Garr’s posterous

 
A great time at the Tigers game as usual. Light rain the whole time but the fans did not mind. Hanshin has the best fans in professional baseball, period. Thanks for the great (and dry) seats, Doug!　めっちゃ楽しかった！

Yahoooooooooooo!!!!!!!
 
Sent from my iPhone

Great game.
 
Sent from my iPhone

Sent from my iPhone

Rainy day but the game goes on...here fans get a bite before heading in to get wet.
 
Sent from my iPhone

This scene above is from the movie Adaptation with Nicholas Cage who plays a screen writer. Here Brian Cox is playing Robert McKee who wrote a wonderful book called "Story" and runs very popular seminars. This scene -- besides showing great acting -- captures something that I can't quite put my finger on, but it's always resonated with me deeply. The McKee character's frustration reminds me of how I sometimes feel when people tell me that there presentation (about business, profits, technology, research, finance, etc.) is just data or information so it's not possible to make the talk engaging with the audience, they say. They tell me that presentations in their field are just something you have to do and they are something to be endured, not engaged with. "I just present the information," they tell me. 'I got lots of information to get through," the say. But information does not equal story. At the very least you can show and tell people why and how your content is important...to them (to life, the universe, humanity, whatever). If you can't do that, then call off the presentation and write an email or send a pdf. I'm not talking about a meeting around a table, I'm talking about a presentation in front of a group who have come to hear someone speak. The question is always what is the story here? What is the meaning?

Robert McKee on the power of story http://snipurl.com/lok8p

This poster of pop singer Beyoncé is at an exit in the subway station on the way to work. People walk by mostly from left to right. Most people will notice the image on the left (it's the biggest, the eyes are attractive and we are drawn to faces anyway, especially good-looking ones). But notice how the Beyoncés get smaller acting as a kind of arrow toward the product from L-to-R. There's good motion in the design overall. Interestingly, I did not notice the huge type (CRYSTAL GEYSER) for several seconds after looking at this image. There is an appeal to sexiness obviously in this ad and there is an appeal to the ol' waist–hip ratio (WHR) — this was mentioned too in the book Universal Principles of Design and others. Lots going on in this simple ad, none of it by accident.
 
Below: TV ad running in Japan before posters hit the streets. An ad like this may not be very effective on its own unless it's part of an integrated marketing campaign. A lot of ¥ spent on selling...water, something we can all get here in Japan for free from the tap.

OK, just kidding — the PZ book in Japanese is not *that* small (but someday we may produce one that small here). This is just a sample of the cover (about 1/3 the size). This paper cover wraps around the book. And it's typical to have the band (in this case in yellow) with additional info on it. Here I am meeting with the publishers to go over the design, etc. It's almost done. The translation is very good and the design is perfect -- the challenge was it takes more space (ironically) to say in Japanese what I said in English, though this is in part due to the healthy type size in Japanese. The book will be out in book stores by the end of this month across Japan. よろしく、ね！

Intro from a talk about the PZ book proposal and writing, designing process. This is just the intro (and is old hat for most of you). A link to the whole thing used to be on my facebook page, but who knows where it is now (I find FB a UI mess, but I think I am just old fashioned and easily confused...). Here are pics from that Feb 08 meeting in Osaka:
http://snipurl.com/l6c7t

 
６分間のサンプルはこちら（字幕なし). 日本語字幕も付いた「プレゼンテーションZEN」のDVDはアマゾンで購入できます。
http://snipurl.com/l3rzh
 
6-min sample of the PZ DVD. Available with Spanish and Japanese subtitles (and CC in English). Available on the Amazon Japan site as well as other sites.