VisualThinkMedia

Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative Video Explanation

JeffBennett — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:59:06 +0000

I just published my latest video explanation – The Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative. The Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative is setting a pathway to transform Hawaii into a model for energy independence and sustainability. This animated infographic video explanation covers the main points of the initiative. If you’re writing a blog article or story about the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative, feel free to embed this video.

Latest Video Zen Inductee

JeffBennett — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:38:57 +0000

I’ve heard comments that this type of video seems disjointed and without a coherent story. But I like the style. I think this is fun, engaging and stylish.

State of the Internet

Click here to view the embedded video.

Pictures vs Text Grudge Match

JeffBennett — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:33:06 +0000

One of my current video projects is an explanatory video about visual thinking. Intrigued by a Garr Reynolds online SlideShare presentation about John Medina’s Brain Rules, I got the book and read it. I think Garr did a great job in summarizing Medina’s chapter on vision. But I thought it would be fun to take it a bit further and produce an explanatory video on it, because I’m of the opinion that the visual thinking community has fallen short in explaining visual thinking (especially in a visual format) and I think the concepts in chapter 10 of Brain Rules would be a good place to start.

So, I’m in the brainstorming phase, sketching out visual metaphors to try to illustrate some concepts. In covering the so-called picture superiority effect, Medina referred to some experiments comparing pictures to text and oral communication, saying, “picture demolishes them both.” On reading that phrase the mental image that jumped into my brain was a pictures vs text grudge match (fictitious fights and contests between pop culture figures) - a boxing or wrestling match with pictures vs text and pictures standing over a knocked out competitor, text. My first sketch of this:

Pictures vs text grudge match sketch 1

After thinking about it though, I thought, shouldn’t the fallen, knocked out text competitor be, well, text? Wouldn’t that communicate the metaphor better? So, I came up with the next sketch:

Pictures vs text grudge match sketch 2

Now instead of drawing a picture of the knocked out text, it just has text describing that there’s a knocked out fighter there. Granted it’s a bit obscure and you have to think about it a bit harder and longer to “get it” but I think it might communicate the metaphor better. So, my question to any of you reading this is, what do you think? Which sketch concept communicates visually better? Or maybe there’s a hybrid approach (on discussing it with my wife, I think that might be the answer). What do you think?

Visual Brainstorming & Storyboarding for Explanatory Videos

JeffBennett — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:52:55 +0000

Just posted a blog article on my main website about visual brainstorming and storyboarding for recent explanatory video I did.

Critical Thinking Explanatory Video

JeffBennett — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:11:20 +0000

Today I published a new explanatory video about critical thinking called “Do You Think?”

Noticing increasing societal polarization, especially political, where people are bombarded with “facts” and opinions by pundits and experts, I’ve felt frustrated that so many people choose to blindly follow their pundit of choice like rats following the Pied Piper, without really thinking and questioning. Having been formally exposed to serious critical thinking standards in my MBA program, I’ve felt that if more people were exposed to critical thinking principles as a discipline, they might at least be able to identify when statements, opinions and actions aren’t completely rational. With that in mind I set out to make an explanatory video explaining some basic principles of critical thinking in the style of Xplane’s recent videos Did You Know and The Carbon Economy. This video is about teaching some very basic critical thinking standards with the intent to intrigue the viewer enough about critical thinking to learn more about the subject.

Much of the content for this video was culled from the Foundation for Critical Thinking’s website, especially their page on universal intellectual standards.

Video Zen

JeffBennett — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:57:36 +0000

I’ve developed a bit of a fascination with online explanatory and informational videos lately and so decided to create a page here devoted to that – a page I’m calling Video Zen. Most recently, Xplane has put out a couple of video presentations that are getting a lot of attention, The Carbon Economy and Did You Know 4.0. Engaging + informative.

The Carbon Economy

Did You Know 4.0

More stuff on their YouTube page.

WordPress Screencast: NextGen Photo Gallery

JeffBennett — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 01:10:26 +0000

Just finished recording and editing a screencast to show how to install the NextGen photo gallery on your WordPress web site, create a gallery, upload some images and post a gallery in a blog post or a page.

NextGen Photo Gallery for WordPress from Jeff Bennett on Vimeo.

WordPress Tutorial Screencast

JeffBennett — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:03:29 +0000

WordPress started out as a blogging platform but become a full blown Content Management System allowing you to create and publish your entire website with it. But, by default, WordPress home pages display your blog articles, and often times you might want something different for your home page, some static content perhaps.

There’s a pretty simple way to create static content on your WordPress site and the cool folks at WordPress.tv created a nice little screencast to show how to do it. Problem is, that, depending on the theme you use, there are some quirks with this method that put some oddities in your menu bar.

Well, it turns out there are work-arounds for this too. Here’s a quick little screencast I made to show how to make a static home page in WordPress and get around a couple of little issues.

WordPress Static Home Pages from Jeff Bennett on Vimeo.

To view a larger version, go to my Vimeo page.

Online Visual Explanation: Plastic Bottles & Ocean Pollution

JeffBennett — Sun, 17 May 2009 05:22:00 +0000

We’re living in a time of information overload and complexity, inundated with too much information and too little time to get through it. I believe that visual explanations, such as video and online presentations, will be an important tool for organizations to convey their message, whether that’s selling a product or advocating action of some other kind.

Read Full Article >>

Visual Creative Thinking

JeffBennett — Tue, 12 May 2009 05:55:00 +0000

Just came across this in SlideShare.

Visual Creative Thinking

View more presentations from homehelper.