What this means for you: There is an enormous amount of rich and colorful content available to those of you who didn’t have a subscription over the past couple years… which, considering… is probably most of you.

So. If you’ve got some time and check out my contributions on topics ranging from transmedia storytelling, to living in a tent for 5-months of my life.

When Church Meets Transmedia: A Convergence of Community

Unplug

Practically Unplugged (a follow-up to Unplug)

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Consider following The Echo Hub, the sister company to Collide Magazine, as they move to engulf the Collide brand and propagate a new and exciting hub for Church Creatives and Techno-geeks. Oh, also… join me at this year’s Echo Conference in Dallas, TX, which promises to be a fantastic event to meet your Twitter followers #IRL.

Keep checking back with us as we continue to explore transmedia storytelling!

It’s a book, it’s a movie, it’s… an app

Anthony Zuiker (CSI) released a “digi-novel” last year, wherein a printed book contained a URL every 20 pages; readers could enter the URL into a browser and watch a related online video. In a lot of ways transmedia storytelling to date has been mostly about promotion (The Dark Knight, for example, used an Alternate Reality Game to promote its theatrical release), but the iPad offers a different set of possibilities: instead of these experiences existing as separate, promotional entrypoints, they can all be brought together on one platform. This is not to say that a project can’t have a live component that exists separately, but the iPad will play a pivotal role in bringing together different forms of storytelling: words, still images, moving images, audio, and interactive experiences can all live together on one handheld, connected device. The iPad will profoundly blur the line between book, movie, and game, and it will do so by offering these new-media experiences for sale through iTunes as… an application. When you’re developing a cross-platform story, what happens if you can’t define your project along clear lines? Should I say it? “There’s an app for that.”

Source: FreshDV.com

Corporate Transmedia Storytelling

It is critical to note that a Transmedia Storyteller is not merely a new media or social media expert. It’s not about being able to use technology – video, facebook, twitter or physical media. It’s about crafting a compelling and focused message and then using media to spread that message in a consistent manner. That’s an important distinction.

Perhaps it is best to think of this role in the way that I have heard the likes of Caitlin Burns characterize the role of a Transmedia Producer – somebody who acts as a translator between groups and platforms. Transmedia Storytellers must be conversant in all of the technical vernacular of each department but, more importantly, they must be granted access to the entire scope of the company in order to be able to best shape and transmit the multi-platform story.

With that in mind, let’s briefly think about the qualities that a Transmedia Storyteller in the corporate sphere might need. I will, of course, be keeping a close eye on this trend to see if it develops further.

A Deep Understanding of the Corporate Identity
This goes without saying. Technical knowledge about specific platforms is absolutely irrelevant if the Transmedia Storyteller doesn’t understand the core values of the company (this assumes that the company has clearly defined values). In this respect, corporate Transmedia storytelling is no different from narrative Transmedia – we are looking for a carefully crafted, compelling and positive message that is consistently transmitted across platforms. The story (or “brand,” if you will) is everything – fogginess, contradiction and ambiguity are fundamentally unacceptable. Accordingly, Transmedia Storytellers may wish to conduct an independent audit of the company to ensure that the day-to-day corporate culture matches what the executive team claims it to be. If it does not, the “story” may need to be rewritten.

An Understanding of Narrative and Storytelling
A Transmedia storyteller needs to understand the basic principles of storytelling – theme, characterization, plot and specificity. Story – both collective (corporate story) and individual (leader narratives) can inspire and unite. Theme is particularly important – what is the simple, positive message that the company wants to convey through its Transmedia story?

Rubel talks about the power of Transmedia storytellers to sell goods to end users. However, he misses an important point – Transmedia will also have enormous power and applications to motivate employees internally through live events, video, interactive elements and games. We could easily put together a 3 day Transmedia course using story to train new employees about the company’s core values. I think it’s common sense that it is far easier to project a consistent narrative to the public if your employees are on the same page as executives and publicists. Transmedia storytellers who can strategize and formulate a cross-platform narrative, rolled out over the course of 12-36 months to employees and consumers, will provide enormous corporate value.

Multi-Platform Fluency
This goes without saying. An effective Transmedia storyteller must have at least a threshold understanding of the best way to use each platform to communicate story – text, audio, video, web. Some platforms may be used to communicate brief, basic messages, while others elaborate on them. Some platforms or messages will be entirely passive while others, interwoven, will provide interactive elements.

This is very tricky stuff, and I think it’s fair to say that we are all still learning about this, but any effective Transmedia Storyteller will be watching technological developments extremely closely. Keeping in line with the idea of a “translator,” the Transmedia storyteller need not be a technological expert but must be able to communicate intelligently with those who are.

The Ability to Listen
As in the narrative world, corporate Transmedia necessitates a new era of attentiveness towards consumers. The Transmedia Storyteller must have his or her ear to the ground to get an accurate sense of how consumers (but also staff and executives) are responding to corporate developments. When complaints are made, responses should be considered and delivered swiftly. This goes back to the first point – it is impossible to react quickly without a clear sense of the corporate identity. In Transmedia, we want to avoid contradiction in the corporate story wherever possible.

Transmedia Storytellers must also be apprised of what we might call “user generated content” in the narrative world – independent endeavors by consumers to personalize and extend the values of the company. The smart Transmedia Storyteller will monitor all media channels (for instance, youtube, twitter, blogs) and see if there is any way that the stories of individual consumers can be integrated into the corporate story. It goes without saying that – if appointed – a Transmedia Storyteller must work extremely closely with company’s advertising, public relations and customer service arms.

Source: Transmythology.com
See Also: The Rise of the Corporate Storyteller

At Samwell Creative our goal is to help organizations and ministries achieve a consistent and authentic invitation — using multiple media channels as the portals to which people are introduced to your story.

Websites | Video Production | New Media Consulting | Transmedia Storytelling

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portion of my workshop on Social Storytelling from the BeDeviant Social Media Summit

The Social Minimalist: How to be present at the party, without being the loudest dressed.

I had a blast, talking with the attendee’s, who ranged from church media admins, to pastors, to creative directors and non-profit organizers. Most of whom were in the beginning stages of social media strategy for their respective organizations. My workshop, was flexible and interactive, giving the participants a permission to direct the conversation with questions and rabbit trail meanderings. I think it went great… and hopefully this follow-up resource will help those in attendance connect the dots.

Below are my notes and presentation in PDF format for you to download. And below-below are all the pertinent links I spoke of during the workshop (if I missed any… put it in the comments and I’ll add them to the list).

Download pdf of notes

Download pdf of slides

Free Blogs I recommend:
Wordpress — http://wordpress.com
Posterous — http://posterous.com
Tumblr — http://tumblr.com

Facebook
How to rock at Facebook groups — [Link]
Facebook Welcome Page Tab — [How To] & [FMBL Application]

Twitter
Favorite Applications to digest feeds and searches
Seesmic Desktop App
TweetDeck

iPhone & iPad Twitter apps
Echofon
Twitter for iPhone, iPad, & iPod Touch
Tweetie

Video
Vimeo — http://vimeo.com

YouVersion
YouVersion Live (events/notes/schedule) — http://youversion.com/live
Free Digital Bible (from your organization) — [Information & Example] & [Form for your own Bible page]

This Daily Edition, includes twitter feeds, blog posts, videos, and news articles relating to the topic of Transmedia Storytelling. I hope it will educate you on this new form of storytelling, just as it has influenced my thoughts and movements toward a more consistent cross platform message.

Happy reading. You can also follow my twitter feed for Samwell Creative, which will have a daily tweet linking back to the newspaper page – @samcreates, and don’t forget to connect to this blog via the subscribe page.

Come join me at the BeDeviant Social Media Summit. Our goal is to create a network of social web-savvy ministry professionals and inspire them to use social media in their specific contexts. I’m leading a break-out session entitled, “Social Storytelling: Telling a genuine and authentic story about your ministry/organization across all your social networks.” More details below:

Registration: http://bedeviantsummit.eventbrite.com/

Though, there is problem. It is one that could impede a quick embrace by the marketplace… This hurdle that is in view is not selling our services (creative storytelling/branding) but lies in selling the platform. Those who have an iPad know what I’m talking about… you have to hold the device and interact with it (more than just a few minutes in the Apple Store) to realize the impact this could have on your organization (non-profit or for profit). The folks over at Charity:Water understand. Not only are they innovators and game-changers in the social justice sector but they are also early adopters, passionate spokesmen for the iPad as more than just a consumption device. Along this vien, they have posted a well written testimonial (yes, on Apple.com) on why/how they use the iPad in their everyday, a portion of this post is below:

Handheld Storytelling

Like most charitable organizations, charity: water needs to raise money. And to do that, Harrison must connect emotionally with prospective donors. So when making a presentation, he shows photos and videos of charity: water’s international projects — images that make a big impact when displayed on iPad.

“In a 30-minute donor pitch, I show 175 photos and videos,” he says. “It’s awkward to set up a laptop on the table in an upscale restaurant. With iPad, it feels more like sharing. I can hand my iPad to another person and let them move through a presentation at their own pace. It’s a whole new level of intimacy around storytelling.”

Recently Harrison found himself making an impromptu pitch using iPad in the back of a taxi. “I flew back from a presentation in Mexico City and ran into someone I hadn’t seen in four years,” he says. “We shared a cab back to New York, and the next thing you know, I’m giving the presentation on iPad. She was so moved that she instantly made a pledge to request donations instead of birthday presents for her 50th birthday.

And iPad is just as effective in the boardroom. “When I go to a meeting or a conference to speak, iPad is incredibly easy to bring along,” says Development Officer Lane Wood. “It’s the size of a book, and it plugs into a VGA adapter, which is usually in the boardroom or conference hall already. I just hook it up and I’m ready to go.”

Which just spurs us onward in our journey to deliver inspiring content via ePub documents, on your iPad and other portable reading devices. Look for a couple new project examples in the coming month to see what we mean when we call the iPad a transmedia agent a beautiful platform for creating inspiring content, creative storytelling, and an engaging brand identity.

So. Today, I want to highlight a logo/branding project for Sam Mahlstadt’s new site Creative Theology, which is due to launch this week.

I’ve known Sam for about 9 months or so… he is a writer, church planter, and conversationalist on topics of church, theology, creativity, and writing. This project was for a logo and a sidebar profile pic that would tell the story of what the new site was about, namely creative theology. During our initial conversation Sam’s guidelines were vague at best… I came away knowing he wanted a simple and clean header logo and sidebar image. FTR: simple and clean the hardest design to pull off, as you have to constantly cut the design back.

To get some more direction on his preferences (and what he defined as “simple and clean”), I asked Sam to send me a few sites/logo’s that he likes — a perfect way to find out a person’s taste and narrow down the genre of logo he/she is looking for.

Having access to his design taste was helpful but not quite the story I was looking for… so I spent some time perusing his current site, trying to figure out his voice and interpretation of what “creative theology” meant. Taking this research — I journaled the following about creative theology:

Whenever we create we use basic elements to create something beautiful… graphite and stone for a drawing, wood and metal for a building, clay and water for a sculpture… just like God used dirt to create Adam. So a great depiction of the basic element of creation is dirt. Creative = Dirty.

Theology… conversations about God. So a creative theology is conversations that sprout from our most basic need… to create and grow. As Christ nourishes our flesh (made of the basic elements of dirt and water) we begin to sprout and grow, becoming a vessel in which God uses to nourish others… So a creative theology is just this… God using the seemingly mundane and dirty to produce something beautiful and impacting.

With this as the backdrop… my muse. I began formulating concepts and ideas based upon this storyline. What follows is the finish draft.
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[The basic iconic logo... I wanted a logo that was identifiable to the creative theology brand, something short and easy to integrate in some of the small spaces of the interwebs... this logo will translate well on twitter, facebook, as the favicon, et cetera.]

[The full typographic logo. For use in larger scale applications, banner ads, and print.]

[Side profile. This adds color to his site which is very modern in design, with not much color or snazz... which is great beause the eye is directed from the top left logo to the right sidebar as the color pops on the page, giving the reader a frame of reference using symbolism to set the expectations of the blog's perspective.]

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If you get the chance be sure to check out the conversations at Creative Theology, and thanks for stopping by to see some of our processes and musings.

In this post, I want to highlight the logo design process for Charming Beard, so you can get a glimpse behind the scenes at our creative process here at Samwell Creative. Especially how we embody our value of creative collaboration with other artists to arrive at a creatively inspired finished product or in this case a logo.

First and foremost is the inspiration. A year ago, some friends/coworkers at LifeChurch.tv were participating in a creative challenge in which they grabbed a adjective and noun out of a hat and then created a illustration/audio clip out of the newly formed phrase. You can find some of there creations at SchizoSketch. I loved this project and in conversations later, asked if I could use the Charming Beard combination in a future endeavor. So. Even from the get-go this subsidiary has collaboration at its roots.

Once the initial website was in place and the business model was being worked out it seemed best to allow Charming Beard to marinate for a while, hence the lack of promotion and general hush-hush nature of the project… During this marination, I began ideating on a logo for the company, I needed an iconic logo, one that would do well on it’s own and represent the brand without needing any text… I wanted to be able to use the icon as a watermark, sticker, stencil, tag, t-shirt, hat… you name it. I also wanted it to convey a bearded fellow, who was a charming ‘ol chap — though not too buggered or burly.

Once I had the business model in place and the brand story firmly established (the story I wanted conveyed in the logo), I scheduled a brainstorming session with one of my favorite logo design creatives in Grant Hill of Hilco Creative. In this session we talked a lot about the brand, specifically the vision behind the company, it’s goals and it’s economic driver (basically, all the things that make it unique — it’s story). I then gave some loose parameters… “the icon’s gotta have/be a beard and give me a typographical element to go with it.”

Below is the sequence of logo’s that we went through, from first draft to final:

After each submission, Grant and I would collaborate via phone or email… For instance on the first iteration with 4 rather different looking logo’s I brought in Don Hogan, one of the Charming Beard photographers to get another viewpoint and in a conference called we discussed the merits of our favorites as well as the elements disliked. (side note: It’s always important in collaboration, to voice the dislikes, that way the designer has a clear understanding of what is working and what is definitely not.) After this genteel conversation, we landed on two versions we wanted to see in another round of concepts.

As you can see — the final draft is a combination of first and fourth logo from the initial brainstorm — taking the bearded fellow and combining it with the hand drawn Charming Beard typography. You can peruse the second and third iterations, as they are small tweaks and conceptual spins on the final draft… check out all the variations of beards, which one would you have chosen?

I love looking at these concept pieces as it reminds me of why I value collaboration — it brings out the best of all involved, as we focus on a solution that fits the project — pushing each other creatively and communicative-ly — finally landing on a finished product that tells a killer story.

In “You Wish You Were Here” by Rob Story, four elements were present: great writing, breathtaking photography, teaser video, and link to share on social media. In a regular magazine, two of the four would be present. To me, the addition of the video and the social elements make the story of the trip to Antartica to record some 1st descents more robust… without taking away from Rob’s 1st person narrative, nor detracting from Greg Von Doersten’s photography.

Not only does the trailer video (inserted in the first paragraph of the article), give me more background information on the trip, it also allows me to see first hand some of the shots that Rob writes about. I am content after reading the article, as far as reading goes… now I want to find out more, what I mean is, the article fed my appetite and the trailer has prepared my palate for dessert. And dessert is where the money is made.

Ancillary winners: Spyder Clothing, Backcountry.com, and the Documentary “Australis: An Antartic Ski Odyssey”

Add the social media aspect to the whole experience and I can now easily share my experience with those that follow me and are likely to have the same tastes as me. Unfortunately, Outside only has the ability to share on Facebook, which is great, but what about Twitter… the king of 140 character information transaction. I would like to see them implement it there as well, in order to get both networks, and in effect reach two separate markets.

So. What can your company do to expand your presence? Try transmedia elements and I think you’ll see a jump in interaction within your product and/or service. See video embedded in article below: