Visual Storytelling

A presentation for Masters of Design students at Victoria University

Since the advent of faster internet connections, mobile phones and online commerce, visual storytelling has become a term inexorably linked with the building of brands and with marketing. The fact that humans are hardwired to process images quickly and are now spending more and more time with access to media that is being tailored for them and pushed to them via screens is almost certainly why there is so much research into and interest in the area.

But stepping back from the current marketing hype around visual storytelling, it would be interesting to think of all the examples we can imagine.

An obvious and powerful example is the comic, or graphic novel, which uses sequential illustration as the primary medium for telling a story, usually in conjunction with words in the form of dialogue. A storyboard follows this same kind of format and can be used to build out stories for anything from short advertising spots to feature length films.

The children’s picture book is a wonderful example of visual storytelling at work, and one which for many of us has no doubt formed our receptiveness to a story unfolding primarily through imagery. In the example below we see a naive illustration, which we might assume to be challenging for a very young child to comprehend - a busy train station, featuring the surreal element of a large lion walking upright among people.

Yet this sort of content is commonplace in children’s books, and very well received by their young audience. A child’s ability to identify objects and scenarios illustrated in a variety of styles verging on the abstract is quite remarkable.

Given that we enrich our own children’s early life journeys so heavily with visual storytelling, it’s perhaps no surprise to see what an important place imagery holds when telling our own stories.

It was common in the 20th century to find packs of mass-printed cards featuring photographs or illustrations of scenes from a particular location. These served as souvenirs for tourists and helped to reinforce the importance of their visit through imagery they could keep themselves.

In turn these images play their part in adding an entirely different dimension to the places depicted - a visual identity, or brand emerges - and begins to change how we perceive them. A single image of the Eiffel Tower, the Trevi Fountain or a spurting geiser in Rotorua are now so heavily stamped into our collective consciousness through repetition that we not only instantly recognise the locations, but import a myriad of shared cultural references with them as well.

Another powerful example of visual story-telling is the music video. Often a story is told visually that is entirely absent or only slightly hinted at in a song’s lyrics (if indeed there are any lyrics). Already a powerful medium, the moving image is made an even more powerful means of communication with the addition of music.

The work of director Michel Gondry is an excellent example of stories being told visually that far outstrip those being told only by the lyrics or music of a pop song. In his video for Sugar Water, by the group Cibo Matto, Gondry manages to tell a story that is at once intricate yet somehow simple.

On the left of the screen a story is unfolding in normal forward motion, on the right, another seemingly unrelated one in reverse. At the mid-point of the video the protagonists from each story meet, and the story which was until now reversed plays back forwards from that point. Meanwhile the other story, which until now was in normal forward motion, plays backwards from that point on. By the end of the video, each of the two half-screens returns the audience to where they began.

Music groups are able to convey a richer story with the addition of visuals, building their brand in much the same way as the souvenir cards did for various cities and sites around the world.

The creative visual identity of New Zealand musician Jonathon Bree begins to deliver us into a carefully curated world with an atmosphere all of its own via the power of visual storytelling.

A music video tells a story visually with a combination of staging and movement as well as the clothing and grooming of the members of the group. If we begin thinking about telling a story with our own body as the canvas, what about the art of Tā moko?

Status, place and genealogy might all be stories told via facial moko.

What is it that we chose to say about ourselves through our own appearance? Just the way we groom and adorn ourselves tells a complex story about who we are, how we perceive ourselves and want to be perceived by others, as well as our origins and aspirations.

Another powerful form of visual storytelling is illustration. While at times the work of an illustrator is to create something absolutely literal (a wheelbarrow for a hardware sales catalogue for example) with no deeper meaning, much of the time their skill lies in being able to tell a story with deeper meaning in a single image.

Here illustrator Sarah Wilkins depicts the sense of loss and grief from miscarriage.

With careful thought and process, her design tells a story through a series of visual clues: The central figure is female and in a prone, dejected posture. The part of her body associated with her loss is missing, while she holds a vessel in the same form of that missing part. The vessel in turn is being used to collect the tears which signify her grief. In this instance conceptualising could well have comprised more work for the illustrator than execution.

Typically Wilkins proposes 3 sketched ideas to a client before a choice is made and the illustration goes to final.

Here we see some sketched ideas for 2 illustrations, followed by the final 2 choices being developed to a colour rough, so that the client can make decisions around related content of the prospective piece.

These final illustrations about the work of author Elenor Ferrante include various visual clues about the subject, including the number of novels she has written, their covers and settings.

Below is an interesting example of the illustrator choosing to build an image from meaning found in the text (that Elenor Ferrante likens her writing to weaving) only to discover the heading of the article changed for publication and perhaps working at odds with the illustration.

If an illustrator is telling a story in each of her illustrations, how does she go about telling the story of her own work, presenting it in a concise way?

The use of white space, separate portfolios, simplicity and hierarchy all come into play when designing a portfolio site for an illustrator.

Taking advantage of a full-width screen, while having a responsive site which maximises image rendering on mobile devices are all important aspects to consider.

How do we sell ourselves? Are we discreet, reinforcing our own story with the use of our own carefully curated work?

Or do we open up to our audience more fully and include a portrait photograph and a detailed story of our background and practice?

How big a part of our story is our own personality? Maybe that’s our biggest selling point when we are in a crowded marketplace and we just have to go for it.

There’s no one way to tell your story.