also have strong, detailed documentation for the client and that slides and documents are not the same. But her boss will have none of it. The boss is not happy until the "PowerPoint deck" looks like "normal PowerPoints," you know, the kind used by "serious people."

Applying the amplification-through-simplification concept
In this 2004 cliff Atkinson interview with Scott McCloud, McCloud says that it is hard to give people concrete advice on how to use PowerPoint because each case is different. Nonetheless, it would be wise he says, for us to take advantage of "amplification through simplification" as much as possible. Beyond this, McCloud offers excellent advice for presenters:

"...trust in those aspects of what you have to say that excite you. Trust that they will excite other people. And try to distill for yourself what it is that seems urgent and potent in your topic. Have faith in your own passion for the subject. And if you have none, then consider a change of career. If you can isolate the aspects of your subject which genuinely excite you, then that can be the fulcrum for any number of effective points."
                                                              — Scott McCloud

I am not suggesting that you become an artist or that you should draw your own images. But I am suggesting that you can learn a lot about how to present images and words together by exploring the so-called "low art" of comics. In fact, although presentation visuals were surely the furthest thing from McCloud's mind when he wrote the book, we can learn far more about effective communication for the conceptual age from McCloud's book than we can from any book on PowerPoint. For example, early in the book McCloud builds a definition of comics and finally arrives with this, a definition he admits is not written in stone:

"Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer."
                                                              — Scott McCloud

It is easy to imagine, with some tweaking, how this could be applied to other storytelling media and presentation contexts as well. We do not have a good definition for "live presentation with slideware" but a killer presentation may indeed contain visuals which are comprised of "juxtaposed pictorial and other images." And many good presentations certainly have elements of sequence designed to "convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response."

And speaking of learning from comics
Checkout Wally Woods's 22 Panels That Always Work. Print this and hang it up near your desk for inspiration and guidance. The 22 panels were guides for comics illustrators, but they may also challenge you or inspire you to experiment with the way you display your visual information. For example, an application of "Big Head" and "Extreme Closeup" in my world is to make use of the entire screen and when possible making the slide space seem larger than it is. This effect can be achieved when you "bleed" images off the screen. With the ubiquity of digital still cameras and inexpensive-but-good stock photography there is no reason that one has to keep images tiny on screen.

   
Above. On the left is an actual slide used in one of my recent talks. On the right is the more "usual" way of presenting the text and image together.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I have incorporated Dan Pink's "aptitudes for the conceptual age" in to part of my presentations on presentation design. To introduce Pink's aptitudes into my talk visually I first made the slide on the left (below). Yes, I know it's not very "visual" but I thought it would serve to summarize Pink's main points in one frame. Now, my application of the idea of "amplification through simplification" is different than what McCloud was talking about in Comics, but the basic idea is there. In some ways the revised slide on the right is more complex, but from the point of view of its Gestalt, it's more powerful, simple, and easy to grasp quickly. The first bulleted slide has 40 words; revised slide has 24. The revised slide is by no means a work of art or even the best possible graphical representation of the six key aptitudes, but it is far more visually supportive of my verbal message. And it was simple to do.

   
(Left) Yuck. (Right) Not great, but much better.

Scott McCloud: The Zen Master of comics
At the end of the book, McCloud gives us some simple, Zen-like wisdom. He's talking about writers, artists, and the art of comics, but this is good advice to live by no matter where our creative talents my lie. "All that's needed," he says, "...is the desire to be heard. The will to learn. And the ability to see." This to me is the essence of his book.

 
When you get right down to it, it always comes back to desire, the willingness to learn, and the ability to really see. Many of us have the desire, it's the learning and seeing that's the hard part. McCloud says that in order for us to understand comics we need to "...clear our minds of all preconceived notions about comics. Only by starting from scratch can we discover the full range of possibilities comics offer." The same could be said for presentation design. Only by approaching presentations and presentation design with a completely open mind can we see that the options are virtually endless. It is just a matter of seeing.

LINKS
• Scott McCloud's website
• Scott McCloud's "The Making Comics 50 State Tour"
• How to make illustrations even if you can’t draw (Eirikso.com)
• How to avoid making boring presentations(Eirikso.com)
• Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work
• Can't stop laughing at this PPT-related cartoon (what's that say about me?)

My favorite book of the summer is Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind.  A simple book in many ways, and a most profound and well-researched one as well. At 267 pages (in paperback), it's a quick read. In fact, I read it twice, the second time underlining, highlighting, and taking notes as I went along. "The future belongs to a different kind of person," Pink says. "Designers, inventors, teachers, storytellers — creative and empathetic right-brain thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't." Pink claims we're living in a different era, a different age. An age in which those who "Think different" may be valued even more than ever.

"...an age animated by a different form of thinking and a new approach to life — one that prizes aptitudes that I call 'high concept' and 'high touch.' High concept involves the capacity to detect patterns and opportunities, to create artistic and emotional beauty, to craft a satisfying narrative....High touch involves the ability to empathize with others, to understand the subtleties of human interaction..."

                                              — Dan Pink, A Whole New Mind

The whole left-brain (L-directed thinking) and right-brain (R-directed thinking) exploration put forth logically enough in the first part of the book is highlighter-worthy, even if it's nothing really new for many of us who keep up on this stuff (my mother survived  a very serious stroke on the left side of her brain ten years ago; I have read a good deal and learned a lot about this subject since then). What I found particularly valuable in Dan Pink's book were the "six senses" or the "six R-directed aptitudes" which Pink says are necessary for successful professionals to posses in the more interdependent world we live in, a world of increased automation and out-sourcing. You can quibble over parts of his book if you like, but I think there is no denying that these six aptitudes are indeed more important now than they ever have been. Mastering them is not sufficient, of course, but leveraging these aptitudes may very well be necessary for professional success and personal fulfillment in today's world.

Now, Pink is not saying that logic and analysis, so important in "the information age," are not important in "the conceptual age" of today. Indeed, logical thinking is as important as it ever has been. "R-directed reasoning" alone is not going to keep the space shuttle up or cure disease, etc. Logical reasoning is a necessary condition. However, it's increasingly clear that logic alone is not a sufficient condition for success for individuals and for organizations. "Right-brain reasoning," then, is every bit as important now  — in some cases more important — than so-called "left-brain thinking." (The whole right-brain/left-brain thing, of course, is a metaphor based on real differences between the two hemispheres; a healthy person uses both hemispheres for even simple tasks).

A whole new way of of presenting?
The six fundamental aptitudes outlined by Pink can be applied to many aspects of our personal and professional lives. Below, I list the six key abilities as they relate to the art of presentation. The six aptitudes are: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning. My discussion is with presentations (enhanced by multimedia) in mind, but you could take the six aptitudes and apply them to the art of game design, programming, product design, project management, health care, teaching, retail, PR, and so on. (I purchased the Japanese translation of A Whole New Mind yesterday. The Japanese translation of the six aptitudes (left) are as they appear in the book, though I added the English word below the Japanese.)

(1) Design. To many business people, design is something you spread on the surface, it's like icing on a cake. It's nice, but not mission-critical. But this is not design to me, this is more akin to "decoration." Decoration, for better or worse, is noticeable, for example — sometimes enjoyable, sometimes irritating — but it is unmistakably *there.* However, sometimes the best designs are so well done that "the design" of it is never even noticed consciously by the observer/user, such as the design of a book or signage in an airport (i.e., we take conscious note of the messages which the design helped make utterly clear, but not the color palette, typography, concept, etc.). One thing is for sure, design is not something that's merely on the surface, superficial and lacking depth. Rather it is something which goes "soul deep."

"It is easy to dismiss design — to relegate it to mere ornament, the prettifying of places and objects to disguise their banality," Says Pink. "But that is a serious misunderstanding of what design is and why it matters." Pink is absolutely right. Design is fundamentally a whole-minded aptitude, or as he says, "utility enhanced by significance."

Design starts at the beginning not at the end; it's not an afterthought. If you use slideware in your presentation, the design of those visuals begins in the preparation stage before you have even turned on your computer (if you're like me), let alone fired up the ol' slideware application. It's during the preparation stage that you slow down and "stop your busy mind" so that you may consider your topic and your objectives, your key messages, and your audience. Only then will you begin to sketch out ideas — on paper or just in your head — that will soon find themselves in some digital visual form later. Too much "PowerPoint design," as you know very well, is nothing more than a collection of recycled bullets, corporate templates, clip art, and seemingly random charts and graphs which are often too detailed or cluttered to make effective on-screen visuals and too vague to stand alone as quality documentation.

(2) Story. Facts, information, data. Most of it is available on-line or can be sent to people in an email, a PDF attachment, or a hard copy through snail mail. Data and "the facts" have never been more widely available. In this context, says Pink, "What begins to matter more [than mere data] is the ability to place these facts in context and to deliver them with emotional impact." Cognitive scientist Mark Turner calls storytelling "Narrative imagining," something that is a key instrument of thought. We are wired to tell and to receive stories. "Most of our experiences, our knowledge and our thinking is organized as stories," Turner says.

"Story" is not just about storytelling but about listening to stories and being a part of stories. We were all born storytellers (and story listeners). As kids we looked forward to "show and tell" and we gathered with our friends at recess and at lunchtime and told stories about real things and real events that mattered, at least they mattered to us. But somewhere along the line, "Story" became synonymous with "fiction" or even "lie." "Oh, he's just telling you a big fat story," they'd say. So "Story" and storytelling have been marginalized in business and academia as something serious people do not engage in. But gathering from what college students tell me, the best and most effective professors, for example, are the ones who tell true stories. My students tell me that the best professors (from their point of view) don't just go through the material in a book but put their own personality, character, and experience into the material in the form of a narrative which is illuminating, engaging, and memorable. My hardest course in graduate school was an advanced research methods class. Sounds dry — and the textbook was dry — yet the professor told stories, gave example after example, and engaged the class in conversations which covered a great amount of important material.

In the end, we can all benefit from increasing our appreciation for Story and becoming both better listeners and storytellers. Story can be used for good: for teaching, for sharing, for illuminating, and of course, for honest persuasion.

(3) Symphony. Focus, specialization, and analysis have been important in the "information age," but in the "conceptual age" synthesis and the ability to take seemingly unrelated pieces and form and articulate the big picture before us is crucial, even a differentiator. Pink calls this aptitude Symphony:

"Symphony...is the ability to put together the pieces. It is the capacity to synthesize rather than to analyze; to see relationships between seemingly unrelated fields; to detect broad patterns rather than to deliver specific answers; and to invent something new by combining elements nobody else thought to pair."

                                         — Dan Pink, A Whole New Mind

The best presenters can illuminate the relationships that we may not have seen before. They can "see the relationships between relationships." Symphony requires that we become better at seeing, truly seeing in a new way. "The most creative among us see relationships the rest of us never notice," Pink says. Anyone can delivery chunks of information and repeat findings represented visually in bullet points on a screen, what's needed are those who can recognize the patterns, who are skilled at seeing nuance and the simplicity that may exist in a complex problem. Symphony in the world of presentation does not mean dumbing down information into soundbites and talking points so popular in the mass media, for example. To me, Symphony is about utilizing our whole mind — logic, analysis, synthesis, intuition — to make sense of our world (i.e., our topic), finding the big picture and determining what is important and what is not before the day of our talk. It's also about deciding what matters and letting go of the rest. Audiences are full of busy, stressed out professionals with less and less time on their hands. A symphonic approach to our material and our ability to bring it all together for our audience will be greatly appreciated.

(4) Empathy. Empathy is emotional. It's about putting yourself in the position of others. It involves an understanding of the importance of the nonverbal cues of others and being aware of your own. Good designers, for example, have the ability to put themselves in the position of the user, the customer, or the audience member. This is a talent, perhaps, more than it's a skill that can be taught, but everyone can get better at this. Everyone surely knows of a brilliant engineer or programmer, for example, who seems incapable of understanding how anyone could possibly be confused by his (or her) explanation of the data — in fact he's quite annoyed by the suggestion that anyone could "be so thick" as to not understand what is so "obvious" to him.

We can certainly see how empathy helps a presenter in the course of a live talk. Empathy allows a presenter, even without thinking about it, to notice when the audience is "getting it" and when they are not. The empathetic presenter can make adjustments based on his reading of this particular audience. You may have had the experience of "changing gears" during your talk with great success. You may have also suffered along with others in the audience when a presenter seemed not to empathize with his audience at all, even droning on past his allotted time, oblivious to the suffering he was causing. The presenter with empathy — who empathizes with his audience — will never go over time, and in fact may finish a bit before his time is up.

(5) Play. In the conceptual age, says Pink, work is not just about seriousness but about play as well. Pink quotes University of Pennsylvania professor, Brain Sutton-Smith who says, "The opposite of play isn't work. It's depression. To play is to act out and be willful, exultant and committed as if one is assured of one's prospects." Each presentation situation is different, but in many (most?) public speaking situations playfulness and humor can go along way. I do not mean "jokiness" or clown-like informality. But many of the best business presentations or seminars that I've attended over the years have had elements of humor. As Pink points out, "Laughter is a form of nonverbal communication that conveys empathy and that is even more contagious than the yawn..."

Indian physician Madan Kataria points out in Pink's book that many people think that serious people are the best suited for business, that serious people are more responsible. "[But] that's not true," says Kataria. "That's yesterday's news. Laughing people are more creative people. They are more productive people." Somewhere along the line we were sold the idea that a real business presentation must necessarily be dull, devoid of humor and something to be endured not enjoyed. And if you use slides — and God help you if you don't — the more complex, detailed, and ugly the better. After all this is serious business, not a day at the beach. This approach is still alive and well today, but I hope in future that this too will become "yesterday's news." It's possible. Remember, for example, that twenty years ago or so business — especially big business — rejected the idea of a graphical user interface for "serious computing" because business should be "difficult" and "serious," ideas that seemed incongruent with a mouse (how cute!) icons, pictures, and color, etc. Today, of course, almost every serious business person users a computer with a GUI.

(6) Meaning. I don't want to put too fine a point on this, but making a presentation is an opportunity to make a small difference in the world (or your community, or your company, or school, church, etc.). A presentation gone badly can have devastating impact on your spirit and on your career. But a presentation which goes insanely well can be extremely fulfilling for both you and the audience, and it might even help your career. Some say that we "are born for meaning" and live for self-expression and an opportunity to share that which we feel is important. If you are lucky, you're in a job that you feel passionate about. If so, then it's with excitement that you look forward to the possibility of sharing your expertise — your story — with others. Few things can be more rewarding than connecting with someone, with teaching something new, or sharing that which you feel is very important with others.

Frankly, the bar is often rather low. Audiences are so used to death-by-PowerPoint that they've seemingly learned to see it as "normal" even if not ideal. However, if you are different, if you exceed expectation and show them that you've thought about them, done your homework and know your material, and demonstrated through your actions how much you appreciate being there and that you are there for them, chances are you'll make an impact and a difference, even if it's just in the smallest of ways. There can be great meaning in even these small connections. Take the time before the presentation to meet people, linger afterwards to speak with as many as you can. This is where the relationships are really formed and where a difference can be made.

Many people find a great deal of meaning by volunteering their time and "giving it away." Think about volunteering to present for free to non-profit groups, schools, etc. When it comes to "meaning" these have been some of the most rewarding speaking opportunities. It's an opportunity for you to share your knowledge and wisdom, broaden your own network, and it serves as good practice for you. What could be better?

   
The slide builds in six stages beginning with Design. The vector images are from iStockphoto with some extra editing on my part.The content is adapted from pages 65-66, "Introducing the six senses."

Design. Story. Symphony. Empathy. Play. Meaning. These are not the last word on the aptitudes needed by the modern presenter, but mastering these along with other important aptitudes such as strong analytical skills will take you far as a communicator in the "conceptual age."

Links
• Daniel Pink's blog
• Revenge of the right Brain by Dan Pink (Wired)
• Dan Pink interview with TomPeters.com
• Changing world is leaving the SAT behind by Dan Pink (USA Today)
• Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself (2002) by Dan Pink.
• The World is Flat. A good companion book to A Whole New Mind.
• Love is the Killer App. I kept thinking of this great little book while reading A whole New Mind. Good advice for the "Conceptual Age" man or woman.

When I was in high school, I made a very cool 6-7 minute slideshow on environmental pollution for my class project in biology. The entire school saw it. The first part showed images of pollution and manmade catastrophes, including images of war. This was put to the song "Can't Stand to See the Slaughter (but still I eat the meat)" by Tower of Power. The second part featured images of the great beauty around us there on the Oregon coast set to the hopeful ballad entitled "Let Them See the Light" by Earth Wind & Fire. The slideshow was a visual affirmation of all the natural beauty around us juxtaposed with the manmade destruction and the hypocrisy of it (us) all (ah, to be seventeen again...). This was in the days before the "digital age" (I think the math teacher had an Apple II, the latest technology at the time) so I put my slides and music together with two 35mm slide projectors and used fades to give a "cross dissolve" transition between the two. The music was synchronized with the transitions on a single screen. The resolution of the images was fantastic. It looked as good as anything today to the audience, but it was a ton of work and it could not really be shared unless I lugged around a bunch of equipment with my teacher's help.

Making slideshows in iPhoto
We've been able to make pretty decent slideshows on a computer for a very long time. It's nothing new. But a few years ago Apple kicked it up a notch with iPhoto. I do not mean to be a commercial for Apple, but this little piece of simple software is amazing to me, if for no other reason than its slideshow feature, a feature that Apple does not even really promote. As easy as it is to use (which allows you to focus on the content and your story rather than mucking around trying to make it work), I do not know why more people, including students, do not make more and better us of the tool. It is not a pro-level tool, yet for slideshows, many pros use it.

iPhoto is not deep with a laundry-list of features, yet it has what you need to tell a digital story with images and do it well. Still, one needs the talent and skill, not in using the tool (that's easy), but in knowing how to present the relevant information best, and how to tell a "digital story." People like Dana Atchley (1941-2000) were pioneers in digital story telling. We need more Dana Atchleys today. The tools are there, what we need now is more design education, more understanding about how to present information, and how to tell compelling, relevant stories that matter. Short, relevant, and good slideshows embedded in the presentation can be used by serious scientists or artsy-fartsy grad students working on their MFA.

iPhoto slideshow example
All of this is a long-winded way of me sharing with you that, in a very short amount of time today, I put together in iPhoto a slideshow of an evening we had in Hawaii to share with my friends and family around the world. The hardest part was deciding quickly which shots to include out of the hundreds our photographer, Susanne Pridoehl, snapped for us. The original exported video is of stunning quality and it looks great embedded in Powerpoint/Keynote; YouTube of course compresses the file a great deal. There are a few serious projects that I am working on where a short slideshow in the middle of the presentation will work very well. I had forgotten how useful the iLife suite is. Pretty amazing for such a low-cost piece of software.

Here are a few videos readers have kindly pointed out to me over the past few weeks. These videos are making a pitch or telling a story, much of it done sans the spoken word. You may have seen these before, but they are worth another look. They are not videos of speeches or presenters, but the "presentation" in these bits are strong.

Sony (tv/web ad)
Color like no other. Sony's pitch is not an appeal to the rational. They are not trying to persuade you via lists of features, facts, or argument. Instead, their appeal is more emotional. Because at the end of the day, for most of us, what is the bloody difference between a 42" flat screen from Panasonic, or Sony, or the rest of them? But what if Sony could own a word? And what if that word was "color"? Color after all is an emotional thing and can be supported best visually and by example. This ad is a very simple and effective idea. Difficult to pull off, but they do it. It's beautiful, fun, and even inspiring. It's just a commercial, but to the team who produced it, it's art. (Watch in high-rez).

Honda "Cog" (on-line ad)
Like the Sony ad, you'd swear they did this tv commercial with the help of computer graphics.  And while it took about a zillion takes, the final result is all a single shot. Also on Google.

Virgin Atlantic (tv ad)
This TV commercial has surely offended some viewers, but I suspect the offended ones would never fly Virgin anyway. This method of pitching business class seats on an airplane is utterly unforgettable and completely fits the Richard Branson and the Virgin brand. Of course, Sir Richard loved it so much at the screening that he gave the chief creative officer a big fat kiss ("Choose your sleeping partners on Virgin").

My Declaration of Independence (by Pamela Slim)
Here's a little flash video that Pamela Slim of Ganas Consulting put together for her target audience. I like it. (The music may die out halfway through; they're working on it). You could imagine her doing a standup presentation in front of these slides. Pam introduces the video here.
 

Where the hell is Matt?
One of the simplest and oddly compelling amateur videos I've ever seen. And one of the best. No message really — it just is. And yet, it is inspirational (and I'm not really sure why). No doubt teachers would do well to show this video and then explore in class all the places Matt went. Secretly, I think we all wish we could travel the globe. But it's a lot easier to watch Matt do it... The music undoubtedly helps (a lot). In fact, it may be the music that really makes the audio and low-rez video together so strangely compelling. More on Matt's homepage.

High Boots
What does this have to do with presentations or simplicity? Alright, it's a stretch. But for some reason I am strangely attracted to this '60s-era video which I found via a Boing Boing link weeks ago (Download options). I like it. It's camp.The visual (stage design) is extremely simple, mostly warm colors against a black background. Simple early '60s genre rock with few chords, silly lyrics, but a very strong backbeat and a booming bass drum. Primitive and primal, and oh so '60s. I was just a small kid back then, but it personifies that musical era for me. A lot of pop music today is completely over produced. Back then groups like The Dave Clark Five, The Ventures, The Beatles, The Supremes et al., had no choice but to keep it rather simple. If you hate the high boots video, then you're really going to hate this one by Nancy Sinatra. Groovy (baby).

If I asked you to define simplicity in the context of design, your definition would likely include at least a general principle of using fewer parts/elements rather than more. MIT's John Maeda touches on this in his blog, Simplicity:

"Simple parts are most simple when there are few (versus many) parts. When there are fewer parts, there is an opportunity to distribute one's precious time in fewer directions which results in a higher quality per part."

                                                 — John Maeda, MIT

Steve Wozniak, of course, was famous for slaving over his early designs in the'70s and getting them to work with fewer and fewer parts. The fewer the parts, in general, the cheaper a design (a product, a system, an event, etc.) will be. But another real advantage is that the chance of something going wrong, of failing, is reduced.

Few versus many parts. I was reminded of this aspect of simplicity of design when I was out running the other day. Thirty minutes into my run, and 5-6 kilometers away from my home in central Osaka, part of the heel of my right shoe suddenly went bouncing past me while I was jogging easily on a smooth surface. Weird. I never had part of my shoe just fall off like that before. Now minus the right side of the 2cm heel, continuing to run was not only uncomfortable but also dangerous. Frustratingly, I had no choice but to walk (limp) home. The shoe had only about 50K of wear.

   
Above: Here are my shoes placed on my desk at home moments after I returned  (of course I cleaned the outsole first; we don't allow shoes even on the floor indoors here, as you know). As you can imagine, running on that heel was out of the question.

I was wearing Nikes with the "Shox" technology, the TL3 Shox. "Shox" are little rubber columns on the outsole of the shoe that actually work extremely well as shock absorbers. The particular shoe that I was using, however, has one especially hard piece of rubber attached to the column on the outside heel. Nike calls this BRS 1000 Carbon Rubber for the "key wear areas" of the shoe. This is good for people like me who have a slight supination in their form. It is interesting that the failure of a small rubber part can make this pair of $150 shoes completely useless as a running shoe in just a blink of an eye. This little rubber part is ironically the "Achilles heel" of the shoe. And since I have already severed my right Achilles tendon twice (years ago while playing American football), a strong, elevated heel is very important.

      
Did the designers of this running shoe stop to consider that runners run on trails and beaches or roads, etc. far away from home or their cars, often miles away from anyone at all. The possibility of the shoe failing is usually the furthest thing from a runner's mind. The shoe was a given...at least they used to be. This important part on the Nike shoe was held together with only a bit of glue over a small surface area (since the "shox" is a hollow piece of rubber the area where glue can bond is limited to the rim). I didn't know it at the time of purchase, but only the integrity of the glue for this piece of rubber stood between me and a possible running injury.
    
In the "old days" of running shoes (such as the '70s era Oregon Waffle above) the outside tread was usually a single bonded piece of rubber. If the glue ever failed it would do so gradually, noticeable first along the edges. The failure of the bond would not lead to a "catastrophic failure" of the shoe during the middle of a run. Today the sole of a running shoe may have 2-3 (or more) pieces of rubber attached in some way, but usually these pieces are not so small that they could be easily knocked off, nor are they in such a crucial area as the outer heel. The BRS 1000 heel is 2cm in height; a loss of the heel makes running unwise at best. I will glue the heel back on, but I will never trust this particular shoe again for anything but walking. I bought the shoes in Hawaii; I doubt Nike here in Japan will take them back.

I am thankful for the advancement in running-shoe technology since the days of running track as a high school student. But I would hope that the advanced designs they create would not lead to an increase probability of failure as well. Is this an inevitable consequence of complexity? Maybe Nike needs to ask how they can leverage their technology and cutting-edge design to produce a running shoe that is supportive, good-looking, and will absolutely not fall apart in the middle of a run. Maybe they can take a tip from the folks who designed the Jackson manual typewriter over 100 years ago. I love these lines from the people who brought you the Jackson:

On Simplicity:

"As every one knows, the greater the complexity of a machine the greater the liability to derangement, and the greater the outlay for repairs."

On Durability:

"Mechanical simplicity is naturally followed by mechanical durability."

Not every problem lends itself to simple solutions, of course. Still, as "simple as possible" and "with as few fill-in-the-blanks as possible" is a good general principle worth aiming for. I'm not suggesting we go back in time and use typewriters and run in Oregon Waffles, etc. But whether we're talking about hardware, software, user interface, presentation graphics, or running shoes, simplicity is not only aesthetically pleasing, it often leads to better performance, greater reliability, and overall better results.

Can we learn anything about multimedia and presentations from (gasp) TV commercials? The creators of TV ads have similar challenges to the typical conference presenter. And that is, how to connect with the audience and get the message across in a short amount of time? Yes, conference presenters have more important, complicated subjects than soap or beer or auto insurance, and they have a little more time (though 20-30 minutes is not much more time). But the goals in many ways are similar: Get noticed. Be understood. Be memorable. Get people to take action.

Often, the best commercials appeal to humor; many of the best presentations too use a bit (or a lot) of humor. Let's face it, humor is visceral, it connects with people. The other thing that good TV ads have in common with many of the best conference presentations or keynotes is that they are highly visual. Given the high quality of multimedia support at most conference venues (corporate and university auditoriums, etc.) there's no reason why our conference presentations can not be highly compelling visually as well.

Present like Joe: Simple, visual, memorable
Ozgur at Marketallica in Istanbul sent me a link to an older Canadian beer commercial which, although clearly tongue-in-cheek, is actually a pretty good example of how one could present on stage for a larger audience. If there is a "Garr Reynolds method" I'd have to say that this is pretty close. The "presenter's" large screen in this ad incorporates the use of photography, large text, animation, and video. This is my preferred style as well. The man ("Joe") and his message are front and center, but the visuals bring it all together in a big way.




   
Joe goes all "Takahashi Method" by keeping the text large.

   
Using high-quality photos, large sizes and full bleeds.

   
Videos start in-sync with his talk.

     
Simple animation (in fact, this is video too, but you get the idea).

Conventional wisdom
When a guy in a beer commercial makes better use of on-stage multimedia than most CEOs and executives, it's time to rethink conventional wisdom on what is truly a kick-butt presentation with multimedia support.

The "conventional" approach. Safe, easy and expected. But is it effective? Is it remarkable or memorable?


Unconventional approach. Takes a little — sometimes a lot — more time and thought to construct, but the ROI can be huge on presentation day and beyond.

OK, I know what some of you are saying. It's unfair to compare a Bill Gates technology-related PowerPoint presentation to a guy in a beer commercial, right? They are different. I get that. All I'm suggesting is that in this era, your presentations should be utterly unique visually and your media support should look more like Joe's than Bill's. It's just a commercial, but it is a creative piece of work. Here are the takeaways that we can apply to our real-life presentations.

Tips for making killer presentations with impact (Canadian style?)
• Make it visual.
• Make it large.
• Make it high-rez.
• Mix in photography, text, video, perhaps a small bit of animation.
• Synchronize visuals with the spoken word.
• Make it vocal. Your voice is a powerful tool. Your presentation is not a "slideshow with narration." It is you telling your story with compelling visual support.
• Be different. Not different for the sake of being different, but honestly different. Get in touch with your "inner presenter" — everyone has it inside them somewhere, and it's different in each of us.
• Stand front and center, don't look back. 
• Be proud of your topic. Don't be arrogant (duh), but be confident and show it. 
• No one should have a clue how many slides were used. If they are counting, you've already lost.
• No one cares about your software. At the end of the day, no one should really know or care what software you used. No PowerPoint clichés, tired templates, etc.
• Never, ever go over your allotted time. Period.

All of this assumes, of course, that you have compelling, well-organized content with the appropriate depth and scope for the occasion. If you don't, even nailing every one of the items above will not insure success. But if you do have great content, then presenting "different," big and visual like "I-am-Canadian" Joe just may make your presentation unforgettable.

Link
• John West Salmon TV ad. (This is a bit off-topic, but I love this commercial and always thought of fishing up in B.C. when I saw this ad. In fact, I think John West is an Australian company with English roots. The short ad gets the point across in a memorable way, to be sure.)

Aloha. I've just returned from a two-week trip to the west coast of the US mainland, stopping by the Big Island of Hawaii for several days of laidback fun, none of which involved using a computer. It's wonderful for the creative soul actually to get away completely from technology for a while. The short time away from Japan too has inspired me and given me greater appreciation for many aspects of Japanese life, not the least of which is the absolutely amazing customer service you'll find here.

As you know, I believe strongly that we can learn many things about presentation design by casting a wide net and examining not only great speakers and presentations, but by opening our eyes to studying all aspects of visual communication. With that in mind, below are a few pics I shot while in the US last week.


This was shot above at a corndog stand near the beach in Seaside, Oregon. While standing in line, someone came up to ask the staff if they had any bathrooms. What? Didn't he read the sign?! I too didn't notice the sign (above). It made me smile; a great example of a decorative script typeface that serves to be ugly and unreadable (and even unnoticeable apparently). Well, at least the sign says "sorry." Still, a better idea would have been a small yet readable sign that not only matched the look and feel of the business, but that also informed customers that public restrooms were indeed available just 100 meters up the street.


While in Hilo, Hawaii I found this sign (above) placed at eye-level in the small toy section of a store called "The Most Irresistible Shop in Hilo." The sign is ironic, given the name of the shop, but the message is so off-putting and out of place it's amusing. I can almost hear my dad yelling at me as I read the sign, "This Is Not a Play Room, Damn It!" I don't like doing business with people who yell at me. I'm sympathetic to the shop. I grew up in a seaside tourist town, I know tourists can be a pain. Some people often seem to lose all common sense once they assume the role of tourist. But that's life. Your in-store signage says something about you. Crappy handwritten sings on faded paper say something about the brand. But signs written with an indignant tone say even more...and it ain't good. The shop was actually quite nice, making the sign all the more out of place. Come on, I say let the people play with the toys. They're "irresistible," right?


If you suffer from both arachnophobia (fear of spiders) and aviophobia (fear
of flying) you would have hated my seat on my Aloha Airlines flight from Kona to Honolulu a few days ago. I was seated in the window seat of the first row. I'm a bit paranoid myself of flying and I'm always looking for something to worry about it seems while waiting for takeoff. So I was a little distressed when I noticed a live spider crawling around, trapped between the exterior and interior windows of the 737. "What's a spider doing in there and what does its existence say about the maintenance of these planes?!" As a matter of fact, though, Aloha is an excellent airline with tremendous staff at all levels. And my short-lived bout of anxiety disappeared immediately when I noticed the sign below the window written on some masking tape: "CLEO the Spider". Funny. I learned that the spider had been stuck between the two pains of glass for several days; a flight attendant named the spider on an earlier flight. The sign said two things to me: (1) Don't worry about the spider. We are aware of it, but it's no big deal. And (2) Aloha Airlines has friendly staff with a sense of humor. We take our jobs seriously, but we can have fun too. I like that. (See my blogging buddy in Australia, psychologist Les Posen, for info on coping with the fear of flying here.)



Finally, I had a nice chuckle when we were served our second meal on the flight from Honolulu to Osaka yesterday. Sure, everyone hates airline food, but perhaps passengers will like their meal better if you remind them to "enjoy" it. Actually, it's a nice simple package with a clean narrow sans-serif typeface that says "light" as in light snack (though the cheese and ham sandwich must have been about eight million calories!).

If you ever get a chance to visit Hawaii, be sure to spend some time on the Big Island. The Big Island is the youngest and largest (obviously) of the Hawaiian Islands -- the recent lava flows are amazing. There are something like eleven different climates on the island — we went through most of them as we drove around the entire island in one (long) day. At Punalu'u Black Sand Beach I took a few photos of the sand, thinking that the sand would make an interesting texture for my images library. In the slide below, I used one of the photos as a background. You can download the photo (1024x768) I used for the background here.


The slide above uses a (background) photo of the sand at Punalu'u Black Sand Beach I shot a few days ago on the island of Hawaii.

Oh yes, I did something else pretty cool while in Hawaii. Here's a hint (I'm the one on the left).

Germany is know for great design. Some of the best designed automobiles in the world, for example, are from Germany. BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Porsche are not only wonderfully designed cars, their very names today represent some of the strongest brands on the planet (see Interbrand's 2005 rankings). Along with the world class engineering enjoyed by these firms, of course, are intelligently designed brand identity and communication visuals. Their respective simple yet powerful logos, for example, are identifiable everywhere in the world and serve as a kind of "crown jewel" and an instantly identifiable evocative symbol for each brand. Beyond precision in engineering and industrial design, Germany also has a rich tradition of graphic design, and typography...and, of course, let us not forget where Johann Gutenberg comes from. Germany gets graphic design. According to Jeremy Anynsley, author of "Graphic Design in Germany (1890-1945)":

"German graphic and typographic design in the first half of the 20th century represents an extraordinarily rich and diverse aspect of the history of visual culture."   
                                                 — Jeremy Anynsley

Germany's Erik Spiekermann "embarrassed" by World Cup design
Given Germany's history and love of great design, including graphic design, you would think the design for the 2006 World Cup would be remarkable. But is it? At least one German design expert, Erik Spiekermann, thinks otherwise. Spiekermann is one of Germany's most famous designers and typographers and is the founder of MetaDesign, a firm whose clients include such notable brands as Apple, Audi, VW, and Nike. In this interview with Deutche World, Spiekerman says that the whole design concept for the 06 World Cup — including the Mascot and the logo — look to be the result of too many cooks in the design kitchen, a mediocrity resulting from "design by committee."

Design is functional *and* emotional
"Design has a functional role, but it also creates a mood" says Spiekermann.   "It has both important functional and psychological roles." Spiekermann thinks that that the overall design of the World Cup suffers from several problems: (1) Too many committees trying to get their ideas in. (2) Design teams aiming to please everyone and offend no one. And (3) too many messages resulting in having no real clear message at all. When all involved try to play nice and no one takes responsibility, says, Spiekerman, you get this sort of bland result as people are afraid to take a risk.

Afraid to polarize? Afraid to take a risk?
There is a saying by many designers that if something is truly remarkable, it is going to be hated by some. Truly mediocre designs rarely evoke such visceral response. This fear of polarizing people often leads to designs that are "safe" and unobjectionable, hated by no one...and loved by no one either. No one has a visceral reaction either way. Sometimes this is desirable and intended. But usually it is an accidental consequence of "playing it safe" or seeking approval of this committee or that focus group, etc.

Good advice: Present naked (but wear pants)
Commenting on Goleo, the official lion-like mascot of the World Cup in Germany (who curiously wears a shirt but enjoys parading around sans trousers) Spiekerman says, "This artificial lion is neither cute nor ugly nor relevant; it's just embarrassing." Now, I'm all for presenting naked, and for the naked truth and all that. But in public presentations, wearing pants is still highly recommended. Goleo appears to be a flop; no body loves him and the company which licensed the European rights to the pantsless mascot filed for insolvency. Read more about "Mr. No-Pants" here on the DW-World site.

Next, I'd like to look briefly at logo design and see if we can relate principles there to presentation-visual design.
 
What's in a logo?
What do you think of the World Cup 06 logo? Spiekerman hates it. "Too many messages...You can look at this and count the elements and it just flies in the face of effective communication" he says. Logos are a funny thing. In and of themselves we can not really say they necessarily succeed or fail, even if we do not care for the design. It is over time, depending on the performance of the organization/product that the logo represents that associations, good or bad, will be formed. No logo, no matter how elegantly simple or beautiful, for example, will come to signify "The Ultimate Driving Machine" if the product is indeed mediocre. Nonetheless, from a messaging and aesthetic point of view, there are some good guidelines to keep in mind when designing or critiquing a logo. According to Paul Rand (1914-1996), the effectiveness of a logo depends on several elements including;

   • Distinctiveness
   • Visibility
   • Usability
   • Memorability
   • Universality
   • Durability
   • Timelessness

A logo must also be attractive and reducible to very small sizes and to one color. How would you rate the World Cup 06 logo with these items in mind? Look at the examples of the Apple logo below. The first logo (left), which did not last long at all, is far more complex and intricate that the simple familiar "forbidden fruit" Apple of today. The first Apple logo concept could pass hardly any items on the checklist above. The best logos are simple. (Go here to see past World Cup logos; see the more Apple logos and history here.)

                            
       
From logo design to presentation visuals
The principles and ingredients that contribute to great logo design can, more or less, be applied to other forms of visual communication as well. Paul Rand said as much in this 1991 article:

"Bad design is frequently the consequence of mindless dabbling, and the difficulty is not confined merely to the design of logos. This lack of understanding pervades all visual design."

                                                               — Paul Rand

To most working professional — the "non-creatives" — logo design and other visual communication such as slide design for business presentations, etc. may seem superfluous. However, as Paul Rand suggests, graphic design is a vehicle of memory. It matters if you want people to understand you and remember you. "Good design adds value of some kind and, incidentally, could be sheer pleasure; it respects the viewer — his sensibilities — and rewards the entrepreneur. It is easier to remember a well designed image than one that is muddled." This is true for logos and it is true for presentation visuals.

Regardless of what you may think, your visuals go beyond serving as mere ephemeral "visual aids" just as a logo goes beyond a mere marker or identifier. Said Rand, "A well designed logo, in the end, is a reflection of the business it symbolizes. It connotes a thoughtful and purposeful enterprise, and mirrors the quality of its products and services. It is good public relations — a harbinger of good will. It says 'We care.'" Substitute "logo" with "presentation" and the sentence rings just as true.

Good presentation visuals support your message, they are functional and emotional...and they are a reflection of you — and on you — and your organization.

Related links
• Design observer on the power of context
• Logo dissections
• Worst logo ever
• 5 Cardinal Rules of Logo Design
• Brand names that do not travel well