TED has put up a presentation from 2005 that is so good your head will explode. Not only is Scott McCloud's content stimulating and directly relevant to our world of presentation, his unique presentation of his story is a wonderful example of what is possible with your basic slideware app. I've talked about Scott many times before on this site (such as here) and I talk about him a bit in the Presentation Zen book as does Nancy Duarte in Slide:ology. This is just a fantastic TED talk and powerful yet simple use of the slide medium. If the principles Scott talks about excite you, then I recommend his best-selling book on the art of comics (and why and how they matter) called Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. This is an amazing book with applications far beyond the world of comics. Watch his talk below. You can find download options here on the TED site including a higher-rez version.
Good advice from comics guru Scott McCloud So much good stuff in this TED talk, but here's something that sticks out to me. Three types of vision:
Vision based on what one can not see (unseen and unknowable)
Vision based on what has been proven (or has been seen)
Vision based on what can be, what may be based on knowledge (but is not yet proven)
What Scott is saying is that there are many ways to pursue a vision based on what can/may be. People are doing this in science, the arts, politics, personal endeavors, etc. What it all comes down to, says scott, is this:
Learn from everyone
Follow no one
Watch for patterns
Work like hell
These four guidelines will take you far indeed as you create your own life story.
(I will be attending my first TED conference in a couple of weeks in Long Beach, California. I feel very blessed and honoured to be attending this year and look forward to sharing all that I learn at TED here and live on my Twitter site, my Posterous site, etc.)
When I was a small child, our house on the Oregon coast had a small Japanese garden in the front yard, complete with stone pagodas and a koi pond. Looking back, I wonder if a kind of traditional Japanese aesthetic at least an Oregonian's version of it influenced me even then? At the same time, our house was filled with boxes of jazz records including albums from Miles, Coltrane, Bassie, Ellington, etc. and pop records from vocalists such as Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. My older brothers spun records by The Beatles, The Stones, and The Dave Clark Five, etc. I dug those records too, but something drew me to the jazz recordings. My father, who would later pass suddenly when he was only 48, was a good amateur jazz vocalist with a wonderful voice; he occasionally performed live even after he became a company worker. I credit my father with introducing me to jazz. No one gave me formal lessons in jazz appreciation or in the Zen aesthetics as a kid, but the influence of those elements were surely there, even though I would not really appreciate those things until much later in life.¬[sgl dagger]
To those unfamilair with it, jazz can seem like an abstraction. Zen can seem quite abstract and removed from our daily lives as well. But in fact both are far more concrete than that, both are much more concerned with direct experience and direct connections, connections to reality.By mere coincidence, I have built a deep appreciation year by year for both Zen and for jazz. Though my intention was never to compare, looking back I now see that the similar elements, tenets, and complementary components of jazz and Zen are quite profound. Here a list of a few lessons that both jazz and Zen practice have taught me over the years. These lessons, all seemingly commonsensical, can be applied to presentation or to any creative endeavor.
Twenty-one things I've learned from jazz and Zen
In structure there is freedom and spontaneity.
Restraints and limitations can be great liberators.
Don't ever force it; be ever natural.
Good intentions are key.Sincerity is king, and yet...
It's not about you.
Listen more than speak.
Speak only when you have something to say, and then in the most economic way possible.¬[sgl dagger]
Your approach can be direct and subtle at the same time.
Fear is natural (and human), but work through it and past it. Don't let fear hold you back.
Mistakes are part of it (do not worrying about them).
Embrace the power of now, this moment.
Technique matters, but it's not the most important element.
Make no pretenses; put up no facades.
Laugh, smile if you feel like it why not?
Share yourself with others; make a contribution.
Simplicity is supremely beautiful, yet difficult to obtain.
Emptiness and silence are powerful elements of expression.
Remove the clutter, strive for absolute clarity.
If you think you have mastered it, you've have already begun your descent.
Always be learning. Always be learning. Always be learning.
Curiosity is your greatest gift, nurture it (in yourself and in others)
I picked up a book recently called Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual by Timothy Samara* that is quite good. Samara starts off his book after a short discussion on what is meant by design and graphic design [base ']Äî with a list of "Twenty Rules for Making Good Design" which includes a brief but good elaboration of each of the rules. Now, as Samara points out, rules are important to understand but it's certainly permissible to break the rules (he even shows how later in the book). What is not permissible is to remain ignorant of the rules. Samara quotes Typographer David Jury here: "Rules can be broken but never ignored." I tend to think in terms of Principles rather than Rules, though this is really just a matter of semantics. This stuff is old hat for longtime designers, but for the rest of us Samara's list of 20 Rules is a useful reminder. Here are just Ten of Samara's twenty rules below just as he wrote them (though not in this order). I chose the rules (principles) which I think are both the most important and yet easiest to grasp without much or any explanation. Keep these rules in mind when designing your next presentation or website, poster, etc.
10 design rules to keep in mind (1) Communicate, don't decorate. (2) Speak with a visual voice. (3) Use two typeface families maximum. OK, maybe three. (4) Pick colors on purpose. (5) If you can do it with less, then do it. (6) Negative space is magical [base ']Äî create it, don't just fill it up! (7) Treat the type as image, as though it's just as important. (8) Be universal; remember that it's not about you. (9) Be decisive. Do it on purpose or don't do it at all. (10) Symmetry is the ultimate evil.
This list of ten above which I pulled from Samara's list of twenty are self-explanatory for the most part; let me clarify just two of them. Number 3 (Type). Remember that even within one family there is lots of variation possible (e.g., regular, light, ultra light, narrow, italic, bold, extra bold, and so on depending on the typeface), so consider even working with just one professional typeface family for a project and see what you can do. I have a preference for san serif typefaces but a combination can work well too in display type (such as Apple using Helvetica and Apple Garamond together). Number 10 (Symmetry). OK, symmetry isn't evil, in fact it can be quite beautiful, and calming, (or serious, etc.). But symmetry can also be rather dull and predictable. Asymmetrical designs are more dynamic generally and can allow for a bit more freedom of expression. Like the author, I have a thing for asymmetry myself (maybe because my nose is crooked from playing American football). The Zen aesthetic is all about asymmetry as well (Fukinsei)
Another good book Another book I received recently that I really like is Graphic Design: The New Basics by Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips (a pic of my copy on posterous). This is a good book. It covers the fundamentals of graphic design, much of which has not changed over time (that's why they are fundamentals). But the author stresses some fundamentals such as layering and transparency that have become perhaps more important today for many reasons, including the fact that powerful digital design tools are ubiquitous and layering and transparency effects are easier to do now. * I do not have Timothy Samara's newest book [base ']Design Evolution: A Handbook of Basic Design Principles Applied in Contemporary Design but it looks good. I'll let you know.
The problem with many presentations is that people simply try to say too much in a short amount of time. Most people struggle with practicing restraint in the preparation stage including myself and have a hard time making the tough choices about inclusion and exclusion before the presentation. Often no time is given to the idea of exclusion and paring down. As a result, audiences all too often get more than they want, need, or can comprehend. We know this is true of many executive presentations, sales presentations, and conference presentations, etc. In The Craft of Scientific Presentations Michael Alley touches on a similar idea. In this book he suggests that you can go deep (depth) or you can go wide (scope) but it is very difficult to do both in, say, an hour lecture or conference presentation. The key, then, is to set realistic goals, and if you decide that you need to go deep then you have to seriously consider reducing the scope. Sometimes, in life as in presentations, you just have to make a choice about what's important, and let go of the rest (at least for the time being).
And in the classroom?
I have often wondered if this idea of including a very large breadth of material in a short amount of time is a problem for teachers and students as well in traditional classroom settings. Now, teaching daily lessons is a different animal from the kind of presentations I generally focus on here, to be sure, but I have wondered for the longest time if teachers [base ']Äî especially college professors [base ']Äî attempt to cover too much ground (and not enough depth) per semester. That is, do too many classes sacrifice depth and understanding for scope? Yes, it depends on the subject I suppose, but is it better to learn, say, only six core ideas deeply and repeatedly or is it better to cover as much ground as possible and go for the greatest breadth in the time alloted? Great scope certainly makes for an impressive syllabus and perhaps even a feeling of accomplishment for those who pushed hard and got the highest marks. But how many of the students who got a 'C' or better will actually remember what they studied a year later?
What got me thinking about this again was this presentation by economist Robert Frank speaking at Google.You already know about the talks available at TED, but you may not be aware of the hundreds of presentations and speeches available for free that are part of the @Google Talks including Authors@Google, Women@Google, Candidates @Google, etc. (I have been ask to present for Google as well and will be there hopefully later in the year). Except for the all too familiar PowerPoint style, Dr. Frank gives an interesting talk. But what I found compelling in the talk were his comments concerning depth/scope and narrative learning theory. I invite you to watch his presentation, but you can see the gist of the points I'm referring to below in his slides (click for larger view).
Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu (Happy New Year!). Back in Japan at last. No New Year's video greeting card this year, but checkout last year's if you have not seen it.
If you were asked, could you come up with a top-10 best/worst communicators list for 2007? I have not compiled such a list, but legendary communications expert Bert Decker[base ']Äîbased in San Francisco, California[base ']Äîpublished his annual top-10 best/worst list again a few days ago. Very interesting list indeed (I was especially interested in #9 in the "best" category...). Bert's list features those in the US. Can you recommend some other best/worst communicators from in or outside the US? I have many favorites, of course, such as Seth, Steve, Guy, and many more. But here are some non-Americans that are exceptional presenters: Markuz Wernli Saito (Switzerland), Daniel Rodriguez (Mexico), Hans Rosling (Sweden), and Marco Montemagno (Italy). And my favorite speech of 2007 is this 1992 speech from a 12-year old Canadian, Severn Cullis-Suzuki. Any others?
Images in NASA. A collection of about a thousand images of historical interest scanned at high-resolution in several sizes. NASA multimedia. Includes many high-quality photos as well. Photos by Astronauts. A gazillion cool images from space. NOAA Photo Library. Search the site or browse through "collections" at the top. Hundreds and hundreds of historical photos in there too. Uncle Sam's Photos. A directory of the U.S Government's free stock photo sites. The (US) National Archives. The National Archives has more than 30 million photos stored in several buildings in the US, many of them are available online.
WWII posters. Not too many high-rez images here, but very interesting. Sizes may be good enough for slides. Public Domain Pictures. A repository for free public domain photos.
This may seem like an odd potpourri of links, but these are sites from which I have been gathering images lately and just thought you may be interested for future reference. If you know any other public domain sites that offer good quality in the form of historical archives, etc. please share your links in the comments section below. Much appreciated.
New website accessibility tool released. A new website accessibility tool has been developed in Australia to improve learning
for students and teachers with disabilities, particularly those who are blind or have
low vision. The new program has been developed by national ICT agency education.au, the
Department of Education, Science and Training and leading not-for-profit organisation Vision Australia. [Vocational Education & Training Headlines]
11:26:28 AM
If you were asked, could you come up with a top-10 best/worst communicators list for 2007? I have not compiled such a list, but legendary communications expert 
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