I don’t know about all of you, but I’ve always had a deep love of photography. Growing up, I spent a lot of time behind the lens and have spent many a night toiling in the darkroom. One thing that always stood out to me was something my Photography Teacher yelled at the class.
“Don’t say it, show it!”
We were critiquing each other’s work, something I both enjoyed and dreaded. We got to this one kid who was stammering out why this particular photo mattered. Our teacher looked at it, and said ”If the viewer can’t figure out the meaning on their own, it doesn’t matter.”
Don’t say it, show it!
You can have all the story in the world, but it means nothing if it falls flat to the viewer. It’s an important thing to remember for us as we navigate between visuals and narration.
[Jimmy’s note: We have a similar policy here in the studio, “Content is king”. What we mean by that is that the content should speak for itself, you shouldn’t need a member of the staff to walk you through it.]
That said, I think Irene is really hitting it out of the park with her illustrations. Case in point, this image below.
[Jimmy’s note: My jaw hit the floor.]
I can’t go into the story too much yet, but I had chills when Irene presented it at our meeting this week. I can feel the story already shaping up and I’m excited to see it come to fruition.
How do you get emotion across in your stories?