Mickey’s Ten Commandments for design

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is lots of advice about storytelling and designing presentations. I found some excellent advice on page 12 of a book from 2015 by Disney construction developer Marty Sklar titled One Little Spark! – Mickey’s Ten Commandments and The Road to Imagineering, which also is previewed at Google Books. Those commandments are:

 

[ 1] KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

Identify the prime audience for your attraction or show before you begin design.

 

[ 2] WEAR YOUR GUESTS’ SHOES

Insist that your team members experience your creation just the way guests do it.

 

[ 3] ORGANIZE THE FLOW OF PEOPLE AND IDEAS

Make sure there is a logic and sequence in your stories and in the way guests experience them.

 

[ 4] CREATE A WIENIE (VISUAL MAGNET)

Create visual ‘targets’ that lead visitors clearly and logically through the experience you’ve built.

 

[ 5] COMMUNICATE WITH VISUAL LITERACY

Make good use of color, shape, form, texture – all the nonverbal ways of communication.   

 

[ 6] AVOID OVERLOAD – CREATE TURN-ONS

Resist the temptation to overload your audience with too much information and too many objects.

 

[ 7] TELL ONE STORY AT A TIME

Stick to the story line; good stories are clear, logical, and consistent.

 

[ 8] AVOID CONTRADICTIONS – MAINTAIN IDENTITY

Details in design or content that contradict one another confuse an audience about your story and its time period.

 

[ 9] FOR EVERY OUNCE OF TREATMENT, PROVIDE A TON OF TREAT

In our business, Walt Disney said, you can educate people – but don’t tell them you’re doing it! Make it fun!

 

[10] KEEP IT UP (MAINTAIN IT)

In a Disney park or resort, everything must work. Poor maintenance is poor show!

 

There is more detailed advice in a book review by Andrew Everett at THE KEY POINT on May 1, 2016 titled One Little Spark, like:

 

“[7] Tell One Story at a Time. ‘Good stories are clear, logical, and consistent… Storyboards are a must in our work, as a way to develop our story sequences. The objective is to create a story line that holds together from the first sketch to the last…A storyboard review can help reveal a key point or a weak character than can be reworked without tossing out all the good material the creators have developed.’ ”

 

This post was inspired by finding Mickey’s Ten Commandments mentioned by Bob Weis in his 2024 book Dream Chasing: my four decades of success and failure with Walt Disney Imagineering.

 

Six ways to create an outline for your presentation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Magic Slides on July 22, 2024 there is a useful article titled How to Create a Presentation Outline: A Step-by-Step Guide with Examples. It describes the following methods:

 

Method 1: Create Your Outline from Scratch

Method 2: Use an AI Presentation Maker

Method 3: The Mind Mapping Technique

Method 4: The Storyboard Approach

Method 5: The Reverse Engineering Method

Method 6: The Comparative Layout

 

I have previously discussed four of these methods. On July 5, 2009 I blogged about Two types of speech outlines: speaking and preparation. And on August 4, 2009 I posted about Mind mapping and idea mapping for planning presentations. Also, on March 17, 2011 I blogged about Use a storyboard to organize your presentation. Finally, on December 11, 2022 I posted about how to Get a bird’s eye view of a presentation with a reverse outline.

 

At Toastmasters International the mandatory Level 1 Pathways project on Writing a Speech with Purpose contains a Speech Outline Worksheet starting on page 22.

 The number six was modified from this image at Openclipart.

 

What we can learn about speechwriting and PowerPoint from storyboards on a Disney ship

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During the cruise my wife and I took in late April on the Disney Wonder I noticed there were framed selections from storyboards hung on the walls to the landings for some stairways. One set of eight from the 1942 eight-minute Goofy animated film How to Swim is shown above. A storyboard is an old but important planning tool for preparing animation – but it also can be used both for speechwriting and PowerPoint.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another dozen frames from the 1940 animated film Tugboat Mickey (Mickey Mouse Installment 107) are shown above.

 

At LinkedIn Pulse on February 6, 2024 there is an article by Jaimie Abbott titled Using storyboarding to plan your presentation. And way back on March 17, 2011 I had blogged about Use a storyboard to organize your presentation.

 

The Pop-Up Pitch - Dan Roam’s visual storytelling approach to planning presentations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are many different ways to plan a presentation, including outlining, mind mapping, and storyboarding. In 2021 Dan Roam added another with his book The Pop-Up Pitch (The Two-Hour Creative Sprint to the Most Persuasive Presentation of Your Life). A description on his web page claims: 

 

“If you’re busy but you want to create a great presentation, I wrote this book for you.

 

This whole book is about how to spend two hours creating ten pages that will transform your audience in seven minutes, no matter what story you need to tell.

 

Your pop-up pitch combines clear words and simple pictures that evoke specific emotions, so that your story is enjoyable to hear, memorable to see, and inspires the action you need.

 

The next time you have an idea to pitch, try this story line. It works.”

 

Toastmasters typically give five-to-seven-minute speeches, so Dan’s approach may appeal to them.

 

In his book Dan describes two tools, which are THE VISUAL DECODER and THE 10-PAGE PITCH TEMPLATE. Templates for both can be downloaded at his web page. A redrawn version of the Visual Decoder is shown above. It fits on both sides of a single sheet of paper. You fill in each page by drawing a picture. Pages 55 to 63 illustrate how to do this with the example of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

 

The more detailed 10-page pitch template is as follows:

 

P1 TITLE: WHO & WHAT

Title Page:

Give your pitch a Who & What title.

(Emotion = CLARITY)

 

P2 OUR COMMON GROUND

Our Common Ground:

Establish an authentic connection to your audience and the issues that concern them Show them you know them, for real.

(Emotion = TRUST)

 

P3 THE COMING PROBLEM

The Coming Problem:

State the facts and numbers that might be so scary that no one really wants to look at them.

(Emotion = FEAR)

 

P4 AN EMOTIONAL WIN

An Emotional Win:

Paint a picture of what it might feel like to have already solved the problem.

(Emotion = Hope)

 

P5 THE FALSE HOPE

The False Hope:

Admit that the hoped-for simple solution won’t really work at all.

(Emotion = SOBERING REALITY)

 

P6 AN AUDACIOUS NEW REALITY

A Fairly Audacious Reality:

State the bold alternative; the slightly crazy yet potentially viable solution that just might, with courage and commitment, work.

(Emotion = GUSTO)

 

P7 WE CAN DO THIS FOR REAL

We Can Do This, For Real:

Walk through your bold alternative with a grounding sense of real possibility; get into a few key details to show there’s no real reason to fear them.

(Emotion = COURAGE)

 

P8 CALL TO ACTION

Our Call To Action:

List the five things that need to get done first to make it happen. Take personal responsibility for two. Request help with the other three.

(Emotion = COMMITMENT)

 

P9 EARLY BENEFITS

Early Benefits:

State at least two near-term measurable benefits that getting started now will trigger.

(Emotion = REWARD)

 

P10 THE LONG WIN

The Long Win:

Close with an unexpected giant win that could truly come to pass once the new solution becomes the new normal.

(Emotion = TRUE ASPIRATION)

 

The three core components are the Beginning (P2, P3, P4), the Middle (P5, P6, P7) and the End (P8, P9, P10).

 

There is a thirty-minute YouTube video by Kelly Kingman at Kingman Ink titled VBQ O1: Dan Roam Explains the 10-Page Pitch Template.

 

I haven’t tried his 10-Page Pitch Template yet.

 

Planning a speech on a flipchart (or whiteboard) using sticky notes or note cards

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My previous post on February 22, 2023 is titled Use a flipchart, a whiteboard, or a napkin to capture your ideas. What do you do next to shape your ideas into a coherent speech or document? Back on March 17, 2011 I blogged about how to Use a storyboard to organize your presentation. A storyboard is a shorthand visual script. If you have a flipchart or a whiteboard, then you can write each idea down on either a 3” x 3” sticky note or a 3” x 5” sticky note card (as shown above). Then you can easily move those notes around until they tell a clear story. There is an old but excellent article by Marie Wallace at LLRX back on November 1, 1997 titled Guide on the Side – The power of Post-Its: Picture your speech.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you can’t keep a flipchart or whiteboard free, then you instead can use the smaller 1-1/2” x 2” sticky notes inside of a file folder, as shown above (and in my 2011 post). Bert Decker and company have a tool and system based on this called the GRID (a trademark). It is discussed at length in his book You’ve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard. They have a four-page .pdf download about it that mentions the acronym SHARP which stands for Stories, Humor, Analogies, References (and quotes), and Pictures (and visuals). They have a blog post on June 20, 2018 titled SHARPen Your Edge, and another single-page .pdf download titled Decker SHARPS - Your cheat sheet & guide.

 

Does your speech have too much content and not enough structure?

Crafting an excellent speech requires giving the content a structure (via a storyboard, mind map, or outline), and deciding how much to say (or not say). Too much content is like a bad Santa overstuffing the stockings.

I just read a humorous story by Stephen Leacock called Save Me From The Man Who Has A Speech To Make from the September 1927 issue of Harper’s Magazine. He told about his series of brief encounters with Mr. Robinson over the course of a month.

First, Mr. Robinson told him that next month he had to speak at a Tuesday evening banquet - to give an after-dinner toast to Our Country. A week later he decided it might be a good idea to say something about the history of the country. After another three days Robinson was sidetracked by reading The Life of Christopher Columbus.

A week before the speech he decided it also might be a good idea to say something about the future of the country. On Monday morning, Robinson stayed home to work on his speech. (A newspaper announcement for the banquet noted there would be fifteen speakers).

On Tuesday morning he was still working, and finally had decided to write it out. Also, he complained that he hadn’t had enough time to work on it before. Just before dinner Robinson decided he’d gotten a touch of bronchitis, gave his text to a friend to present at the banquet, and stayed at home, presumably in bed.

On Wednesday evening he whined that the morning paper had misquoted his text:

“...Where I said ‘This country has a great destiny in front of it,’ they’ve put it, ‘this country has a great destitution in front of it.’ ”

Months later Mr. Robinson was still talking in hindsight about what he should have said, of other ideas that came to him later, and of jokes or gags that could have been included.

The bad Santa was adapted from a 1908 Puck magazine cover.

Speech geometry: lines, circles, forks, and combs

On February 6th John Zimmer blogged about Basic Speech Geometry. He began by noted that many people think of a speech as being something linear, as shown above.

There is no good reason why that line needs to be straight though. A speech could follow some sort of a story arc instead.

Then John continued by saying that instead:

“I believe that a speech should be circular. Not in the sense that you keep going over the same point again and again. Rather, I mean that the conclusion should somehow bring the audience back to the introduction.”

Last Thursday I blogged about how to Use a storyboard to organize your presentation. As you begin by putting note cards or sticky notes into stacks, you will notice that there also should be clear transitions between the main points.

A speech with three main points (and an opening and closing) will have a geometry that resembles a fork at this stage of planning.

A complicated speech with many points instead will look more like a comb. During planning you might unconsciously be aware of patterns like these. I think naming them works better.

Use a storyboard to organize your presentation

A storyboard is a shorthand visual script. It is like a comic strip - a series of drawings with words and images that outline and illustrate the points in a presentation. We can begin to make one by listing our ideas on note cards or sticky notes, and arranging them in stacks, as shown above. It’s easy to rearrange them at this stage.

Next we lay them out in sequence and take another look to see if the order makes sense and flows. If it does, then we can go to our computer, open PowerPoint, type in the words, and add the images. For editing we will use the Slide Sorter view to see an equivalent of our storyboard.

A storyboard can begin with a series of 1-1/2 by 2-inch Post-It notes arranged in a file folder, as is shown above for my speech about the Case of the Corroded Computer, which I discussed previously.

I originally give that speech as project #8 (Get Comfortable with Visual Aids) in the Toastmasters Competent Communication manual. For that audience my PowerPoint slides were similar to those shown above. For the medical high school students I had a more detailed version that included things like the chemical reaction used to test for chloride.

Making storyboards with sticky notes was described by Marie Wallace as Picture Your Speech back in 1997. Bert Decker teaches it as the Decker Grid, using a folder with a template as shown here.

You can watch a recent video of Jon Thomas beginning the storyboard process. Nancy Duarte has described how she edited a 40 minute presentation down to an 18-minute TED talk. She discussed how you can go back to a storyboard from the Slide Sorter view in PowerPoint. Nancy noted that when you print slides as handouts with nine per page the images are 1-1/2 by 2-inches, just like those little Post-It notes.

Storyboards have a long history of use in animated cartoons and other films, as described by the following video.