Comics and Presentation

In the last post, I mentioned how I felt the concepts behind a comic (strip or book) to be very similar to those behind a business presentation, when I read Scott McCloud's Making Comics book. I would like to expand on that.

In his previous book Understanding Comics - now a classic pertaining to field of comics, Scott McCloud defines the term comics as "Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the reader". It sounds a little academic. The crux of the definition is that comics is sequential art, where each frame is made of pictures and words to convey a message both individually and over the entire span. This definition fits equally well for presentations as well. After all, a presentation is nothing but a series of frames where each frame is normally made of words and pictures and conveys some information to the viewer.

It looks like I was not alone in seeing the similarity. When I did a bit of research before penning this blog, I found an interview by Scott McCloud himself talking about this, as well as others.

Source: Austin Kleon

So, "What is the benefit?", you might ask. After all, comics is not necessarily associated with serious stuff - like pitch decks or lunch and learn sessions. It's supposed to be read & throw, right? Wrong. Think about this - which one have you felt is more engaging - comics or presentations? Which one has kept you on your toes, completely engaged, immersed? If the two share a number of common traits, then how come a comic is so interesting and a presentation is not? Is it just because of the relatively dry content of a presentation or is it something beyond that? After all, when we write a presentation, we don't start with the intent of boring people to do death, do we? What can we learn from the comic art that we have loved and apply to our presentations as well?

One easy and most common mistake that has been made over the years is the lack of pictures. And on occasions where there are indeed pictures, the compelling urge to drown it with words describing what the picture means.

Source: Call me Cassandra - Death by PowerPoint

Let's take a look at what Scott says on things that makes a comic and things that makes it work. A clear, persuasive, and intense comic (and from here on, you can freely replace the word 'comic' with the word 'presentation') has the following components.

1. Choice of moment: Picking what moments in a story to include and what not to
2. Choice of frame: Picking the right angle and distance. In short, the right viewpoint to provide the right emphasis
3. Choice of image: Picking the right image at the right level of detail
4. Choice of words: Picking the words that go with the image
5. Choice of flow: Picking the order of the frames that guides the readers from start to end

The same rules govern a presentation as well. I have seen numerous instances (and in early days, I have fallen prey to this as well), where the writer tends to include a few slides either because it looks cool, or because they spent hours searching the Internet to get it and just didn't want the effort to go to waste, even though it does not add to the story. This is where the Slide Sorter mode in PowerPoint comes in. It lets you take a look at all the slides at slightly higher level and let you figure which ones to keep and which to remove. Comic writers (or any writer for that matter) go through this phase, and so should a presenter, if the aim is to make the presentation crisp and to the point.

Similarly, the other aspects are equally important - picking the right bullets or emphasizing the right bullets to convey the message, picking the right images to add clarity to the text (or vice versa), and ordering the slides in such a way that it flows end to end in a cohesive manner.

Comic writers can tell you how much work goes to creating a newspaper comic strip or a full-fledged novel. It takes weeks of preparation and work to produce a comic that is typically devoured in 30 minutes or so. The same unfortunately, applies to a presentation as well. While it may not take a few weeks, it will at least take a few hours if not, a couple of days to refine a deck - but at the end of the day, if it gives the same level of immersion as a comic strip or a graphic novel, I think the effort spent is worth it.

He goes into a number of other details too long to mention in a simple blog entry, but definitely worth reading. Here's another example that pertains to the interaction between the words and pictures. Scott classifies the interaction into seven categories.

1. Word-Specific: Words provide the information with pictures accentuating what the words say
2. Picture-Specific: Pictures provide the information with words accentuating what the pictures say
3. Duo-Specific: Both words and pictures say the same thing (added emphasis)
4. Intersecting: Both work together, but also provide information independently
5. Interdependent: Both work to provide meaning, but neither will provide the information alone
6. Parallel: Each provide seemingly differing message that do not seem to converge
7. Montage: Words conveyed as pictures

In your next presentation, see if you can spot these variations. While each has its own purpose in life, most often we tend to overuse a few of the categories and more often than not, use one in place of another, thereby resulting in a poor presentation as a whole.

I feel that a little extra effort and some understanding of the basics, even if not from the same field, can go a long way in making one's craft far more superior than where it currently is. I know I myself am not there yet, but hope to get there soon. After all, how awesome it will be if we can immerse our PowerPoint-viewing audience in the same way as a comics immerses a kid?