The Steak and The Sizzle

When I went to type my post title, the phrase "The walls are alive with the sound of vomit" automatically filled in. No idea where that came from.

Anyway, I found an intriguing side bit in the Star Tribune today that reminded me of part of a planner's job: make it interesting, and make it easy to understand.

I said in a recent post that we're supposed to make the complicated simple. Sometimes, that doesn't have to mean a loaded sentence of carefully selected words (and in fact, that doesn't seem like an appealing option in any circumstances.) In this case, the Star Trib discussed the topics brought up by each political party at the national conventions through simple visuals. I apologize for the poor quality of the scans, but I'm new to all this.

The point is, when you're presenting an idea, you need to account for more than just the bulk of the idea. You need to make it exciting, interesting, and easy to comprehend. You need to make people like hearing about your idea. I had a professor, Earl Cox, who called it "the steak and the sizzle," and it's something that I've been trying to work on. I give Star Trib a gold star for this little bit, because while there was a whole page article on the conventions, this managed to catch my attention.