Presentations and Sequential Art (Part 2)

Lessons from Scott McCloud - Part 2: Creative Steps

Continuing with my 'appreciation' posts for Scott McCloud's fabulous work, I thought that I would share some more thoughts from his outstanding book Understanding Comics. This post is about the steps that we take when creating any artistic product, and is most certainly relevant to creating great presentations.

Once again, it should be noted that the thoughts written below, barring a few tweaks for reference to presentations, are in Scott's words. I will be sharing a few more 'lessons' from Scott's work over the coming weeks.

The creation of any work in any medium will always follow a certain path, and presentations are no exception. This path consists of six steps: (1) Idea/Purpose, (2) Form, (3) Idiom, (4) Structure, (5) Craft, (6) Surface.

(1) Idea/Purpose – The impulses, the ideas, the emotions, the philosophies, the purposes of the work, the work’s ‘content’.

(2) Form – The form it will take: will it be a book? A song? A sculpture? A comic book? For the majority of business presentations, of course, this will likely be a series of powerpoint slides.

(3) Idiom – The ‘school’ of art, the vocabulary of styles or gestures or subject matter, the genre that the work belongs; maybe even a genre of its own.

(4) Structure – Putting it all together: what to include, what to leave out, how to arrange, how to compose the work.

(5) Craft – Constructing the work, applying skills, practical knowledge, invention, problem-solving, getting the ‘job’ done.

(6) Surface – Production values, finishing, the aspects most apparent on first superficial exposure to the work. In all the arts it’s the surface that people appreciate most easily, like an apple chosen for its shiny skin.

Any artist creating any work in any medium will always follow these six steps whether they realize it or not. And creating presentations is no exception. All works begin with a purpose, however arbitrary; all take some form; all belong to an idiom (even if it’s an idiom of one); all possess a structure; all require some craft; all present a surface.