Visual Storytelling - T. Benjamin Larsen's Blog

The making of a presentation (part 3)

This is part 3 of «the making of 'Cultivating Creativity'», a presentation I entered in SlideShare.com’s «World’s Best Presentation Contest».

Going graphic

While the text-problem needed fixing I was also working on the graphic elements. My initial idea was to use a character where the head and hands floated freely in the air.

Original doodles in the background, first serious draft in the front

The head would be as generic as possible to avoid provoking anyone. (Similar to what I used in my Electing #44 video). Unfortunately, just like with my initial text-experiments I found the design didn't work particularly well. It just seemed too bland and didn't deliver anything the viewer would be bothered to spend time on. Needless to say it wound up in the giant archive beneath my desk.

These early problems got me to rethink the whole presentation. While I was stilled convinced the basic idea was sound it clearly needed some fine-tuning to reach its full potential. My first step was to cut down on the number of slides, particularly for the "feed"-segment. I decided to use the five strongest words and leave it at that. I'm a huge follower of the short-is-sweet-school (although reading this blog you might find that hard to believe). Keeping it short would also increase my chances of getting people to read through the whole deck. To further streamline my presentation for the purpose of the competition, I decided to combine the large words and artwork in the same slide. (If this was to be a live presentation I probably wouldn't have done this). Next step: Designing the slides.

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The making of a presentation (part 2)

This is part 2 of «the making of 'Cultivating Creativity'», a presentation I entered in SlideShare.com’s «World’s Best Presentation Contest».

Finding a form

OK, so now I had a plan for my presentation. Not only that, but I already had a fairly clear idea about the look of the piece. As this would be designed exclusively for the Slideshare-contest it had to work without sound an the text would have to be legible even in a small embedded flash-player. The idea was to use huge type in a one-word-per-slide layout emphasizing the do's and do's. I planned to display each word followed by a similar slide where an illustration was composited on top of the former slide.


As the two big-word parts of the presentation were to deal with different tasks I figured I'd better find some clever means to separate them visually as well. For the "feed your brain"-part I decided to go for an 'active' colour like green, while I reserved a nice pale blue for the more passive "rest your brain"-segment. I immediately fired up Photoshop and after experimenting I decided on the font Hattenschweiler.

To make the text a little less boring I gave them a slight gradient. I still wasn't 100% satisfied with the look, but finished the first iteration of these slides to see how it played. Oh, what a snooze-fest. While there was nothing wrong per se with the slides I found it impossible to concentrate while watching through them. If I couldn't entertain myself, how could I expect to keep the anyone else's attention!? Back to the drawing board then...

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Gigantic Storytelling

The Sultan’s Elephant

Wow! Three letters, one syllable and the only word I can think of when watching the french marionette/street-theatre group Royal de Luxe performing The Sultan's Elephant. I don’t think there’s much to say really. This one of the most formidable pieces of visual storytelling I’ve ever seen and that’s from watching it on a small web-clip. Enjoy!

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The making of a presentation (part 1)

This is part 1 of «the making of 'Cultivating Creativity'», a presentation I entered in SlideShare.com’s «World’s Best Presentation Contest».

Finding creativity

For those of you who have yet to see the ‘Cultivating Creativity’ presentation, just scroll down to my last post. As a huge part of my blog-posts have been about Slideware Presentations I figured I had to participate. And if I was to participate, I wanted to do it right, meaning: adhering to my own ideas and philosophies about what makes a great presentation. As an oral presentation wouldn’t be possible I would have to use more text than I would normally do, but it had to be strong visually. First thing’s first though and the first challenge was to decide upon a topic for the presentation.

The very first physical piece of the presentation-puzzle

Some of the topics I considered were myself, Norway (my country), Visual Storytelling (surprise) and anything else that popped into my mind. In the end though I decided to go for a shallow but entertaining meta-presentation. (A presentation about itself.)

So with this in mind I began doodling and brainstorming on paper. While doing so however I felt that the topic was perhaps too shallow. While I felt fairly comfortable that I could make a presentation interesting to watch, it might be a hard sell to actually get anyone to watch it in the first place. Yet, I didn’t have any better idea, so I pushed on. When it suddenly hit me: My search for creativity was the answer. How often hadn’t I found myself in search for the creative spark? How often hadn’t I experienced the creative part of my brain firing on all cylinders when laying in bed waiting for Mr. Sandman to arrive? And even better: I knew how to treat my brain to spark the creative process in the first place!

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World's Best Presentation Contest

-Cultivating Creativity

No reason to elaborate I guess. I have entered the following presentation in Slideshare’s World’s Best Presentation Contest. Looking at the competition it’s unlikely it’ll win any prices, but I had some fun creating this and succeeded fairly well in what I set forth to do.

I’m planning to run a series of posts about the creative process behind the presentation. Anyone interested in learning how I attack the creative process should look in over the next few weeks. Cheers!

Edit: as the version on slideshare is lagging quite heavily I’ve included my own Flash-file here.

Edit2: After a less than perfect experience it now seems everything is in order over at the Slideshare-site, so I’ve put that version back up...

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Based On The Graphic Novel

Films and comics (by any name) are two of the strongest and best known types of visual storytelling. They are also related in many ways and inspiration between the two are many and seem to go both ways. Some of the most successful films ever owe their existence to the comics they are based on. The apparent similarity between the storyboards used by filmmakers and the panels of a comic-book can mislead though. These are two distinct art forms with their own strengths and weaknesses and any story told has to be done so in a manner befitting its chosen medium. Finding inspiration in the original media is fine, carbon copying it is not. Obvious as this may seem it is something that several filmmakers have sinned against.

Sin City

Sin City (2005) was a success both commercially and among critics. Lauded for its closeness to the Graphic Novel and for the 'fresh' look. Safe to say, no film has ever been closer visually to its paper counterpart. As a piece of storytelling however, I found it to be something of a failure. This is bound to irritate some since the film has a huge following. It seems particularly popular among fans of Frank Miller's Graphic Novel. The thing is though, that all the cleverness and energy used to make the film look like a comic prevents me as a viewer from getting into the story. In many ways it feels like watching an overlong Music Video. I appreciate the effort and the technical quality but as every shot draws attention to itself I find it impossible to stop admiring the technical bravura and get into the narrative. So while the filmmakers (Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller) deserve praise for their willingness to experiment I sincerely hope this style will not be adopted on a grand scale. Thankfully there are filmmakers that use more of their energy to adapt the material in a way that fits the silver screen.

Batman Begins

A reset of the Batman franchise, Batman Begins was released in the same year as Sin City. Writer/Director Christopher Nolan (and co-writer David S. Goyer) effectively mined the Batman canon crafting an effective and strongly structured story. It was shot, not to mimic a comic, but in a manner that utilized the strengths of its chosen media. While parts of the imagery (the noir-ish look, the bat silhouette etc.) was clearly inspired by the comics, it never betrayed the cinematic-narrative. It delivered an experience that pulled me as a viewer into its universe and didn't let go until the ride was over. While it could be argued that the execution was less creative than Sin City's it clearly worked better as a film...

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Monday Facelift

Ah, what a way to start the new week. I’ve spent a few days changing the look of my blog. Most importantly I’ve changed the navigation-tools to make the different parts more accessible. I’ve also added a few new features. Hopefully you’ll find this to be an improvement over the last version.
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Stuff of interest

Quick links to interesting stuff found the last few days

Thought I’d just share a couple of finds from the web that some of you might find interesting. First out is Slideshare’s: World’s Best Presentation Contest. It should be interesting to anyone looking for inspiration on how to improve their presentation slides.

The other link I'd like to share is from Karen J. Lloyd's always interesting Storyboard Blog. Obviously geared towards making great storyboards her latest post deals with the fact that Animation Storyboards should «act out» any dialogue so that the animators have a picture of what the characters are saying even without the actual dialogue. If you’re not sure what I’m on about you only need to watch La Linea (again?).

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JFK vs PP III

Good Things Come In Threes

Despite the fact that part 2 of my JFK vs. PowerPoint project was something of a flop compared to the original I've decided to finish the trilogy. (New readers should probably look through part 1 and part 2 before the read on). This time I have not limited myself to the use of Slide Ware (PowerPoint/Keynote). I've made a dynamic presentation based on the same audio-clip as I've used in the previous examples.

Seductive Visuals

Hopefully you'll find that this version commands attention and is actually quite interesting to watch. And I really hope it serves to demonstrate a point. That point being that despite this latest iteration probably being the most visually pleasing, it is no more effective in presenting the message than the original 'boring PowerPoint'.

While the two version differs a lot in quality and dynamics they have at least one problem in common: When you force the audience to read they cannot give their full attention to the spoken word. This means that no matter how beautiful the text is displayed on your PowerPoint-slides they will harm your presentation if delivered at the same time as you speak. If you look at the second example however you'll find that the imagery is designed to augment the speech. The images should work either to make the message clearer or to strengthen your audience's emotional connection to the material.

The first rule towards better PowerPoint presentations is in my mind so simple it's almost ridiculous. Text = Bad. Imagery = Good.

As always there is also a higher quality QT version available.

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