My Columbia students always enjoy the visit from Joe Zeff, whose trajectory in visual journalism takes him from stints with TIME Magazine and The New York Times and destinations in between. Today, however, Joe is busy on his own, with Joe Zeff Design, which he describes as a “boutique agency that works behind the scenes to help the world’s biggest companies tell better stories.”
And helping big companies is exactly what Joe is doing these days, with clients such as AT&T and American Express, which come to him for help on how to make their stories easier to comprehend.
“Technology decisions used to be made by people in the IT department. That’s no longer the case. Decisions about technology are frequently driven by sales and marketing departments,” Joe told the class.
He urged my journalism students to make an effort to learn more about the technology around them.
One part of technology that Joe thinks offers great opportunities for storytelling is Augmented Reality. Joe gave the class some fascinating demonstrations of the power of AR. Joe pulled a $20 bill out of his wallet and pointed his iPad at it. Suddenly, multimedia stories magically appeared on top of the $20 bill — cards, video, even 3D objects. Here’s a link to a demonstration.
“The tablet makes sense for augmented reality when someone is presenting content to another person. Otherwise, the phone is best,” he said.
“Think of augmented reality as another tool in your tool box for storytelling. But don’t get confused, the story is the driving force behind what you do, not the tools you use to bring that story to life.”
Why does Joe see AR as such a compelling way of telling stories?
My phone knows who I am and where I am, and with augmented reality my phone can tell me things about something directly in front of me, something that helps me understand, or care, or buy.
TheMarioBlog post #3005