Going Graphic

Almost every day we are faced with some communication materials or other informational resources that for one reason or another are difficult to slog through, that seem to have no real point or call to action, or that simply bore us to tears since we are so tired of their style, format, or delivery mechanism.

At work it could be the quarterly company newsletter, the Annual Benefits Open Enrollment packet, or the organization's bereavement policy - How many days for a second cousin? But we were very close, more like first cousins really.

Last week I posted about a new and innovative technology for delivering Benefits information, and for helping employees to make the best decisions for themselves and their families, the Jellyvision Benefits Counselor interactive video application. The tool transforms the presentation and delivery of potentially dull, and likely confusing information into an engaging and effective format.

This weekend I came across another example of a new and innovative approach to a classically boring and imminently forgettable medium: the college textbook.

Jeremy Short, Texas Tech University professor of management, has taken the traditional and staid textbook, and re-imagined it in a format that students find more appealing, and certainly more relatable - the graphic novel. Short has created two novels for his undergraduate and MBA classes chronicling the adventures of a young entrepreneur named Atlas Black.  In the titles, Atlas Black: Managing to Succeed, and Atlas Black: Management Guru?, students follow Atlas' journey while exploring the concepts of management, organizational behavior, strategic planning, and entrepreneurship.

You can get a bit of the flavor of the textbook graphic novel in the trailer video below (email subscribers will need to click through).

Pretty cool, right?  I mean way more entertaining than the formal text book that it replaces. Can you ever imagine a traditional textbook even having a trailer? 'And then Chapter 7 - with more of the same, long paragraphs and black and white charts!'.

Sure, this re-imagination of the classic management textbook would not work for every course, subjects like statistics and the hard sciences are too data driven, but for courses that are really mostly about ideas and concepts, why not?  Surveys of Short's students at Texas Tech report that 86% feel the Atlas Black graphic novel  "compares favorably" to other management textbooks they've had. 

Oh and one other thing, in a world where a college management textbook runs somewhere north of $100, the Atlas Black graphic novels only set the students back $14.95.

But to me, the best message here is the way the professor has created an alternative to long standing tradition, developed a product designed to appeal to his audience, while taking into account that tastes, preferences, and technology have all changed.  He is still teaching the necessary course material, but by letting go of 'the way it's always been done', has created an environment that is quite different, distinctive, and memorable.

The kind of thing we are all striving for in every communication we create.

Comments

[Krista]

Thanks for the tip, Steve! I ordered both books from Amazon. And I'll check out Jellyvision.

[Steve]

Cool Krista - I hope you like them, I bet you will!

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