Slide and cut paper work: Nicole Kuhlmann, HAWK Hildesheim, 
Gestaltung/Grafikdesign.

Lovely example for a plain and simple cover slide that takes the audience by the hand and marches off, story telling: This is where we’ll go. No glamorous iStockphoto stuff. The digital divide has been crossed once again. Analog. Digital. Human. Good mix.

Paper cuts can be more than those cute Christmas figurines your mum made for you, or the cheap silhouettes you can still buy for a penny and a farthing at the fair, she says, and is oh so right, and it does not really matter which currency is yours.

I still remember those petrifying black on white session from years ago, and how my sister and I had to sit quite still, and how we were forced to smile, and how the smile never showed on black on white, and how I have hated paper cuts ever since as something dead and stiff. Until today.

And she brings samples, and they are handmade, unperfected, fuzzy at the edges, alive and kicking. I was getting impatient, she says. I could never sit still long enough for one of those fine, deep, bleeding cuts, she says. And I know exactly what she means, for words are just like that: They are always escaping that last smooth, perfect touch of the blade.

She brings hand outs, hand made, all different, yet all the same; one for each of us. I could cut only two in one go with a surgical scalpel, she says. And she makes her art come alive and vibrant, and she makes us hungry for more. And that is pretty much what I ask from a good talk at the end of a term.

Make. Me. Want. More.

And to make sure she does not stumble, she creates  an overview of her slides for herself, the last, best visual hope for a script I know: One image, one sentence, one story.

Thank you for a lovely talk!

 

Related links:

http://www.anastassia-elias.com

http://www.boveylee.com

The underlying themes in my cut paper works are power, sacrifice and survival.

Hina Aoyma Watch paper cut letters dance.

Karen Bit Vejle Norwegian paper cut tapestry, large scale.

“My heart and soul are at peace when I have the scissors in hand and the paper dances between the blades. If my scissors can manage to make you stop and wonder for just one instant, I will be happy.”

[Image credits: © All rights reserved 2011 Christoph Golombek, HAWK Hildesheim, Fakultät Gestaltung/Produktdesign. InDesign to PDF.]

Sweet visualization of color vision, rods, cones, and life on the retina in general. Of course, you need to imagine the text. It was all there. Lively, funny, visual. Reflection was demonstrated with a (yellow) banana.

Reduced to the max. Task was exactly that: Making things as easy as possible to understand.

Thanx for the little guys!

Schöne Visualisierung zum Thema Farbensehen: Stäbchen, Zäpfchen, Netzhaut. Auch ohne Text fast selbsterklärend. Reflektion wurde am lebenden Objekt (Banane, gelb) erklärt. Didaktische Reduktion erreicht.

Danke, dass ich die Folien hier einstellen darf und für die bunten Jungs.

Comments:

• Short and long wavelengths could be visualized accordingly.
• The net stocking pattern works lovely in German: Netzhaut. Net skin. [from retina: net like tunic], might be too subtle in other languages.
• I was worried yellow for the light sensitive rods would be too confusing and a light grey would be better. Audience said no, everything was crystal clear. Okay :) But I still imagine the rods pulling down small blinds when life gets too tough and bright.

This is just a quick link dump, I will come back to this later. Today, Tech Crunch is featuring a round of high school Nasa pitches, videos and all. Lovely stuff and well worth checking out, from tools to give astronauts more private space to hitching safe rides. I will try and find the time to comment on some of the vids. Until then, see for yourself: NASA pitches

To compete in the Conrad Foundation’s Spirit of Innovation Awards, each team of high schoolers had to create a business plan, technical report, graphical representation and elevator pitch for their product, presenting their invention to a panel of judges for 10 minutes. All in all 27 finalists competed in the Aerospace, Clean energy and Cyber security categories to win $5,000 and the community support and mentorship to develop their product commercially.

Also in the post: Link to a Quora thread of Start ups destined to fail. I personally can’t stand Quora’s noise and clatter, but there are some good bad ideas there: as we certainly do not need another T-shirt site or Q&A-portal.

Main Link in this post:  NASA pitches

Letzte Woche habe ich mir rund 55 studentische 3-Minuten-Präsentationen angesehen, alle zu einem freigewählten Thema aus dem Bereich Gestaltung. 

Last week I evaluated 55 talks and slide sets. The topic was design or design related. You choose means you cannot complain it’s a boring topic.

Eine davon ist hängen geblieben. Der schlichten Folien wegen. Der deutlichen Veränderung zur Vorwoche (Weg-vom-Ich-hin-zum-Thema) wegen. Der präzisen sprachlichen Ausgestaltung wegen.

One talk stuck a little more than the others. Because of the plain slides. Because of the striking change from me to topic. Because of the precise language.

Dieser Vortrag verwendet das Stilmittel der Metapher, die stärker und wirkungsvoller ist als der gängige Wie-Vergleich. Überlassen Sie den Wie-Vergleich ambitionierten 19-jährigen Jungautoren.

This talk uses metaphors, not similes. A DJ is... not: A DJ is like... Leave the simile to 19-year-old aspiring authors.

All images © Patrick Walton/HAWK Hildesheim/Holzminden/Göttingen, Fakultät Gestaltung

• All slides ballpoint pen scribbles, scanned, postproduction in Photoshop.
• Idea: Using a familiar concept and putting it into a new context, enhancing meaning.
• Black background resembles vinyl.
• White scribbles resemble scratches on records.
• White font: Boston Traffic, 36 pt. Stamp like, as term DJ has been stamped/coined as something new.

Slides/Script (slightly edited)

The DJ as we all know him. But DJ is just a term, a phrase, an image.

A DJ is also a juggler. He creates a musical rhythm and flow to which people move.

A DJ is a mathematician. He adds up music and records and finds new solutions.

A DJ is a social worker. He communicates and creates relationships, sharing his records.

A DJ is an emotion designer. He creates a love brand, he thinks of and about his audience, he makes people happy. He creates a composition that touches peoples’ emotions.

A 3-minute presentation is like a single. It is over after one song, even if you would have liked to hear more.

The follwing video I stumbled upon somewhere. I probably wouldn’t have checked it but for the promotional line Like honey in between your hands.

I am not really into glass blowing. I find most shiny objects too cute and cliché. But I am very much into this video, as I am into everyone who makes a process more than a series of boring steps and passive voice.

I like the quietness of Kiva Ford’s passion.

If you need to give a brief overview of why you do what you do, this is a great example.

And no, it does not start with Adam and Eve and the history of glass blowing. It starts right at the heart of everything alive; it starts with fire and flame.

There is all sorts of different flames that you need to learn when you are working over the torch.

Script:

Handmade Portraits: Glassblowing With Kiva Ford

0:00
There is all sorts of different flames that you need to learn when you are working over the torch.

0:22
A yellow flame is a cooler heat and as you increase the oxygen, the flame turns blue. The temperature is probably a few thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

0:45
It’s really interesting working with glass, as my experience with glass is that it is solid. And then when I was introduced to glass blowing, all of a sudden it is not solid anymore, it’s a liquid and then it almost feels like honey in between your hands.

01:09
For liquids, there isn’t a structural order, but when a liquid freezes it does get a solid crystalline structure and what is so unique about glass is that it never has a crystalline structure, whether it is in its molten state or whether it is in its solid state.

01:34
I’m a proud member of the Scientific Glassblower Society, creating custom scientific glassware for research and discovery chemistry.

We make some pretty wild stuff.

Extractors, reactors, condensors, custom flasks.

It can’t be made by a machine or mass produced.

2:00
Scientific glassblowing has seen some decline over the years because of the way industry changes, the way that chemists run reactions and also the advancement in plastics.

02:14
A few decades ago there were a few thousand people in the Society and now there are under a thousand people. But the scientists still need that one-on-one interaction between the chemist and the glassblower to get the glassware that they need for their research.

2:35

Most days I get home from work and go to my shop and make the artistic glass. I get just as excited about scientific glass as I do about artistic glass. The whole process is beautiful to me.

2:50
The idea of blowing glass was developed I believe in Persia a few thousand years ago and we are still using the same basic principles.

3:09
We work over open flames and manipulate the glass to get the shapes that we want. You can get a very intricate detail, and I really like focussing on the tiny details. 

3:33 One of the things that I get the most enjoyment out of is trying to come up with new ideas, seeing what is possible and what isn’t possible.

3:50
For the animal series that I make there is a really interesting technique involved in getting that animal inside of the glass. I haven’t seen anyone else do anything like it before.

4:10
I grew up on a small farm and as a kid we would walk around and find arrow heads. I used to look at these arrow heads and think about the guy who was making them. Maybe there was one guy who was the best arrowhead maker and people would come from miles away and get arrowheads from this one craftsman.

4:35
I feel like I am connected to that in some way, to just focus on one skill and get good at what you do.

Phil Waknell from Ideas on stage is one of the more recent active voices in Presenting Land, and one that is not easily overheard. As he says himself: His aim is to be the Number One presenting agency within five years. He may actually achieve that, using social media to the full. I find, it is one hell of a very clear goal.

He is also very generous with advice and ideas on his web site and has helped stage the TedEX Paris 2011.

Recently he provided a full 90 minute taped talk on presenting for free.

Now I may not agree with everything Phil says or does—e.g. I always need to hear more about the whys behind the you musts, and my own business goals are quite different—but different is good, and in presenting different is essential.

We all are different, and so are our audiences, and we need to bear that in mind, when preparing a talk.

From the video, there is much to learn for budding entrepreneurs or anyone interested in what makes a talk a better talk and so far does not really know much about it:

Good visuals, good stories, and—I am happy to see it included—oratory.

But then that is where I come from: If you cannot present without slides, you cannot present at all. Words are available light.

So have fun watching, and to Phil: Good luck with your goals.