Presentation Zen. The power of the visual: Learning from Down Under promotion videos. The legendary Yogi Berra had a unique way of stating the obvious. Yogi once said "You can observe a lot by just looking around. " Obvious perhaps, yet profound in its truth. People are always asking me, for example, how they can learn about graphic design or photography or make better visuals, etc. The first step, I answer, is just to look around you and really see what there is to see. Some bloody excellent promotional videosThe New Zealand and Australian tourism TV commercials are fantastic examples of the power of visuals.
Visceral and memorableVisuals that surprise people, touch them, delight them, and support your story are best because they affect people in an emotional way. Watch these videos a couple of times and ask yourself which one is more memorable. What makes some images so powerful and others unremarkable? One of the first lessons visual artists and designers learn early is the basics of composition, including the "rule of thirds" and the Golden mean, etc. 10 Tips on how to think like a designer.
Most people do not really think about design and designers, let alone think of themselves as designers. But what, if anything, can regular people — teachers, students, business people of all types — learn from designers and from thinking like a designer? And what of more specialized professions? Can medical doctors, scientists, researchers, and engineers, and other specialists in technical fields benefit in anyway by learning how a graphic designer or interaction designer thinks? Is there something designers, either through their training or experience, know that we don't? I believe there is.
Below are 10 things (plus a bonus tip) that I have learned over the years from designers, things that designers do or know that the rest of us can benefit from. These ten are broad and even a bit philosophical. . (1) Embrace constraints. . (2) Practice restraint. . (3) Adopt the beginner's mind. . (4) Check your ego at the door. . (5) Focus on the experience of the design. . (6) Become a master storyteller. From design to meaning: a whole new way of presenting? 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 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.' — Dan Pink, A Whole New Mind Now, Pink is not saying that logic and analysis, so important in "the information age," are not important in "the conceptual age" of today.
A whole new way of of presenting? (1) Design. . (2) Story. . (3) Symphony. . (4) Empathy. PowerPoint: sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying. Creative video presentations.