Tell a story in images with Diptic for iPhone and iPad
Another storytelling option for the iPhone and iPad.
“A picture may be worth a thousand words, but two or more pictures combined can tell a story. Diptic, a new app by Peak Systems, lets you combine two or three of your photos to create a new image, making it possible to create photographic series, before-and-after sequences, or other narratives right from your iPhone or iPad.”
A number of people have tweeted that this is some pretty good storytelling on AT&T’s part. You be the judge.
Beyond The Border Wales – July 2010
Limor Shiponi has been known to frequent this festival. That moves it up pretty high on the list in my book.
“Britain’s leading international festival of storytelling returns to St Donats Castle on the South Wales coast for another spectacular weekend of stories by the sea!
For three glorious and magic-filled days, the grounds of our fairytale castle will echo with the sound of stories from Wales and the World…..”
Using Prototypes For Storytelling.
“As the quote says, there is value for experience designers in story telling. Story telling drives art, aesthetic and function, this is accomplished when an overarching plot is communicated with the help of thematic or “same-subject” devices. Think of the different forces that drive your favorite movies or music. Did you like the character development? The cinematography? What other forms of artistry contributed to your resulting experience?
Storytelling when applied to design allows designers to understand narrative. It helps designers obtain an idea of who we are telling the story to. In addition to just determining who the story is told to, designers begin to accumulate tools such as textual elements that can be used to shape the story at hand. Compare this list of elements that filmmakers and web designers use to create specific experiences.”
LEFT BEHIND in The Venetian Casino Data Center (Really!)
Hat tip to Lou Hoffman for this one! Helluva’ story.
“They make it look so complicated in the movies. Detailed covert operations with the intent to hack into a casino’s mainframe preceeded by weeks of staged planned rehearsals, but I’m here to tell you it’s much easier than that.
This is my story of how I had 20 seconds of complete access to The Venetian Casino’s data center, and lived to tell about it.”
Best tips for storytelling in branding and marketing?
An interesting discussion starting to form around this topic at Limor Shiponi’s blog.
“After reading a lot of stuff about this issue I still have a question: what should one know? Many people use terms like narrative, story, storytelling, engagement, eliciting emotions, conversation marketing etc.
If you’re already at it I have another: what can storytelling really do?”
Transmedia Storytelling for Social Marketers: A Sample Campaign
This is quite good!
“Lately, I’ve been talking about transmedia storytelling to whoever will listen. If you’re not familiar with this approach, transmedia refers to a story that is told on multiple media platforms, with different parts of the story appearing in different places. The readers/viewers may enter the story at various points, and may need to solve puzzles or follow clues to discover the different nodes of the story. Transmedia is different from multimedia, which would be a retelling of the same story told using different media (e.g., a movie, a graphic novel, an audiobook). Beyond using transmedia for the sheer joy of telling a story, this approach is now often used to promote television shows and movies, as well as marketing products.”
I said in a tweet this was way cool. I’ll stand by that.
“Last year, I participated in a wonderful workshop at the Golden Fleece conference titled “How Pictures Can Promote, Provoke and Prolong Communication.” The workshop promised I would “leave with practical methods, simple exercises, and exciting tools for helping yourself and others to find the stories in their lives.”
It was designed around Dialoogle® — a blended word combining “dialog” and “Google” and meaning “a search for a dialogue.” I was enthralled!”
The Most Interesting Man in the World Requires Your Help
Interesting storytelling promotion.
“While returning from a routine circumnavigation of the globe to collect numerous and invaluable artifacts, the Most Interesting Man’s plane experienced some technical difficulties. To preserve his curious collection, he was forced to parachute the artifacts out. While he was of course able to land the plane safely, his priceless possessions are now scattered across the country.
And you can be the person to him find them – with the Most Interesting Cargo Hunt.”
Storytelling: Branding in Practice
This is the second edition of what is a wonderful book. Releases in July.
“As a business concept “storytelling” has had a significant impact on how companies can build strong corporate cultures and credible brands. Yet many corporations are still confused as to how exactly storytelling can make a difference: Why should we tell stories at all? What makes a good story? And how do we tell it in a way that advances our company both culturally and fiscally while strengthening our brand?”
Microsoft Comms Head Smacks Back by the Numbers (Plus a “Rocky”-Inspired Internal Email!)
The numbers tell the story?
““It has been a rough couple of weeks for us from a coverage standpoint. It seems like every time I turn on the computer, or talk to a reporter, or pick up a publication at home, or do a scan of my RSS feeds or Twitter client that I see more stories and opinions about the challenges we have, and how great some of our competitors are doing. iPad this, Droid that, sheesh.”
Sheesh? Who says that anymore?
Still, I like his gumption in using it! Thus, Shaw–who is an active blogger and Twitter poster–is apparently mad as heck and not going to take it anymore!”
Nice post from Cathryn Wellner.
“As this 5:55-minute video opens, a blind beggar sits by his hand-lettered sign as people walk by. Some toss coins. Most ignore him.
We see a businessman, carrying a briefcase, walking toward the square. Will he give the man a coin? Walk by? We know the juxtaposition of rich and poor is important to the story, but we don’t know how until the end.
I don’t want to give this one away so will only say that this beautiful little film is a good example of how changing the story can change the outcome.”
The Art Form Of Painting Pictures With Your Tongue
Nice visual huh? It’s a very nice piece.
“Tom Brown, Jr., the Tracker, has talked about the importance of getting healthy ideas out to the young. There is no more effective or quicker path than Storytelling. Teachers and parents already know what Storytelling is. You can bring in Stone Age tools to your presentations. If you tell stories from your heart, you will fill spiritual hunger like few others can, and help begin the Community Healing process. Storytelling is a powerful, beautiful art form. If you can talk, you can do Storytelling.”
If It’s Purple, Someone’s Gonna Die: The Power of Color in Visual Storytelling
Have you ever thought about color as it relates to your storytelling?
“Patti Bellantoni studied under renowned color theorist Josef Albers. She now teaches color and visual storytelling to directors, cinematographers, editors, producers, screenwriters, and production designers. Her faculty credits include the Conservatory of the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, the world’s premiere film conservatory. She was also previously on the faculty of the Center for Understanding Media in New York. She has taught Color and Visual Communication at the School of Visual Arts in New York and Design at California State University, Los Angeles.”
“It’s also astounding that the leader of a major corporation would try to neglect his primary job of a leader: communications–open, approachable, two-way communications with all the organization’s stakeholders, news media included. Open communication with those at the top is not only advisable, it’s essential in a world that expects transparency and a public that assumes the right to be heard.”
Shooting a narrative short film on the iPhone 4
Interesting experiment.
How to create unforgettable characters?
“First get curious and dig into your characters. This implies that you believe your characters ‘exist,’ that they have their own life-histories, back-stories, and world-views. Because if they do, then that transforms the writer into a psychologist – posing questions to characters, analyzing their responses, stitching together possible interpretations of why they are who they are, what is going on in both their External World (action and dialogue) and their Internal World (intention and subtext). The more you dig into your characters and learn about them, they more they can reveal the multiple layers of their persona, which in turns gives you a wealth of narrative material with which to work.”
Socks, Inc. (an Alternate Reality Game)
There’s been a lot of talk about this today.
“Socks Incorporated is about creating an avatar, a.k.a. a sock puppet, and telling a story together. The player follows the main character’s narrative while simultaneously participating in their own. The nature of the sock puppet avatar (a character brought to life by your hand) allows the player to experience real-world play without the fear of embarrassment or the limits of social conformities.”
Doug Lipman – Marketing Outside the Storytelling Community.
An ‘oldie’ and a ‘goodie’.
“Why is marketing hard for storytellers?
For one thing, we’re up against a hard situation. Like all artists, we do important work: imagining and communicating what human beings are like and can become. Yet, as invaluable as we are to society, we are not rewarded well or supported well. We are even expected to be both artists and marketers. Few people master two such careers!”
I’ve posted about this before. It’s worth looking at again.
“A few years ago I started thinking about an entirely new way to tell a story, far different from traditional TV. I didn’t just want to talk about “saving the world” in fiction, I wanted to create a narrative that spilled out into the streets. One that you could live inside of for a while. How cool would it be, I thought, to create a story that exists all around you all of the time? — On your laptop, your mobile phone, on your sidewalks, as a secret message hidden in your favorite song or while standing at the bus stop on your way to work.”
“There’s no app for that”: Peggy Nelson talks timing, technology and story
“Journalists use technology to tell stories, but technology has its own stories to tell, sometimes the very opposite of the ones we expect. In this series of articles, I’ll explore the impact of technology on narrative, and offer some observations from my work in new media — how technology suggests new types of tales, and new models for their tellers.”
A DISTANCE MEASURED IN MORE THAN MILES
Seems a heartfelt story that will have you looking at your assumptions and beliefs.
“He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. I didn’t think men that beautiful were allowed on the speech team. He stood just over six feet tall-ish. He wore a dark suit, maybe charcoal, a tie, and a crisp, collared shirt that had tiny, vertical red stripes – so tiny they looked pink – I love a man who can wear pink. He smiled at the room of about 10 competitors who were all silently staring. Charming. He apologized to the judge for being late to the round, but he had been competing in another event. Respectful. The judge just nodded her head in a trance. Memorizing. He shook hands with his partner, who was waiting. Friendly. And wrote his name on the white-board to sign in.”
“Real life is not a narrative. That is not to say we don’t place a narrative quadrat over our lives, trying to make sense of it all. We select, we edit events and experiences, trying to deduce an inner logic, a readable pattern to guide our future behaviour. Our faculty of memory itself is highly selective, filtering out all that it judges to be excess to its limited storage capacity, even if in all likelihood most of the extraneous stuff is never completely deleted and could be brought back to consciousness, by the trigger of a smell, or a long forgotten specific sound.”
