All Streets In the US

Check out this map, pretty cool when data does what data does. It maps every street in the United States. Don’t miss the city details below too, those are pretty cool.

Edible Inspiration

In thinking about what to blog about as a first time blogger, I hit a wall. Then, I put my virtual car in reverse and hit another wall.

It’s a little overwhelming writing a note to open space (yes, I’m being a bit dramatic but it’s my blog). I’m more of an interactive person. I need to see someone’s face expression and reaction. But again, this is a blog.

So, I sought some inspiration from my colleague Renee who sits within shouting distance and she sent me to the Communication Arts site. http://www.commarts.com/insights/ I read what inspires and drives some creative greats and that got me thinking….

Food. Menus. Risk taker chefs. Great composition. Innovation. Divine pairings of flavors, colors, textures. Unique and daring interpretations using simple ingredients. Balancing technique with whimsy.

I’m hungry for design that delivers and satiates. Each case presents its own set of ingredients, seasonality, palates, time constraints, pairings, and plating possibilities. It’s like Top Chef meets the cream of the crop attorneys. My goal is to create a tasting menu for the customer presenting the arguments in a digestible way.

I attempt this by combining tried and true concepts with original interpretations. Sometimes inspiration and ideas come easily. Other times all I can uncover are the old recipes.

What I’m learning is to look for the dead end signs. If I’m not innovating on a case, it’s time to get inspired. That may include brainstorming with others, putting pen to paper, or stepping away and coming back.

Or, it may be just the time to peek through Grant Achatz’s creation gallery. My favorite is “tomato.”

http://www.alinea-restaurant.com/pages/gallery/gallery_cuis.html

It’s most important to look to at what inspires each of us during these bland times. Achatz’s interpretations demonstrate the invaluable relationship between risk and reward.

Baseball Salary v. Performance

I’ve become a fan of Ben Fry, he’s written a book on data visualization for O’Reilly.

Here’s another chart from him, it compares the payroll of a baseball team to it’s performance over the season. The slider at the top let’s you move it so you can see what happens over time.

Image Scaling

Stretchy pixelated images are always a problem. Here’s a post on CSS liquid about an elegant browser solution for a portfolio site.

Pecha Kucha: Get to the PowerPoint in 20 Slides

This is a great explanation and example of Pecha Kucha b Dan Pink.

These Slides Are Made For Using

I recently started working with a young attorney who was putting together his first opening. He spent many hours working on his script and annotating spots where he wanted slides. He told me he was open to other ideas for slides, but wanted to make sure I covered the points he identified. My first draft of his presentation included his slides, as well as a bunch of new ones that seemed to go along with his script. I also tweaked the order to help better the flow of the presentation.

When I met with him to pitch the slides, he was resistant. He just wanted to look at the deck and make comments. I stressed to him that the slides were only half the story – how they are used and threaded together is the second, equally important, half. He liked the deck and immediately started to mark in his script where the slides should appear. There were slides and ideas that didn’t have any place in his script. He looked puzzled. I turned to him and said, “You really should ditch your script for now. You can come back to it at some point, but for now it’s going to get in the way of working on your argument. You need to think in terms of an outline.” He was even more puzzled and responded, “This case is really confusing. I have to make sure I cover all the details.”

We continued to work for a week. At times he would start to think in terms of an outline, but then resort back to his script. We did a few dry runs for small test groups where he read his script and referred to the slides at the appropriate times. He was right, it was a confusing case and people weren’t getting it. We started to brainstorm ideas on how to simplify and clarify the argument. He immediately got energized by the process and instinctively started outlining a new argument. He had a major breakthrough. I worked quickly to reshuffle the deck and add a few slides to match his outline. Then the major shift occurred. He picked up the presentation remote and started running through the deck, making his points on the fly without a script. There was something noticeably different. His delivery had a power and ease that did not exist before. We made a few more tweaks and assembled another test group. This time, people got it instantly. It was a homerun!

What is the moral to the story? The slides ARE the opening! The sooner you start thinking in terms of slides and how to use them, the better the opening will be.

Thin Slides Are In

This presentation has been making the rounds here and I thought I would share it. It’s a little shocking at first how few things are on each slide, but its effective in delivering a lot of information quickly. Slideshare calls it the “Worlds’ Best Presentation” and while that’s a little like claiming to be the world’s best cookie, we liked it enough to talk about it. I love that each slide communicates without additional thought. It just looks like what it is saying, which can be an elusive goal for us since our subject areas tend to be more complex than this. Assessment of the quality of any communications piece is dependent on two issues: audience and objective. Who is it targeted to, and what do you want them to take away from it. But with those caveats, this is still pretty good eye candy.

The Power of a Simple Visual Explanation

A great story on from the NYT today on their “Talk To The Newsroom” feature. The interview is with Graphics Director Steve Duenes, and while there is some very interesting Q and A’s about their process for anyone involved with informational design, the highlight for me was the story told in response to the question of “What’s the best graphic you’ve ever done?”. Which for a creative is a tough question, it’s like asking which of your children you like the best.

Duenes’ response is a really cool story crystallizing the power of even a simple visual explanation. Nicholas Kristof, one of the paper’s columnist, had done a series of columns on third-world disease. These columns formed the genesis of Bill and Melinda Gates’s interest in world health issues. The couple told Kristof this on a trip they all took to Africa to see the work the Gates Foundation was doing. Kristof sends an email to the NYT Graphics department relating this episode to them. I’ve included the relevant section below.

Great! I was really proud of this impact that my worldwide reporting and 3,500-word article had had. But then bill confessed that actually it wasn’t the article itself that had grabbed him so much — it was the graphic. It was just a two column, inside graphic, very simple, listing third world health problems and how many people they kill. but he remembered it after all those years and said that it was the single thing that got him redirected toward public health.

No graphic in human history has saved so many lives in africa and asia.

I’m sending you a copy of the story and graphic by interoffice mail. whoever did the graphic should take a bow.

nick kristof