Following up on the 'learning as art' meme - Let's Start With Comics

This book has ALWAYS been one of my favorites. I think it is an absolutely crucial book to read in terms of understanding the visual - on a par with Theory of Fun for understanding game design. Scott McCloud is just a genius in using the medium of comics to explain the visual components of comics. My problem though is that I never really turned the spotlight on how this work can inform learning.

Thank goodness Garr Reynolds over at Presentation Zen is much better at catching some of this than I am. I would offer some quotes from Garr's two GREAT posts on this book but I am afraid that I would just wind up quoting them in their entirety - suffice it to say that you should go here and here and read them yourself.

I did want to pass along this one directly - this is Scott McCloud's loose and admittedly flexible definition for comics: "Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer."  Now is this feeling a bit more relevant? Think about the last powerpoint deck you produced. Did you use images? Did you use them in a deliberate sequence? Did you design this sequence in order to produce a response? Maybe you are a comic artist and you don't even know it!

Now click through to look at two slides that Garr did using McCloud's idea of 'amplification through simplification.' Which one do you think would keep the audience's attention more? Which one tells a more compelling story?

 

or this next one?

As I try to find my way blindly down this path of 'learning as art' - one thought is that maybe I need to do as McCloud has done and figure out a way to use more art in the learning I design.