Visual Grammar: How To Communicate Without Words | Van SEO Design

Visual Grammar: How To Communicate Without Words | Van SEO Design

Defining Visual Grammar

Most of the information in this post is coming from Christian Leborg’s book Visual Grammar. From the preface of the book:

The reason for writing a grammar of visual language is the same as for any language: to define its basic elements, describe its patterns and processes, and to understand the relationship between the individual elements in the system. Visual language has no formal syntax or semantics, but the visual objects themselves can be classified.

The last point in the quote above is important. It would be great if we could place a circle on the page, a rectangle to the right of it, and a curved line to the right of the rectangle and have it mean the same thing to all people. It won’t. That makes it harder to think and communicate visually, though also much more interesting. It’s one reason a single design problem can have so many different design solutions.

However, we can classify much of this visual grammar. I’m going to deviate just a bit from the way Christian organizes his book and organize visual grammar as:

• Objects – The basic elements we have to work with. Can be abstract or concrete.
• Structures – The patterns formed from our basic elements. Can be abstract or concrete.
• Activities - The processes we can represent with our basic elements and patterns.
• Relations – The relationships between objects, patterns, and processes. They’re the way everything in your design relates to each other and the viewer.

Objects and structures will both further be subdivided into abstract and concrete sections. In the book the main sections are Abstract and Concrete, with objects and structures being the subsections, but I think it makes more sense to organize them as I have here.

As you read through the rest of this post you’ll see many connections to design principles that myself and others have written about. In many ways this post and Leborg’s book are a way to organize all those principles and ideas to see how they fit an overall visual grammar

Objects

Objects are the basic elements at our disposal. They’re akin to letters and words. We use objects to express different ideas and concepts. A circle is an object as is a line as is a single character of type. A single point is an object as is an image of a person holding your product. Objects are the most basic elements we can add to any design.

Objects can be abstract or concrete.

Abstract Objects

Abstract objects are idealized shapes that can’t physically be created. For example take a point. A point by definition has no area. It only has a position. Any point we try to draw will have some kind of area if we are to see it and once it does, it ceases to become a point. It can only exist as an abstract concept and not as a physical thing.

Abstract objects include:

• Points – A position on a coordinate system without area. Points have no dimensions
• Lines – A series of points adjacent to each other. Points have one dimensions
• Surfaces – A series of lines that are adjacent to each other and perpendicular to their direction. Surfaces have two dimensions.
• Volumes – An empty space defined by surfaces, lines, and points. Volumes have three dimensions.

Theoretically objects can have an infinite amount of dimensions. Of course we can only perceive three of them, width, height, and depth so our abstract objects end with volumes. Beyond volumes we can only imagine more abstract objects and we can only represent these additional abstract objects using points, lines, surfaces, and volumes.

Everything we see is perceived in relation to some kind of external limit. This external limit is the format. For example this post is seen in relation to the format of your browser window. The format of a book or magazine is the page.

Concrete Objects

Concrete objects are perceived within defined limits called contours. Inside and including the contour itself is our object, our shape, our form, and outside the contour is everything else. Forms or shapes can be geometric, organic, or random (sometimes called abstract). A circle is an example of a concrete object. It’s contour being the curved line that encloses it.

Concrete objects have:

• Form – defined by a contour of surfaces and lines. A form is how a thing looks.
• Size – Forms can be large or small. They are perceived relative to the person viewing, other forms in the compositon, and the format of the design.
• Color – we perceive different wavelengths of light as color. A form can be any color, though we are limited to seeing only those colors in the visual spectrum

Any element we place on the page is a concrete object. Remember abstract objects can not physically be created. Abstract objects exist to talk about objects in general in order to better describe them.

Structures

Whenever we place two or more objects in relation to one another we form a structure. We describe these structures by the patterns they form. We must be able to recognize the presence of a pattern in order to describe the structure.

Structures have structure lines connecting objects. These lines are the axis along which the objects are arranged. Structure lines may be visible or invisible and they may be active or inactive.

As with objects, structures can be abstract or concrete.

Abstract Structures

When the structure lines of a structure are invisible and inactive the structure is considered to be abstract. Consider the image below. The circles are clearly arranged in a pattern. There is a structure present, but the lines defining that structure are invisible.

Even when the structure lines are invisible we can often see them in our minds. Through the gestalt principle closure we fill in what’s missing to complete the picture. Again consider the image above. While no lines are visibly connecting the circles, it’s easy to imagine straight lines from the center of one circle to the next. Structure lines are not limited to running through the center of objects though.

In the image above the structure lines are not only invisible, but inactive as well. That is they don’t influence the form of the structure in any way even while they are defining the position of the structure.

The circles above are an example of a formal structure. The objects are evenly distributed. They’re symmetrical and arranged on a grid. The structure lines are either horizontal or perpendicular.

Formal structures are not the only type of abstract structures we can encounter or use. Structures can be categorized as:

• Formal – even distribution of elements and spacing (structure units) between them
• Informal – lacking regularity in the arrangement of objects. Even if a pattern is observed the structure is informal if the objects do not follow straight structural lines
• Gradation – structure units change in form or size, but at an even rate
• Radiation – structure units radiate from a common center
• Spiral – uneven distribution from a common center

When the structure organizing the objects can be judged by the eye alone we say the structure has visual distribution. Each form is allowed to occupy a similar amount of space as the others in the structure.

All compositions or objects are bound within certain limits of the surface on which they exist. These limiting forces follow certain axis or paths which are considered the structural skeleton of the composition or object.

Concrete Structures

Concrete structures have either visible or active structure lines. Where abstract structures indirectly show the structure, concrete structures directly show the structure. Concrete structures can be visible compositions on their own such as the patterns that form into textures.

Visible structures do not have to include objects. As long as the structure lines are visible, the structure itself is visible. Visible structures can include the objects being organized, but they don’t have to. Both of the structures in the image below are visible structures despite the absence of any objects in the second one.

Active structures are those where the structure lines influence the form of the objects within the structure. In an active structure the objects need to be present, but the structure lines can be absent as long as their influence is seen. In the image below both structures are active despite the absence of any visible structure lines in the second one.

Structures that can be seen and/or felt are textures. Textures can be formed from either objects or structure lines or both. Textures can be ornamental, random, or mechanical and we can classify them in the same way we classify abstract structures. They can be formal, informal, gradations, radiations, or spirals.

Activities

The elements we design, the objects we place on the page don’t move. Ignore for a moment the idea that as the browser gets resized elements can move or we can use javascript to move elements around the page or use css and javascript to respond to different mouse and keyboard inputs. For the sake of this discussion our elements don’t move and our compositions are static representations.

To convey the idea that some activity is taking place on the page we generally need to create some kind of sequence of objects or create the illusion of the activity through some static representation of it.

If you can understand how to show activities through sequence and the illusion of activity you can better understand how to make use of css, javascript, and browser resizing to express activity as well.

Instead of trying to give you a couple paragraphs on each kind of activity, I’ll summarize them in the table below. Notice how many of these activities are the design principles you’ve seen myself and others write about. In the future I’ll also look to covering some of the activities below in greater detail.

Activity	Definition
Repetition	Anytime several objects share some characteristic repetition is created. When more than one characteristic is shared the dominant one is used to describe the repetition. Repetition helps create consistency and design flow.
Frequency/Rhythm	When the distance between repeated objects is identical we have frequency. When the distance is varied between several frequencies we have rhythm.
Mirroring	When light waves are reflected from the surface at the same angle they fall onto it, an object is symmetrically rendered around an axis and mirroring is created.
Mirroring against a volume	When the surface has several different angles of reflection it becomes a volume. Volumes distort the reflected object and the mirroring is no longer symmetrical about an axis.
Rotation	When an object moves around a point or axis it rotates around that point or axis. The point or axis of rotation can be inside or outside the object.
Upscaling/Downscaling	When objects are scaled up or down their dimensions remain in proportion to each other. Their width-to-height ratio remains constant.
Movement	Within a visual design movement can only be shown as a representation of movement. This representation can be shown as a sequence or some illusion of motion.
Path	An object showing movement travels along an imaginary line or curve, which is the object’s path.
Direction	A moving object has a direction defined by a line or curve that leads from start to end point.
Superordinate and subordinate movement	Objects can rotate, move back and forth, or swing as they travel along a path. This secondary movement is the subordinate movement, whereas movement along the path is the superordinate movement.
Displacement	When only part of an object moves it’s form is displaced. Displacement is define by an angle between the original point and the new displaced point.
Direction of displacement	Displaced objects move in a specific direction.

I’m sure many of the above terms needed no definition and you were likely familiar with all or many of them. We’re building a vocabulary in order to be able to communicate better about design and also through design. Again notice how several of the above find their way into the principles of design.

Relations

Objects placed in a composition relate to each other, they relate to the overall design, the format and, they relate to the viewer. Through relations with each other, elements can attract or repel, they can imply movement and flow. Through relation to the overall design, elements convey a concept and theme. Through relation with the viewer elements communicate different messages.

As with activities there are a number of relations defined by Leborg and again notice how many of them are design principles that I and others have given a more detailed treatment. Since many of these relations are deserving of their own post, I’ll again present a table summarizing each here and look to writing more detailed posts about those I haven’t covered in the past.

Relation	Definition
Attraction/Static	Any time two objects appear in a design they appear to either attract or repel each other. A single object, not in movement, and with equal forces of attraction and repulsion applied, appears static.
Symmetry/Asymmetry	Objects identically arranged around an axis are symmetrical. Objects not identically arranged around an axis are asymmetrical. Symmetry is considered beautiful, but static. Asymmetry is more interesting because it is dynamic.
Balance	When the visual weights of objects in a composition are in equilibrium, the composition is in balance.
Groups	When objects display repetition or are in close proximity to one another they form a group.
Fine/Coarse	The distance between structure lines defines the fineness or coarseness of an object or structure.
Diffusion	An irregular dispersion of objects with varying fineness and coarseness is called diffusion.
Direction	Structures can actively define direction.
Position	A group of objects in a composition can define a position. That position can be in the center or along the edge or corner of the composition.
Space	Space is the empty areas between major and minor objects and is as important to a design as the areas where the space is filled with objects. Learning to see and use the space in your designs is one of the most important things any designer can learn.
Weight	All objects in a design have a visual weight based on size, color, form, surrounding space, etc. Our eye is drawn to elements with the greatest visual weight.
Amount/Dominance	The amount of objects in a given area of a design contributes to the visual weight of that area. Areas or objects in a design with the most visual weight are dominant and create entry points and focal points in a design.
Neutral	Elements in a design that do not stand out from other objects are neutral in relation to those other objects. When too many objects in a design are neutral the entire design can become neutral.
Background/Foreground	The position of objects, their relative weights, the space around them and, their relative proportions all contribute to which elements are seen as being in the foreground and which are seen as part of the background.
Coordination	When objects share the same coordinates, value, focus, and are perceived to be in the same perspective they are in coordination with each. Two identical objects aligned vertically are not in coordination as the one on the bottom is perceived to be closer than the one on the top.
Distance	Closeness and remoteness are relative. The distance between objects is perceived based on the viewer’s perspective. Objects that appear close in 2 dimension can appear very far apart when the composition is seen in a 3-dimensional perspective.
Parallel/Angle	Two lines that never intersect are parallel. When lines intersect they form an angle. Angles exist only in relation to something else.
Negative/Positive	Negative and positive are terms that relate to opposite values such as light and dark. Positive elements appear to be in the foreground and negative elements appear to be in the background.
Transparent/Opaque	Light shines through transparent objects and can not penetrate opaque objects.
Tangent	Two elements that touch and share a common point are tangential to each other.
Overlapping/Compound	When part of one object lies on top of another object, the first overlaps the second. When overlapping objects visually appear to be one object they become a new compound form.
Subtraction/Coincidence	When an object is overlapped by another subtraction occurs in the overlapped part of the underlying object. When two objects share form and size and are position in a way that when seen from above they appear to be one, the objects are in coincidence.
Penetration/Extrusion	When one object is pushed through a larger object the first penetrates the second. When an object is forced through the opening of another object in such a way that the opening alters the form of the first object it has been extruded.
Influence	When an object’s form appears to be altered by another object, the altered object has been influenced by the the other object.
Modification	An object that has been slightly altered has been modified. Modification does not change the basic characteristics of an object. A rectangle whos corners have been slightly rounded still appears to be a rectangle.
Variation	When objects are repeated with minor variance or modification the repetition is called variance.

As with the table of activities above, I’m sure many of these relation terms were familiar to you and needed little or no definition. As with the activities we’re building a vocabulary to talk about design and to use design to talk to others. Many of the terms in both tables above are deserving of their own posts, some of which I’ve already written about and others I’ll write about in the future.

Summary

As communication designers it’s our job to communicate. Communications requires language and for designers that language is visual (PDF). How can we communicate if we don’t understand the language to at least some degree?

In life we can communicate through the spoken word or through gestures. In design we’re bound by a visual language. Even the words on the page are made up of characters of type which are abstract shapes. Written language itself is a visual representation of spoken language.

This post has been an introduction to the grammar of the visual language we use in each of our designs. The more we understand that grammar, the better we can speak the language, and the more effectively we can communicate with our audience.

This visual language, this visual grammar, is the context within which we study design principles. When we learn to use girds or better understand typography or color we are doing so in order to communicate more effectively with our audience. The principles are the trees. Visual grammar is the forest.

Liar, liar: Why deception is our way of life - science-in-society - 21 June 2010 - New Scientist

Liar, liar: Why deception is our way of life

How did we get ourselves into this mess? Continual wars and conflicts, climate change and economic crisis loom at the international level, while as individuals we continue, generation after generation, to inflict pain and suffering not only on other people but on ourselves. Why do we have such difficulty in learning what we most need to know to mitigate our most destructive behaviours?

Throughout history there have been a few individuals whose insight into what goes on inside us is as clear as their understanding of what goes on around them, yet with what looks like self-induced stupidity most of us have been wholly unable to learn what they have been telling us.

Take the Stoic Greek philosopher Epictetus. He commented on human behaviour this way: "It is not things in themselves that trouble us, but our opinions of things." In other words, it is not what happens to us that determines our behaviour but how we interpret what happens to us. Thus, when facing a disaster, one person might interpret it as a challenge to be mastered, another as a certain defeat, while a third might see it as the punishment he or she deserves. Crucially, the decisions about what to do follow from the interpretation each person has made.

For me, this uncertainty lies at the heart of what we need to know if we are to understand ourselves and behave differently. And yet throughout history we have denied this truth because what it tells us about ourselves is that, while we are not responsible for most of what happens to us, we are always responsible for how we interpret it. And we seem to dislike taking responsibility for ourselves as much as we dislike uncertainty.

Over the last 20 years or so, neuroscientists have shown that Epictetus was right - and given us important clues about our neuropsychology. They have found that our brain functions in such a way that we cannot see "reality" directly. All we can ever know are the guesses or interpretations our mind creates about what is going on. To create these guesses, we can only draw on basic human neuroanatomy and on our past experience. Since no two people ever have exactly the same neuroanatomy or experience, no two people ever interpret anything in exactly the same way.

This is frightening. It means that each of us lives alone, in our own world of meaning. Moreover, if everything we know is a guess, an approximation, events can, and often will, invalidate our ideas.

Each of us lives alone, in our own world of meaning. This is frightening

Can you bear to remember that time in your life when you were going along feeling secure and thinking, "This is me, this is my world, that was my past, this will be my future," when suddenly you found that you had made a major error of judgement? When you realised that many of the ideas underpinning your whole sense of being a person - that sense of "I", "me", "myself" - had been invalidated by events?

Have you ever had the sensation of falling through infinite space, shattering, crumbling, of being about to disappear like a raindrop into the ocean? Perhaps you knew that what was falling apart was not your sense of self but some of your ideas. You knew that you now had to go through a period of uncertainty until new ideas emerged.

But if you did not know this, you would have been utterly terrified, so terrified that you would do anything never to go through such an experience again.

Psychiatrists and psychologists have either ignored this experience, maximised its significance as a full-scale "breakdown", or minimised it as a "panic disorder". Yet this feeling of falling apart is an essential part of our lives and of most of our narratives. In The Wizard of Oz, for example, Dorothy and her companions emerge wiser and strong from the invalidation of their idea that the wizard could solve their problems, while paradoxically Othello is destroyed by the invalidation of his belief that his wife Desdemona had been unfaithful.

We first experience the terror of being invalidated when we are small children, but by the time we are 3 or 4 we have learned a way of avoiding it: we have learned how to lie. From then on, whenever we glimpse the faintest possibility that our "selves" might be threatened with annihilation, we lie.

First of all, we lie to ourselves. Why? Because we fear that we do not have the strength and courage to face the truth of our situation. We even lie about lying, preferring to call our lies anything but a lie. We say: "He's in denial" or "She's being economical with the truth".

We lie in our private and work lives, to friends, family and colleagues. Often we tell them what we call "white lies". Some of us do so because we need people to like us: our greatest fear is of being abandoned and rejected. Others tell white lies to avoid the chaotic feelings they get from seeing other people being upset by the truth: they know the world is a chaotic place, and to survive in it they need a personal island of clarity, order and control.

At a public level, we lie about nearly everything, from the true level of corporate wealth to expenses and evidence that humans are responsible for changing the climate.

When it comes to such global-level events, you might think finding out what is true would be a top priority, especially as we start out neurologically blindfolded. But it is not. For all of us there is something more important than finding the truth. We are too frightened to confront the facts because doing so means confronting the danger that most of what supports our sense of who we are could disappear.

Unlike lies, truths require evidence to support them. But no matter how much evidence we accumulate, our truths will always be approximations and absolute certainty will exist only in our fantasies. Lying gives us the temporary delusion that our personal and social worlds are intact, that we are loved, that we are safe, and above all, that we are not likely to overwhelmed by the uncertainty inherent in living in a world we can never truly know.

We can never escape uncertainty: it is part of our very being. Scientists struggle daily to accept uncertainty, and still search for "evidence". In our personal, professional and collective social lives it looks as if we may have no choice but to confront uncertainty if we are to survive - and survive well.

So we will need to be very careful in future about choosing the situations in which we lie. All lies have networks of consequences we did not expect or intend. The lies we tell may well protect us and our personal - or collective - sense of self in the short term, but in the long term and in a linked-up, complex world, the consequences can be truly disastrous. After all, when we lie to ourselves and to others, we multiply a thousandfold the inherent difficulties we have trying to determine what is actually going on inside us and around us.

One day, neuroscientists may be able to describe the damage we do to our brains when we lie to ourselves and to others, when we create confusion about knowing something that we deny we know. Let's hope that by then we can start to believe - and to use - the scientific truths we will be telling ourselves.

Alphabet Soup, by Angelique Westerhof

A BLOG curated by » Alphabet Soup, by Angelique Westerhof

Beginning a new magazine with an ‘A’ inevitably prompted much word play, so when Dirk Van Saene, Walter Van Beirendonck, Gerdi Esch and their collaborators constructed NºA, there was much linguistic fun to be had.

With this in mind, the director of the Arnhem Fashion Institute, Angelique Westerhof, took the proposed A, B, C, D… concept for a real joyride, for her piece “Alphabet Soup”. Constructing five acrostic poems of the alphabet, Angelique chose names and concepts each pertaining to the spirit of Antwerp fashion – from Dirk’s world and the people and ideals within it.

Some you will know and recognise immediately (there is only one Martin, no?) but others are more cryptic and askew, such as the references to the Orthodox Jewish culture in Antwerp, with their Yarmulkas (skullcaps) and the Yom kippur (religious fasting holiday). Other words are rather ambiguous and vague, but help to paint a picture of the atmosphere of the fashion community, with their common inspirations and aspirations.

Rather than explaining all 130 of Angelique’s choices, we suggest a rather more organic and exciting challenge – to piece together the puzzle yourself. With the help of a few queues from us, play with the cerebral links between the words, to allow yourself to arrive at your own vision of this intriguing word map. Push the boundaries of your knowledge to further explore the ‘A’ world.

Anarchist
Beyond
Craft
Dream
Experiment
Future
Genuine
Hidden
Innovative
Juxtapositions
Knowledge
Linda (Loppa)
Magazine
Nationality
Orthodox
Perseverance
Questioning
Radical
Sensuality
Tradition
Underground
Values
Walter (Van Beirendonck)
Xenophobia

Ann (Demeulemeester)
Bourgeois
Change
Dirk (Van Saene)
Emotive
Fashion
Generations
Homogenous
Incubation
Jurgi (Persoons)
Kickstarters
Labour
Majestic
New
Originality
Patrick (Scallon)
Quality
Research
Severe
Tuition
Uncover
Victorious
Wonderment
XI
Yom Kippur
Zone

Aloof
Boundless
Concrete
Desire
Escapism
Family
Gerdi (Esch)
Hierarchy
Integrity
Jointly
Kaleidoscopic
Liberation
Manufacture
Nico
Obscurity
Principles
Qualification
Raf (Simons)
Shy
Timeless
Unprecedented
Visionary
Wild
seXappeal
Yin
Zany

Alert
Bernhard (Willhelm)
Captivating
Diffusion
Ellen
Funloving
Global
Honorable
Inspire
Jubilation
Kindness
Luminous
Make
Natural
Outspoken
Provocative
Quietude
Romanticism
Statements
Torment
Uncompromising
Verve
Window
arickX
Yee (Marina)
Zen

Absolute
Belief
Chris
Dries (Van Noten)
Eclectic
Fever
Genius
Humour
Intuitive
Jobs
Kissable
Loving
Martin (Margiela)
Now
Personality
Quantity
Reward
Spell
Transform
Unique
Veronique (Branquinho)
Winner
X-Ray
Yearn
Zoom

Photography: Shooting Particular Objects in Macro Mode

Metal
1. Use a light-blue background to display silver to its best advantage.
2. Use a piece of poster board to reflect light back on the piece, but mask the image of your hands or camera that may have reflect in the surface.
3. Add small colorful accessories to pictures of silver, such as a flower, to add interesting reflections and a punch of color.


Jewellery
1. Use black velvet backgrounds to display jewelry at its best, particularly diamonds. White is also effective.
2. Position pieces so the most interesting part of the piece is visible. Prop up rings, for example, using a small piece of museum wax or silly putty, or cut a small slit in a piece of foam core board with a razor blade and push the band of the ring down into the slit, making the ring stand up.
3. Make certain photos are well lighted, and the details are clear. Good jewelry is an investment and nobody is going to offer top dollar for something that appears fuzzy or dirty.
4. Sharp, close-up photos of jewelry may require the use of a macro lens and a special lighting set up.


Porcelain
1. Place the porcelain piece against colored background that plays up one of the colors in the pattern.
2. Include a close-up of the most interesting part of the pattern.
3. Experiment with lighting until you get a picture with accurate color and white balance.


Furniture
1. Dust and polish items before photographing
2. Place furniture against a neutral, uncluttered background.
3. Light picture so that the color is warm and accurate.
4. Include a close-up of any carving, inlay, or other details that add to the beauty or value of the piece.
5. Include an accessorizing object to indicate scale, a book or bowl for example.

Paintings
1. It is crucial that the camera be absolutely parallel to the artwork, or you get the “keystone” effect (distortion).
2. Use a tripod and watch out for reflections if the art is under glass. Remove glass if possible before shooting pictures.

Generally, make the image fill in the picture. Too much background detracts from the interest of the image. Use a small tripod for steady images.

Take several pictures with different exposure values to ensure at least one of your shots is well-exposed (use exposure compensation +/- 2 stops).

Use a lens attachment if your camera allows one to reduce depth of field and reduce impossible glare from reflective subjects.

If the image appears to be too warm or bluish, use the manual white balance. Finally, you can adjust your photo in an image-editing program such as Adobe Photoshop, if necessary.

More than Money

Self-motivation is worth more than money
If you have the MONEY to hire the best advisors, but lack the motivation to actually use their advice, you will quickly lose the money. However, the person with the self-motivation to take intelligent action can have as much money as he or she is committed to earning. This is why people can go from rags to riches and why many rich people, end up not only broke – but broken.

In my business, I work hard to avoid people, who want to hire me as their marketing coach, just so we can have lots of interesting conversations. This is because I know that unless someone is motivated enough to get off their butt and work with the ideas and answers I provide to them, they won’t achieve anything. However, a self-motivated person working to a great plan, is simply unstoppable!

Faith is worth more than money
No matter how rich a person is financially, if they lack faith in; them self, their spouse, their friends, their company or product etc – they won’t feel very wealthy. Personally, I find that during the crunch times in life, and we ALL have those times, it’s also great to have faith in something that’s bigger than we are. In my case, that’s faith in God.

It’s impossible to move forward, unless we have faith in others and ourselves; from faith that the brakes on your car will work, to faith that if you work hard enough doing the right things, your business plans will work.

Knowledge is worth more than money
If someone dumps a million or two into Bob’s bank account, he better quickly learn how to be a millionaire! Otherwise, Bob won’t be a millionaire very long.

The reason lottery companies provide financial experts to work with the lottery winners, who win the major prizes, is that they were worried about all the negative stories, of multi-million lottery winners, who went broke and often ended up with less than they started with. That’s because money without knowledge, tends to disappear very quickly. A fool and his money, and all that! Of course, many lottery winners still went broke after getting great financial advice, because they lacked the self-motivation to use what they were told.

My mentor, the late Jim Rohn, used to say that the real value of building a million dollar business is NOT the million dollars. It’s the learning and knowledge we acquire earning that fortune. Take a million away from a millionaire, who made that money themselves, and they can make another million. This has been proven again and again to be true.

Levels of Participation

1. Consult
This is when the mass market looks at your content, accessing it most likely through a search. In the same way we consult a brochure for information, people consult websites for information. This person is not part of your community and not a regular reader or participant.

This is important to clarify, as most blogs are designed and written for those who consume their content on a regular basis. I’ll be quite honest – if the above, non-regular mass market person visited my website, it would not be so easy to get around. I need to sort that out and make it ‘consult friendly.’

To provide a consult level of participation, you must focus on making it findable, and useable to first time visitors.

2. Consume
In the same way we regularly consume food, this is where we enter some form of regular readership. Regular is the key word here. For early adopters, this is easy – we get our readers to plug the feed into their reader. But for the majority, we have to think of simpler ways to deliver regular content to their door step. (Remember: the door step might not be email, or even Facebook for some people.)

The distinction between consult and consume is frequency. Consultations are few and far between, based on need. Consumption is regular, first based on interest and then based on ongoing usefulness and a certain degree of loyalty and trust.

To provide a consume level of participation, you must provide regular content (whatever your content is) and make return visits easy by delivering to the door step.

3. Connect
This is formalising a relationship by securing some kind of connection – creating an account, joining a newsletter, ‘liking’ a Facebook page or joining a group, using Twitter of Facebook to sign into a website. Less people do this than consume your content. I have about 3,000 unique visitors a month who consult or consume my content (50% are new visitors), but only 200 subscribers through connect Feedburner, of which 50 get my blog emailed daily.

Connect is really about an exchange. I give you this, you give me that. This doesn’t have to be an email. It could be that I give you some of my photos, and in return, you showcase them on your website. I win because my work is online, you win because I tell all my friends to look at it. The trick is to make a win-win scenario.

To provide a connect level of participation, provide ways for buy-in and exchange of data and other social connections, and demonstrate how they create a ‘win’ for the end user.

4. Compete
One of the pillars of participation is competition. Since the beginning of time, the lure of competing (and winning) has generated the most participation – siblings know this well!

On one level this is about building games – FarmVille’s participation base is currently 20% of all Facebook’s users! Max Control is a competition that merges online and offline activity (disclaimer: they were a client.) Alder And Alder’s Advent Quiz competition was a great low-buy in game for busy people.

On the other hand, this is about creating competition in things that aren’t games. The main motivation for getting Facebook friends a few years ago was a competition (“who has the most Facebook friends?”) In fact, Facebook used to even number your wall posts, so you could compete on who has had the most wall posts.

When Ashton Kutcher reached 1 million Twitter followers, that was a competition. Even now, people compete over Twitter followers – if not with one another, then certainly with themselves!

Gowalla, Foursquare and other location apps are competitions - “who is the mayor?” “how many items do you have?” “how many checkins have you made?” – the whole drive that makes Foursquare bigger than Gowalla in my opinion is that they made it more of a competition that Gowalla did.

Even tagging, sharing and bookmarking can be a game. It’s a competition that you play against yourself.

To provide a compete level of participation, just show a scoreboard and rank your users. That’ll create competition immediately.

5. Comment
Most early adopters are in the habit of commenting, but if you think back to the first time you did, you’ll get an idea of where the early majority are. I remember thinking “why bother?”, which is what most of the early majority feel about this level of participation, which is why most don’t make it here. It’s a motivation issue.

Commenting has reached a higher level of adoption inside Facebook, but even then it is done less, and by fewer people, than all the other levels.

The reason why this is, is because commenting represents the shift from getting more to giving more. The other levels often give up front (consult and consume), or they give back immediately (connect and compete). Commenting however does not immediately give back, so the motivation has to come from a deeper level of investment and involvement.

One of the issues here is that when someone wants to comment, they think that 1. they have nothing to add, and/or 2. there’s already conversation that they find intimidating and hard to break into.

Example: Those who you see commenting in your Facebook stream are probably the same group of 50. In fact, those who comment on this blog are mostly the same people, who give very insightful and intelligible comments from a place of knowing me outside of this blog. It’s hard for a newbie to break into that!

To provide a comment level of participation, provide a way for users to add their angle to the content (review, share, rate, etc) and attach getting to their giving – the more immediate and visible, the better.

6. Create
The user generate content realm is actually touched upon with compete and comment, because every action generates some kind of content as a by-product, however the create level is distinguished because the content is being intentionally and specifically created by the user.

Forums are a memorable example for me – I used to write a wealth of information in then. Guest blogging, custom reviews, crowd-sourcing all tend to fall into this category.

The motivation to participate at this level, I have found, is usually because of the benefit of identity the user gets by being associated. This has to be compelling in order for people to take time out and custom make content for you.

To provide a create level of participation, show the identity benefits of association with your organisation, with examples of others who have done it.

7. Curate
The highest level of participation goes beyond creating content to curating it, similar to the difference between a writer and an editor. The curator / editor knows the bigger picture well, and now nurtures the participants under them on behalf of the organisation.

I’m drifting a little into metaphor and tech speak here, so let me paint a community example. With Like Minds, there are a number of people who help us at a very high level with bringing the event together. They not only have ‘ideas’ (which are a dime a dozen), but they talk closely with us and work through the kinks, whilst bringing the best of the ideas out there to our attention. I met one of these curators this week, where we spent an hour talking through the concepts and bigger picture repercussions of our next events.

Key for me here is that these people are builders, not bulldozers. Curators build with you – the benefits of which are the intimacy they share with you, and the self actualisation they get.

When I think of this level, I think of people like Robert Scoble who live and breathe the industry they are in and shape it by virtue of their grasp of the bigger picture, and being at the elbow of every conversation. These people are thermostats, not thermometers. They set the temperature and create culture.

To provide a curate level of participation, be open and provide whatever they need to curate. They will rise to the top and show themselves to you as long as you do this.

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukowski

The Laughing Heart
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

More poetry reading here and here