Story vs. Flashy

It’s no secret that I love going to movies. Being in Austin, I have become spoiled by the Alamo Drafthouse. But the real reason I love film so much is because I love the concept of storytelling.

At one point in time, I had an OK Cupid profile, where under movies, I had written something along the lines of “anything as long as it has a good narrative structure.”

This weekend, I had the rare chance to watch both Batman V. Superman and Cloverfield in the same span of 24 hours…and it taught me a valuable lesson about the importance of story vs. flash.

If the time & effort are spent on building the underlying emotional baseline for an engaging experience, your audience will be positively affected. Cloverfield spent time building up tension right from the start of the movie, and did a fantastic job of keeping you completely in the dark until the end. BvS:DOJ was a dark mess, with scenes that could be rearranged in any order, and no real thought given to the underlying emotional experience of the film…just the equivalent of a child playing with toys in a sandbox.

This is directly translatable to the fields of design. Consider the narrative of your product, and design for that experience, versus focusing solely on visual aesthetic. Your audience will thank you for it.