Like to literally see a story unfold? Want to make your complex product or idea simple to understand? Yearn to make your next
meeting more memorable – and enable more people to experience it? Here are three vivid approaches offered by the masters of their visual genres.
1. Animating Your Story to Make it Come Alive
To see an animated version of a TV show, launched out of a radio program, This American Life, (still with me?) see Chris Ware’s coverage of the segment “Every
Marriage is a Courtroom” and another segment here. What if you videoed a happy client using your product or service, then hired a cartoonist to created a Ware-style version to reinforce your message?
Also consider a manga–style comic book version such as Dan Pink did with Johnny Bunko, along with a video trailer, of course. Lesson? Multiply the fun and/or helpful ways they see your message.
2. Drawing the Speaker’s Message to Compound Its Impact
Watch a graphically illustrated version (BigViz Book) of the last TED
conference’s 50 or so speakers, brought to you by group cartographer, David Sibbet and Kevin Richards.
3. Illustrate the Steps So We Recognize How and Why to Take Them
How about getting some pictorial help on “how to” do something new?
View the “plain English”, explanatory videos at Sasha and Lee LeFever’s Commoncraft.
Follow-up Ideas: Consider hiring one of these talents or others to:
• Illustrate the messages presented by your speakers at your conference or meeting. Give the results to attendees as an ebooklet or vlog – a free meeting momento. Then offer it online to anyone else for a modest fee (new profit center?) – or for free to attract members and media coverage. Find a sponsor to underwrite the costs.
• Create the visual story of a new product, service, program or innovation. Feature employees or customers in the creation and distributionof this story. Feature it on your blog and web site. Tell your key media about it.
• At a brainstorming or other meeting, keep everyone focused on the goal, not
whip- sawed by the verbally dominant. Share a Sibbet-style visual group record of the meeting with team members and other stakeholders.
Like participating in a lively Pecha Kucha, these other visual methods can make collaborating and learning together more productive and fun.
