Time for a sequel

Some of you might remember my post Killer Looks where I sought to illustrate how bad visuals, or more specifically bad Power Point, can destroy even the greatest of speeches. My example seemed to work quite well and I received a fair amount of positive feedback. As the post was also one of the most popular posts I've made, a sequel was inevitable. The thing that irked me about the original was that while it demonstrated the point I was trying to make it was also rather contrived. The Power Point Presentation was designed to be bad and while I've experienced similar examples in real life it did tickle the "do-better"-itch.

The original "Boring Powerpoint" clip

The where- and whats

What if I tried to make a proper presentation to go with the same speech? Would it still detract from JFK's dynamic delivery? To make the experiment more comparable to presentations in the wild I decided not to pull out the big motion-graphics guns. Everything was created in Apple's Keynote which is part of the excellent iWork. The free images were downloaded from FreeFoto.com and npg.gov.

The Result

I find it hard to distance myself from my own work and the legendary status of President Kennedy's Inaugural Speech makes it even harder. I am confident that it works okay but Kennedy's charisma is so strong it will always be dificult to improve upon. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether this presentation detracts or ads to the speech...

Visual storytelling and the secret of greatness

This blog was eventually dedicated to visual storytelling simply because most of the posts I made had something to do with the subject. Reflecting over this made it clear to me that visual storytelling has always been a big part of my life. I've always been inclined towards the visual arts and traditional fairy-tales were a natural part of my upbringing. The last bit is something I as an adult find rather fascinating. The fairy-tales have been passed down through generations and are in many ways links to our forefathers. Their storyteller tradition is often referred to as an oral tradition but I find this definition a bit narrow.

What makes a great storyteller

The best storytellers have always been the ones who could paint the most vivid pictures. Surely these individuals used every trick they had up their sleeve. Acting out the different parts of their stories: An attacking boar. A sneaking hunter. Essentially creating visuals to enhance the experience.

Some of them might have used shadow-images on the cave walls and we know ancient men made beautiful cave-paintings, perhaps in an attempt to strengthen the impact of their words. The point I am trying to make is that we have always used visuals when telling our stories. It almost seems like it is an integral part of who we are as a species.

Think

It does not work without an effort though. Storytelling does not automatically become great simply because visuals are added. The imagery has to support the story. If the two competes for attention neither one will reach their full potential. In the same way abstractions may confuse the audience. We are however probably more advanced when it comes to reading complex visuals than ever. No surprise, as we are constantly bombarded with the stuff. TV-commercials, billboards, computer-games, magazines, websites and films. We couldn't avoid it if we wanted to.

Tough crowd

The flip side to this is of course that your audience is not so easily impressed. Some try to counter this with a more-is-more approach. I personally find this incredibly annoying. Spectacle will make a spectacle of you. You might keep your audience's interest for a while, but both you and your audience might loose track of the story in the process. While the correct use of great visuals will help the story become all that it can be - they cannot elevate a mediocre story to greatness.

The good thing about the omnipresence of advanced visual stimuli is of course that inspiration should not be hard to come by. Inspirational sparks from other people's works can be the starting point of greatness. We all have to find our ideas somewhere and can't all expect to have a divine muse available every time we feel a bit dried out creatively. I am of course not talking about copying the work of others.

Be great

The final piece of the puzzle is not exactly revolutionary: Work. We all want to be the best that we can be and most of us can't expect to have more than a couple of truly great ideas in a lifetime. We might have quite a few good and decent ones but greatness is hard to come by. But as a great idea can be buried by poor execution we owe it to ourselves to make sure our moments of inspiration reach their full potential.

So to sum up:

• Have something to tell.
• Enhance/tell it with visuals, but make sure the visuals are right.
• Work until you're satisfied it is as good as it can be.

Not the most original list of tips but certainly something it can be easy to loose track of. The first of these points is something that should be written on Hollywood Hill for every movie-executive to see...

This is what I love about the web. On one of my many random search safaris through the maze that makes up what we all know as the internet, I came across the site ICT Inspirations. This is in itself an interesting blog (and I've bookmarked it), but what was really great was how the blog revealed to me the brilliance of The Common Craft Show, something I had never heard about before.

The Common Craft Show is made by Lee and Sachi LeFever and consists of small videos explaining complex ideas in a straightforward manner. They refer to themselves as interpreters which seems fairly accurate. Their simply brilliant (or brilliantly simple) style consists of well prepared cutouts, an equally well prepared voice over all put together by manipulating the cutouts physically in front of the camera and some really tight editing. The final product almost seems like a high-tech animated scrapbook and the effect is quite mesmerizing. Have a look at the below clip and see for yourself:

Common Craft's take on Google Docs

The first time I watched one of the clips I was hit by a hard spell of why-didn't-I-think-of-this-ulosis.

This is truly a brilliant example of visual storytelling if I ever saw one.