I recently watched this video on TED.com and was terribly excited by it. I don’t know anything about comics, and I don’t care to learn anything about them, but what excited me so much was the way in which Scott McCloud presented on comics.

His presentation style actually resembles a comic strip in many ways. Heavily – nay, almost exclusively – based on visuals, Scott uses full bleed images to illustrate key points or even single words as he is speaking. At times he speaks a sentence naturally as he rapidly steps through a series of images for each of the words (pay attention at 2 min 15 sec to see what I mean).

Scott’s presentation is also in the form of a story. He talks about the influence of his father in his life and also explains the history of comics in an entertaining and flowing narrative. And yet his presentation is also very informative and includes a lot of important concepts and even facts.

I look at this presentation and dream of the day that I come across a professor using this format in a lecture. Mind you, by no means would I encourage any professor to adopt this lecture style exclusively (unless the course were on story telling), but, it is an excellent tool to employ once in a semester or to provide a change-up in the lecture.

Scott McCloud on comics | Video on TED.com: