How Comics can transform how you communicate

[Music]

hello

i’m neil gibson i’m here to talk to you

about how comics can transform how you

communicate

i like to start off by talking about my

grandmother

she was a remarkable woman she was like

the martha stewart of northern ireland

she she actually had to stop entering

baking and garden competitions because

she kept winning them all

um yet despite her vast knowledge of

cooking and baking

she never once ate chinese food

she was convinced it was made of cats

and dogs foreign muck she had no

interest

and we’d laugh at her and try and get it

to try but she refused and she was

convinced and she said that when the

first

chinese restaurant opened up in the

village all the stray cats disappeared

and we’d laugh listening to her but that

was a belief she genuinely had and

and she wouldn’t change her mind

and when it comes to comics i find some

people have

in my view a misguided belief a lot of

people think

comics are just for kids especially in

the uk

and i i mean i was i thought that too i

we went to loud comics when i was at

school uh at nine years i went to new

school

i was nine years old no band there

because i considered it rotted your

brain

so i didn’t read them until i was 14 i

saw someone had a copy of the beano and

i picked it up and it was

awful in my opinion so i thought i’m i’m

grounded for comics

and then in my 20s i was living abroad

and uh

i read a good one and i couldn’t believe

how much it made me think

the visual metaphors the visual puns the

complexity of the characters and the

storyline the dialogue and the world

that was created

and told visually in a stunning way i i

thought it was it was a work of art

and i it opened my mind to i never

considered that and then i became

a big fan of comics and um as you can

see i

i remember i flew back to london i was i

met a friend in a restaurant

and she was a bit late so i was reading

a comic

and she was surprised to finally reading

that and said he can’t keep reading

comics forever

and i found that very very odd um

i understand it because i had to

prejudice against it but you don’t see

people saying you can’t keep reading

books forever

or you can’t go to the theater forever

or you can’t stop watching

can’t keep watching films forever people

don’t say that but they do say that

about comics they consider comics

infantile

and what’s happening is that people are

confusing

content for the media for example you

have

sesame street and peppa pig but you also

have game of thrones and news night and

panorama

you have pantomimes and children’s plays

you also have shakespeare the next west

end big production

i don’t think a medium can be childish

but i

grant you that a lot of stuff in comics

is a lot of it is rubbish

but then i think a lot of things in

every medium is rubbish

i’m sure you’ve all read a bad book or

seen some terrible daytime tv or

um or badly active play for example

but the thing with all mediums is that

they all have their advantage

and advantages and i’d like to tell you

a few of the advantages of comics

and i’d like to start with pacing

can you remember being in a maths class

where the teacher is going a bit too

quickly and you can’t process everything

that’s going on

because for her it’s so simple it’s

these are the basic steps and

so she’ll um run through one quickly

or even just skip one entirely because

it’s so obvious and for some of the

other students it may be as

well but maybe for you it’s going a bit

too fast

or maybe it’s just going too slow all

the steps are going

it’s so slow come on just you don’t i

don’t need all this

people go at different paces now

with someone speaking in real life or

with the film

or tv you’re special tv tv film you’re

at the director’s mercy it’s where it’s

been edited

that’s the speed it goes out however

with the book um and with comics you get

to go at your own pace you can spend as

long as you like to absorb the

information or skip through it quickly

if you’ve got it

and with comics you have the added

benefit of the pictures

because pictures really say a thousand

words with one image you can see

a character’s body language their their

emotions on their on their face you can

with the coloring and see the tone of

what’s going on there and you can also

read what they’re saying

i’m going to show you now four images

and in a split second you’ll see three

things in each image

you’ll know what it is actually the

image you’re looking at you’re going to

see a face or a body and you’re also

going to see

an emotion okay so here they are

okay so first of all you saw the sink

and you saw the toothbrush holder and

the bag and the clouds

you also saw a face in the first three

and then and the body in the clouds

and look at the sink looks like you’re

worried below that you have the bag

which is

um almost smug really and then you have

this happy smiley toothbrush holder

and then you have uh the body and that

could be like

superhero about to crush someone with

their powers or it could be somebody’s

been crucified it’s a bit ambiguous

but you can see something’s there and

why did i mention this

is because with no effort you instantly

made sense of those pictures

you see so all of that having to even

think

our brains are hardwired to

visualization

i’d like to ask you a question about

that now and do you try and come up with

an answer

before you before i give it to you i

want you to think about it

because by doing that you’d be surprised

and learn more

what percentage of neurons in the brain

cortex do you think is devoted towards

hearing

what about touch more or less than

hearing

think about what music people listen to

it’s eight percent about vision

30 10 times more than hearing

vision dominates the other senses

even your retina itself is an outcrop of

the human brain

we are hardwired to understand images

more than text

but it’s not just the comprehension

understanding what you’re seeing that’s

being effortless it’s also the retention

and this is really important

several universities including the

university of oklahoma or the university

of sheffield have done studies uh on the

effectiveness of comic books

versus standard textbooks not

surprisingly uh most people prefer

reading information in graphic novel

format roughly eighty percent

but importantly it’s not just the

preference or ease the recall

when you read uh graphic novels is

significantly higher

they’ve done tests in um with cat scans

and

mris where people are watching a film

reading a book reading comic and with

comics the blood flow is the highest

your attention memory retention is

higher because you’re processing the

text and also the visuals at the same

time

editorial superiority effect if i

present information to you early

your average people remember about 10 of

it 72 hours after the fact

but if you add in a picture as you’re

talking recall source to 65

now that bears repeating adding a

picture to what you’re saying

means your people’s recall goes up six

times six fold the difference that’s

extraordinary difference

so i’m not going to show you um

different ways to communicate

it’s here’s a simple

excel spreadsheet there’s uh three

different regions and the production

over four quarters

some people will understand what that

means instantly but from the vast

majority

once you add a chart you can see the

trends much more easily you say okay red

is rising

the two declining and manager would uh

region one will think oh i need to take

action

okay that should be obvious that people

find it easier to see

charts rather than the actual just

numbers but what’s important is when you

add the chart you show them that people

remember

what your message was after the fact

so comics not only easier for people to

understand

but it’s also important they’ll remember

more afterwards so if you’re trying to

communicate something important i highly

suggest using comics

so how can you do that if you’re trying

to learn though

well i’m sure you’re familiar with the

doppler effects that’s when a car goes

past your pitch rises as it approaches

and falls when it goes away it goes

this car goes past you well stars

act like that as well with light south

astronomers know how far away stars are

because if it’s moving away to you or

towards you it shifts in the light

spectrum towards either the blue end or

red end of the spectrum

let’s say you’ve got a physics exam how

you remember which is which when you’re

under pressure is red closer or is it

further away

i’m going to show you one image now and

you’ll remember it for the rest of your

life you’ll never forget this

here we are the red sun

is setting over the blue sea which is in

front of you so red means

it’s further away blue is closer that’s

it

no effort in your part you’ll remember

that for the rest of your lives

which is closer which is further away

and

you can do this for so many things

especially if you’re studying and you

can do it with your friends get them

straight images and see theirs and

theirs is better it takes more than mine

great

i work with schools about this to try

and help people learn more because i

care about this

now primarily i make comics for

entertainment that’s what we do

but we also have worked with

corporations if they want to do

advertising or

training manuals get to teach people

stuff

when we first started making them we

found something unexpected

the first project i did was a warehouse

comic

for an international company they had a

new warehousing system and they want to

teach people how to use the new system

and we drew in the president and the

vice president and they’d be arguing

with each other and making jokes and

explaining the system

and and showing how it worked

and yes they were happy with that taught

the employees how to use it

but the reason they were really happy is

because everyone read it

they were used to sending out training

manuals or various things and people

wouldn’t read them in their emails

they’re too busy

this when it was printed was shared with

many people

because it was different it was funny

and it was something

that wasn’t just dry text

and whenever you want to teach anyone

anything

what you really care about is results at

the end didn’t make a difference

and i’d like to show you kilpatrick’s

model for sequential learning for me

i like to start this at the bottom going

backwards

what you care about when you teach

someone something is results did it make

a difference

it’s only going to make a difference if

they use what you taught them

they’re only going to use what you

taught them if they learn

what you taught them and they’re much

more likely to learn it if they like it

so comics well they’re fun they’re not

intimidating block of text people prefer

reading them training manuals

and memory retention is higher and

they’re quick to read you can learn more

faster

and do they use it depends on the

situation but

they’re more likely to be shared by

those because it’s a name different and

it’s fun

it depends it does depend on the

situation because it goes back to

content again

if you make a manual and it’s no good

it’s not going to have the results you

want

but you’re never going to know unless

you try and comics are being used in

many

different ways now not just training

even google used it to teach people

about the chrome

chrome browser when that launcher uses

comics to teach people uh there’s a

universities in japan and in bangalore

india which teaches medicine

using comic books because they found it

to be very effective

in the sheer number of of things people

have to learn

and in south africa they’re even using

comics as a legal document

let me show you this here you can see on

the top right hand side

someone picking in the calendar three

weeks at your probation period

okay picking fruit then left hand side

if you don’t meet the quota

you go home on the right hand side you

go above the minimum quota for

that time period welcome to the team

this is the contract

sign here

this demonstrates the versatility of

comics and clear communication is

critical in the modern digital reality

not all adults can formulate uh what

their thoughts precisely

and i work with an israeli company to

develop a course for children teaching

them

to develop better stories having skills

from a young age with the use of comics

so i do implore you to try making comics

to teach to get a

point get your point across but it’s not

just making comics uh that’s important

you can

you consume comics to learn what to

learn better

uh and the range of comic content is

enormous

mouse was the first comic to win a pure

surprise it’s a

fantastic story about the holocaust and

frames in a very moving yet digestible

way

i learned the theory of relativity by my

roommate

at university studying physics he had

this introducing einstein comic

and it’s fascinating i still remember

theory relativity to this day because of

that comic

you can also learn about the economy or

i learned personal journeys about what

it’s

really like in north korea or in

palestine uh through these

comics and my a japanese friend of mine

she read some of the classics of english

literature from shakespeare and

jane austen so that when she moved to

london she could go to business meetings

or

dinner parties and talk about british

culture in a knowledgeable way

without having to spend the time to

properly consume it in its original

format

may not be the best way to experience

the art but it depends on what your

objectives are

so i’m going to leave you with this um

not everyone is visually orientated

ed some people are kinesthetic some

people are auditory

ed catmull of pixar fame is famous for

not being able to read poetry but then

he tried

audio books and he became addicted he

loves poetry but he can only hear it he

can’t read it

comics isn’t the best medium for

everyone but for the vast majority of

people it is the best way to learn

it really is so important to give it a

shot if you want to communicate to

people so they understand what you’re

trying to say

and remember it comics did transform

your my life

and i hope they can transform yours

thank you