Revisionist History?

In GR618-Visual Literacy, we tackle a project about timelines… and we ask the students (among other things) to look at the timeline a few different ways. This brings up questions: Why? Is this realistic? Can you really change history? What are we learning here?

While you can’t literally change history, you can change your point-of-view (POV) — and you can change how you tell the story; where you start and stop; what you focus on; and what you group together. So, yes, this is realistic and it’s an important point of learning about narrative structure.

For instance, the story of the antics in a kitchen is very different from the POV of a rat. A man’s daily ritual is interesting from the POV of his wristwatch. These are Hollywood storytelling tricks, but as designers we have ours… namely editing and streamlining.

In your case, it is crucial when you begin to tell your own stories. Editing insights to key information is essential. We all have a friend who — when telling a story — goes into far too much detail and loses the audience. In some cases, you want to say: “Stop there. That’s enough detail. What you said is plenty.” or… “Why did you tell me about (X) when the story was about (Y)?"

You will be facing the same dynamic when telling your audience about your own work — specifically the Mid-point and Final review committees… and eventually interviewers and clients about your projects. How much detail should you include? Where should you start your story? What should you include? How should you group your information?

As we study in GR618, we know that people process information best when broken down into more understandable, systematic chunks and delivered in paced, expected streams (but do like surprises now and again) [Gestalt principles of Equilibrium and Isomorphism]… how can you leverage that not only in Project-4 but in your process storytelling in general?