The use of comics for instructional/training purposes (pedagogy) has a rich history, including such giants as Will Eisner. I’ve always thought this has been underused and way back when the Google Chrome browser first came out I found the related instructional comics adaptation by Scott McCloud very interesting. A friend of mine passed along a link to a presentation Scott gave on “Understanding comics” which I liked a lot. Scott is a great presenter.

I think this type of illustration can be really useful, especially in the form a dialog with at least two characters. It reminds me of a French instructional recording by Michel Thomas. His way to explain French to you is to explain it to a couple students. One catches on fast and the other is a little slower. I think it’s more interesting because there’s a “story” element to it and I think people are wired to give special weight to stories (vs. straight facts or information). There needs to be some sort of dialectic like Goofus/Gallant or maybe a graphical representation of the standard Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.