Common Craft Blog

It's new video time! This video was suggested by Common Craft members and explains a concept called The Internet of Things in just over 2 minutes.  

Here's an ExplainerGIF with highlights from the video:

Learn how to turn digital photos of your pets, friends, kids and even spouses into "Creatures" that can be shared online. 

Wait, what?

As any subscriber to our newsletter knows, at Common Craft, we love our dogs. Recently we noticed something: Common Craft Cut-outs and dog photos can easily be combined to create funny creatures. 

“Maybe the Dragon” was the original. Our friends loved it:

The more we played with the Cut-outs the more we laughed. It's so fun! Soon enough Bosco became a (somewhat reluctant) vampire/devil:

Then an idea was born...

What if we created a LOT of these “Creature” Cut-outs and showed people how to create their own creatures? It seemed like a fun idea, so that’s what we did.

Introducing: The Common Craft Creature Guide

This online guide is free and provides step-by-step instructions for making Creatures using our Cut-outs with presentation software (PowerPoint or Keynote). It's easy!

We’ve created 120 new Cut-outs for this purpose.

From dragons and dinosaurs to pigs and goats, the new Cut-outs provide unlimited mix-and-match opportunities. We've focused on dogs, but you can create creatures from any digital photo of a pet, person or object. 

All Creature Cut-outs are available within the Creature Guide and delivered as .ZIP files. You'll find:

• A FREE downloadable pack of 15 Creature Cut-outs.
• The FULL pack of 120 Cut-outs for only $4.99(US). 
• If you're ready, go directly to the Cut-out downloads page.

All Creature Cut-outs are free for Common Craft members and available as a pack in the Cut-out Library. 

Get started at http://commoncraft.com/creatures.

We just published a new video that's for all the instructors out there. It explains Instructional Objectives in about 3 minutes:

Highlights from the video:

About This Video:

This video tells the story of an instructor named Mariam. She learns to use instructional objectives to plan her lessons so that her students can demonstrate what they learn in a measurable way. It teaches:

• Why instructors need measurable results
• Why instructional objectives are important
• How instructional objectives inform lesson planning
• The 3 main parts of instructional objectives

Watch it now.

Some Things You May Have Missed:

Recent videos:

• Blended Learning
• Online Advertising
• Affiliate Marketing

Recent blog posts:

• ExplainerGIFs: What They Are and Why They Matter
• The War on Drugs Explained with Dragons
• A Nice Animated Explainer on Planet Earth (and an Intellectual leap)

Unrelated Bonus Link:  Lee wrote a popular article about the experience of living in Seattle this time of year. It's called Ready for Rain - Why Seattleites Crave The End of Summer.  

I love this. Bruce Herwig, a reader of The Art of Explanation, decided to review the book by creating a Common Craft Style video. He even provided "5 lessons I Learned in Making a Common Craft Style Video" in the blog post. Thanks Bruce!

Reading in email? Watch the video here.

Learn more about Common Craft Cut-outs. 

NOTE: If you're interested in learning in-depth about the skill of explanation and how to make Common Craft Style videos, check out our online courses at the Explainer Academy.

We're big fans of GoAnimate. They make it easy for anyone to create animated videos - even using Common Craft Cut-outs.  

Recently they asked about doing an interview with me, but not just any interview. They wanted to make the interview look like an animated talk show. This is where their service really shines.

We talked about my family's business in NC, how Sachi and I get along and of course, explainer videos. The video below was made with GoAnimate - and you can make videos just like it.  

Viewing in email? Watch the video here.

Learn more about how you can create Common Craft Style videos with GoAnimate. 

One of the tools we use in creating explainer videos is abstraction.  We look for opportunities to take the ideas that we want to explain out of their normal circumstance and put them into a new world. An example is our video that explains social media. It's a big analogy about ice cream.  Instead of talking about the details of tools and use cases, we showed what happens when everyone can make their own flavors. 

By abstracting an idea, we work to free it of all the details, biases and baggage that comes with the real world situation. Instead, we use symbols, metaphors and analogies to relate higher level ideas. It's these idea that have the power to create understanding.  Once understanding is in place, then the details make more sense. 

NOTE: If you're interested in learning in-depth about the skill of explanation and how to make Common Craft Style videos, check out our online courses at the Explainer Academy.

Vox pointed me to a video that was sponsored by the Global Commission on Drug Policy that is a great example of abstraction. Rather than using real world examples, they use a fictional story about how a society dealt with a dragon called Drugo. The video is called The War on Drugo.  Watch:

Reading in email? Watch the video here.

The next time you're struggling to make an idea easy to understand, consider the power of abstraction. Look for ways to take the big ideas out of the real world and put them in a world that highlights them without all the baggage.