Incorporating a client’s legacy into presentations

Recently, while developing a series of storyboards as part of a VR training project for a major research organization, I found myself leafing through a cartoonishly large stack of technical documentation and binders dating back over 40 years.

In doing so, I came across some vintage instructional material that the organization had itself produced for internal use back in the ’80s. Sadly, I can’t provide any examples as it contains information that’s still commercially sensitive, but think retro airline safety card chic, combined with Valve’s timelessly brilliant Aperture Science safety videos. Amazing.

Don’t get me wrong; I absolutely don’t want to poke fun at the material. It was both informative and beautifully done. It was clearly the work of someone who took a tremendous amount of pride in their work and cared about both the subject matter and actually keeping people safe. Also, as it turned out, some of the original authors were still at the organization and now held senior positions with oversight of the proposed VR training programs.

Now, these are obviously smart people and not easily swayed by fancy graphics and artistic fluff with no practical purpose, but I was confident enough that the technical training content was already strong, and thought a respectful callback to the aesthetic of the old material would go down well.

It might seem like a small thing, and of course, it would be easy to cross the line into insincere flattery and from thereon in spiral quickly into outright brown-nosing, but in this case, it seemed to work pretty well. There’s also something about this process that nods to an understanding of the history of the client’s organization. There is, for example, no way we would have even found this source material had we not been deep diving into these obscure and half-forgotten pages; something that was clearly appreciated by them and helped lay the foundation of a highly successful relationship.

To reiterate, I’ve had to recreate these images and diagrams to maintain client confidentiality (and have changed and obfuscated material as necessary), but they’re a decent enough depiction of the original work.

It is, of course, absolutely essential for a client to know that you truly understand them, their culture, their goals, and their language. There are many other proven, reliable, and more quantifiable ways to do this of course, but sometimes it’s the smaller, more esoteric methods of communication that build a far deeper level of trust and understanding.