What Is This About?

In the interview process, we were discussing what I was ultimately hoping the audience would take away from my talk. While I wished I was a media theorist but wasn’t, or a great artist doing amazing visual works which I’m not, the talk had elements of both things in common ways. In the back and forth with the TEDx Omaha team, when pressed, I landed on “I want people to question more what they see online, to not just blindly accept what’s put in front of them.” Using my progressively minded images would be the messengers for a message about critical thinking. If you align philosophically with the images, great, if not, that works too. And if you happen to have a problem with the images, fine, then do your own talk.

An image is between us and an action

The Intentional Impact of Images

We’re surrounded by images, and they’re all trying to get us to do something. The question is, what will we choose to do? The script from my TEDx Talk is now up on Medium. If you’re looking for a 9 minute read rather than a 15 minute video, this is for you. An image flat and static, can, within a split second of being scrolled by, make us click the button:

Read on Medium

Design Notes

This is, basically, the third version of the talk. The first idea took more of an unveiling approach. The second, more combative, where the core idea was of images fighting back. The final version I presented, in my mind, is a very middle-of-the-road approach. The showing of my graphic design work while I, the maker, tell you, the viewer, the basic brief behind the images and the context they exist within. These images don’t simply emerge out of thin air. There’s a reason for everything — what I’m trying to say, why I’m saying it, and to whom I’m saying it to, as well as, where the image is meant to end up and the action I want a particular audience to take.

We Love Our Sons and Daughters

Project launch for Campaign Zero:

Michael O.D. Brown was eighteen, black, unarmed and gunned down in broad daylight, around noon on August 9, 2014, in the middle of Canfield Drive by a Ferguson police officer. In the days that followed, no police report was released, only a video by the Ferguson police department assassinating Michael’s character. His brutal killing sparked protests all over the country, gaining international attention and support.

Visit the Foundation

Why you should watch my TEDx

An incomplete list:

  • Because I have a clicker

  • Hand gestures (including jazz hands)

  • Help spread disinformation about cows

  • Learn how to say GIF

  • “Both Sides” will join as one

  • Learn how to draw a person

  • Learn how to stop a pandemic

  • Who doesn’t love a good aspect ratio?

  • Racist Map

  • Like it on Facebook

  • Ask yourself, “what am I supposed to do now?”

  • Negative Space

  • Get stuck in the middle with me

Watch My TEDX

Social Networks That Are Worth It

As determined by a formula that looks something like time spent + useful information × joy ÷ rage/dread/worthlessness – age = maybe worth it:

  2. Instagram

  3. LinkedIn

  5. Ello

  6. Medium

  8. Facebook

  10. Pinterest

  12. Twitter

  13. TikTok

TEDx Omaha: Videos 2022