Storytelling through design

Design Management Journal,  Fall 2003  by Sametz, Roger,  Maydoney, Andrew

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While the methods and materials of design give "form" to communications, Roger Sametz and Andrew Maydoney compellingly argue and illustrate that the ultimate goal of manipulating type, color, imagery, space, and time is to tell stones-to engage "teller" and "listener" in a dialogue that builds comprehension, commitment, participation, loyalty, and trust.

Once upon a time... before there were mouse pads, moveable type, or even written languages, there were stories-and storytellers. And although storytelling's popularity has flowed and ebbed-perhaps seeming to hit its nadir in the twentieth century, driven by efforts to reduce all knowledge to analytical models'-storytelling has endured. Indeed, stories have moved from caves to campfires, to library floors, to become a "communication tool" embraced by corporate leaders, gurus of knowledge management, and now, practitioners of strategy and design.

Why? Because telling stories works. Because stories stick. In the words of one knowledge-management-expert-turned-storyteller, Stephen Denning, "Storytelling is natural and easy and entertaining and energizing. Stories help us to understand complexity. Stories can enhance or change perceptions. Stories are easy to remember...and engage our feelings...Storytelling enables individuals to see themselves in a different light, and accordingly take decisions, and change their behavior in accordance with these new perceptions, insights, and identities."2 Multiple-intelligence theorist Howard Gardner adds: "In recent years, social scientists have come to appreciate what political, religious, and military figures have long known: that stories.. .constitute a uniquely powerful currency."3 And finally, narrative expert Robert Fulford opines: "Stories are how we explain, how we teach, how we entertain ourselves, and how we often do all three at once. They are the juncture where facts and feelings meet. And for those reasons, are central to civilization."4

More and more, in our communications practice, we're "building" and "telling" stories to connect our clients to their key constituencies: current and prospective customers or participants, investors, partners, donors, boards, staff, peers, media. Gardner posits that there are three fundamental kinds of stories: stories of self, stories of the group or community, and stories of value and meaning. We translate "self" to be both the teller (client organization) and the listener (constituent/s)-because every good story involves the listener in the story, and encourages the listener to interpret and complete the story in his or her head. Group and community stories are about how the organization and its offerings fit within relevant and/or competitive landscapes or into a constituent's community context. Stories of value and meaning are just that-what an organization or offering means, what it promises, what expectations it meets, what benefits it affords-in the mind and heart of the "listener." (This kind of story can also be told internally.) We believe, like Gardner, that stories can use one, some, or all of these approaches to communicate.

That said, stories can be crafted and told at different levels, with different goals, to:

* Build brand recognition and relevance-by connecting the desired brand attributes to the organization and its offerings, investing meaning in an organization's brand cues (messages, symbols, type, color, and so on), and by encouraging people to learn what you want them to know and remember.

* Foster connection and trust among an organization and its offerings and its key constituents-a connection deeper and more lasting than a transaction-by creating "ways in" and "resonant points" that match a constituent's needs and interests.

* Correct outdated notions or misperceptions.

* Simplify the complex.

* Explain "why" and "why you should care" in addition to "what" and "how."

* Connect to "listeners" on both analytical and emotional levels, communicating both the denotative and connotative.

* Lead to action and effect change-externally or internally.

* Build communities.

* Move people along a relationshipand trust-building path. Whether an organization is selling missiles, presenting concerts, recruiting students, or raising funds, stories can help move prospects from awareness to comprehension, to participation, to commitment, to loyalty, to renewed awareness, to support, in the case of development initiatives.

And while storytelling might be most readily associated with yarns spun around a fading campfire, children gathered around the pleated skirt of a librarian in 1955, or the president addressing Congress, stories can be compellingly told with few, or without any, words. Cave paintings, tapestries, stained-glass windows, painting, sculpture, and music all tell stories. Einstein's formulas tell stories, as do chromosome and genome maps. There's a continuum-from verbal to nonverbal-of ways to tell stories.

Communication designers as storytellers

Although usually thought of, too narrowly, as a strictly visual discipline, communication design is uniquely situated at the intersection of verbal and nonverbal communications. The best of the profession have (consciously or not) embraced this intersection and understood that the opportunity to combine verbal and nonverbal "vocabularies"-each to ratchet up the othergenerates particularly effective, lasting communications. This intersection is also a great perch from which to tell stories.