In my reports, all the slides are similar to each other. At the top is a description of the slide, in the middle is a graph and below the graph is my commentary on what the result means for the client. At the very bottom is the exact wording of the question from the survey. Over and over again. Everything is blue, no pictures. Manic individuals are freaking out or yawning. Where are the colours, bubbles, pictures, fonts and diagrams? They have been sacrificed in the name of clarity.
We humans, at least lately, for the last 150 years or so, have become quite unhealthily obsessed with life. We’ve let life free, and now it bites and tears. And the one who ran from the dog of life up a tree is a form. Form loses it with life pretty badly.
But life without the support of form cannot stand, it lies down strangely and resembles a jellyfish on dry land. It becomes indigestible. The gibberish structure of modern poetry is unreadable. Expressionism throws the spontaneous energy of life at us until it’s unwatchable. Everyone’s life becomes desperately more uninteresting the more we stress the fact that it cannot be generalized. It’s pretty boring having to listen to someone tell you about his dreams.
The raw energy of life is indigestible. Rather, it needs to bubble up, like the harmonies in a steady jazz beat, or a story between slavishly identical slides. The expectation that a page in a report has exactly the same layout as the previous one helps us to perceive the numbers and, above all, the story behind them. The steady form gives us the opportunity to not focus on it. And it allows us to perceive the content clearly. If we don’t limit our life energy with form, we have no choice but to let ourselves be dragged along. By the confusing school of life.