Visual stories are infinite in variety. They can be intricate and baroque or simple and spare. They can reveal hidden worlds, explain processes, expose systems, show solutions, spark understanding and inspire change. We can harness them to get to the nub of an issue, to untangle complexity, to give substance to an abstract concept, to share knowledge, experience, emotions and ideas.
When words take too long, a picture can reveal all at a glance. Where words go unnoticed, even a very simple image can prove unforgettable. A handmade picture, especially, can be appealingly human -- and communicate difficult themes gently and playfully where more formal means fail.
Metaphor is a vital element of any form of storytelling. The great white whale in Moby-Dick is a classic example: it’s an eerie symbol for something that can’t be pinned down or properly known. And sometimes, in order to help your audience engage with and grasp something new and hard to comprehend, you need to associate it with something they can already picture.
The strongest visual stories draw us into their world, where every detail is coherent, consistent and revealing. They pull us in further with telling details and poignant gaps that set our imaginations flying. They never leave us asking why we should care or devote our precious attention.
We hope this week’s homework exercises help and inspire you to tell your own visual stories in your own way. Happy dreaming!
“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.”
This week in summary
Where to Begin
Imagine you’re a film director about to make a movie of one of these four old tales. You’re planning how to open on the most powerful, attention-grabbing, captivating scene. First, choose a story and read it through. Now decide on your opening shot. Is it already at the beginning of the plotline? Or is it currently somewhere further along the line? Sketch it up as simply and clearly as possible, as if it were the first frame in a storyboard to help your production team understand your vision for it. Consider what to prioritise through scale and detail. This is an exercise in finding and designing the most compelling first image to represent your story.
“Visual storytelling of one kind or another has been around since cavemen were drawing on the walls.”
Homework challenges
Leaving something to the imagination
Here Dan shows how it’s not always necessary to draw out every piece of action in a comic strip. Sometimes what happens ‘in the gutter’ is just as important, and can actually really help to engage your audience. So his challenge for you this week is to create a simple comic strip that leaves something to the imagination. The story can be about anything you like. One option is to build on the first scene you created for Where to Begin (above) and tell the whole story, or your version of it.
Finding a metaphor
One of the great powers of visual storytelling is to make a difficult or dry idea accessible and memorable. Think, for instance, of ‘digital data stored in logical pools’. Or the ‘cloud’, as we know it better.
Your task is to make a visual metaphor to explain a term non-experts find hard to grasp. The catch is you need to use one of the objects below to create the metaphor. That may sound daunting but think of it as a happy constraint. Because when we’re looking for something to hang a metaphor around, we don’t have to find a perfect fit. We simply need something familiar enough to the audience to convey the gist of the idea. So, if your term is ‘key performance measure’, the measuring tape might work fine as the basis of an analogy.
Annotate, adapt or add to your chosen object to make the idea clear and engaging. Label your visual metaphor with the term it represents.
Changing the world
Some of the most memorable and vivid stories are old ones reimagined in fresh, unexpected contexts. This experiment is to retell a traditional tale in a new way by setting it in a different world. Choose your story from the first of this week’s homework tasks (above). Select your world from this list:
Coral reef
Construction site
Back of the fridge
Swimming pool
Fairground
Luxury ceramics shop
Book shop
Spider’s web
Sports ground
Weather Centre (Meteorological Institute)
As well as the setting, you could alter other details too. You might change the characters’ species. You could swap songs for scent, sweets for comics, coins for tennis balls. You could also change the narrative point of view: all the tales have an outside narrator but what if your version shows what happens from, say, a minor character’s perspective? However you play this, aim to put a surprising twist on the original. Present your version of the tale as a simple plot line (as shown) or storyboard.
