Ideas + Makers

5Great : ways to tell a story

We've been looking at ways to make story come alive. Whether it's brand journalism, personal narrative, or reportage...how do we use all the pieces of story to make something interesting?

1 -- Mark Blaine -- firestarter and UO brainiac -- turned me onto the pecha kucha phenomenon. What a cool way to bring people together and connect with smart content. Created by designers who wanted to gather to show material from multiple producers quickly, the concept is one that lends itself to getting ideas produced and shared.

2 -- Mediastorm is remarkable. It is photojournalism, photoblog, multimedia platform, podcast, and signals the next chapter of connective journalistic visual reporting. Brian Storm has produced a series of strong stories. For anyone interested in crafting a compelling multiplatformed approach to understanding people and their stories. For brand afficionados, an authentic approach to connecting ideas to audiences.

3 -- From reportage to fanciful...flipbooks and zoetropes are mediatoys that also have beautiful application  for  telling a story in a different way.  The digital flipbook is hot right now, but the old-fashioned diy version  makes such a cool tactile moment that you really can't pass it up. A soundtrack for your zoetrope world?  Oh my.

This photo by Andrew Dunn 04, www.andrewdunnphoto.com

4 -- People telling stories in multiple forms...visual, performance, conceptual. Go back to the remarkable Danny Gregory and look through the archives to see stories take form in multiple media, experimental form through  drawing and journaling. He is so nimble with doing ideas that  we should all have the WWDD homage tattooed on our psyches. What would Danny Do? Other folks to look at craftmonkeys,  zefrank on punctuation, korzekwa.

5 -- Maybe it's just about crafting the perfect sentence.

5Great : changing how you think

Let's hit a couple of classics and and some sidestreet moments that take us to new places. Other suggestions welcome:

1 -- TED conferences
Come on, you know this one or you should. Every click offers a new perspective for creative thinkers using design, science, art, culture, technology as fodder for making your own ideas. I loved the guy talking about all the cultural references to 4am...poetic. Some others I've recently loved:
• Steven Pinker on language and thought
• Jeff Skoll makes movies that change thinking
• Carolyn Porco on Saturn
• Stefan Sagmeister shares happy design
• Mena Trott tours her blog-world

2 -- Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Life
This has been around for a couple of decades (!) but oh man is it good. Read and study. Apply it to your work. Look through his design projects. All salute Bruce!

3 -- Edward Tufte and the love of visual  information
Tufte is a Yale design prof (emeritus which shows respect, longevity and leadership in the area after retirement) who focuses on design of complex data. His books are intellectual, thick with examples and thought pieces. His courses -- I took one in Portland this summer -- are 8 hours of brain candy (and you get all 4 books...awesome).

4 -- Coudal Partners Video Wall
Intriguing short movies on delicious topics. Look at the keyboard piece. Interesting that Coudal Partners offers this on the site: a design, advertising and interactive studio in Chicago, as an ongoing experiment in web publishing, design and commerce. Which means they are creating content to see how it works and where it lives. Inspiration!

5 -- I dare you to watch the entire speech. Think of the death threats he had received, you can see the fear in his face but it is not in his voice.  Look at the audience dressed in Sunday best. Consider that no such gathering had ever occurred. Understand that if you are a woman, gay, a person of color, a white man looking for justice, you are affected by the seeds planted on this day. This is about you.

back again

Lots of stuff happening..thanks for patience.

I'm starting a new approach to sharing some info for classes and friends. I hope to hear from you about suggestions and new directions.

The concept will be this:  5Great. Every couple of days a new set of five interesting thematic places to go to think about stuff related to ideamaking.  Some interesting things collected already that I'm posting. Brett Robbs and I use this technique in our new book Launch! The practical guide to a great first job in advertising in which we've collected some great readings, inspiration, and career direction in the 5Great model.

Yes that is a shameless plus for what's coming out in the spring, published by The One Club. And part of what's been keeping me from this project.

So off we go....