by Klaas | 13 Jun, 2023 | Visual stories for visitors
I can be quite smug about it, I think. Science is a tyrant, wielding intimidating texts and tables. But the two fields I love, – ecology and geology – source their knowledge from a reality you can easily reveal. If one’s task is opening up science, that’s a bonus.
The ground under our feet has been laid down over millions of years. That’s easy to explain. And ecology: who doesn’t sense that all plants and animals are connected? What could be more enjoyable than visiting the product of geology and ecology – the landscape? Yet I can’t help but worry about the preservation of special and fragile geology, ecology or heritage. For how is it that cyclists ride past it, schoolchildren find it boring and voters overlook it?
Apparently, it is not visible enough. The language and images used by professionals, once beyond the borders of academia, just can’t cut it.
What do you need, to grasp geology or ecology?
Nothing more than a few clues. A dash of knowledge. Preferably administered on the spot by a human guide.
“Do you see that the salt marsh is higher than the polder behind the dike?”
“Did you notice there are no godwits near trees?”
Yes, they do see that. Nice. Right now all you have to do is to come up with an explanation for that height difference or that bird behavior. And in terms that your audience understands. If only you could put a geologist next to every phenomenon.
To simplify, but not too much
The next best way to see an area is through a paper or digital guidebook, with photos, illustrations, maps and text. An atlas, an app, a travel guide. (Whether the thing is paper or digital doesn’t really matter, it seems to me. But something that you click away in an instant is a message you forget in an instant).
Either way, digital or analog, you want to unlock scientific knowledge in an easy, visual way. You want to simplify, but not too much. Reality is complex and readers may have little time, but they certainly don’t want to waste it on information or stories that don’t teach them anything.
This way, this “opening up science” of mine will still be quite a job. Good thing the reward is so great: once people see geology or ecology, they keep seeing it everywhere.
That’s riches.
Talking geology at a party
Fun anecdote: one of the professors who collaborated on the Canon of the Dutch Landscape gave me a great reason to do my job. He said “thanks for your work, now I can just explain what I do at a party”. This also indicates that the scientists themselves find a short version of their work very useful.
Atlas of the Netherlands in the Holocene, block diagrams of braiding, meandering and anastosomal river.
Block charts and maps can look very friendly. How simple can visualizing science be? When do you go from accessibility to “telling too little”?
Canon of the Dutch Landscape, a folding sheet of 16 faces, created with 20 professors and specialists, each of whom could write a book about it.
The content is tightly bound: each plane of the folding sheet has an introduction, a description of a phenomenon, and some location text of where that phenomenon occurs. The block diagrams visualise the phenomenon.
I still think this “leaflet” is a good example of how information can be transferred from pure text to photo, map, illustration and timeline.
There is a separate section for human additions to the landscape, on top of sand, clay and peat.
‘Het ontstaan van Zeeland’ (the origins of Zeeland) lets you browse from the past to the present, getting a good look at how Zeeland became dry land, washed over again and eventually slowly became diked.
Online you would do this with a slider, such as topotijdreis.nl, but browsing by hand naturally gives you a fine object.
There is also such a thing as scientific posters, for use at conferences. For a few geomorphologists, I made a dozen, prioritizing the visual. After all, the landscape itself is visual.
It can also be a lot more abstract: the port of Rotterdam (tilted), from the “Climate as an Opportunity” project. The sea level is rising and the Netherlands must be designed accordingly. Blue shading = water storage.
by Klaas | 13 Jun, 2023 | Visual stories for visitors
At first I didn’t understand why they were calling me. They had everything. Storylines, a corporate identity, an inspiration guide, 3D visuals, an image bank. Then I looked more closely. I saw distance everywhere. Scientific detachment. Objectivity. As can be expected of scientists. But if you want to captivate audiences then you need stories. Closeness. Intimacy even.
How do you accomplish that?
1 Do not overwhelm
For starters, by not overwhelming the reader. Stories made for visitors are shorter and much more visual. Actually, nothing new. I said, let me make drawings. Primarily because the Zeeland and Flemish geology is all but invisible in photos. The landscape is quite subtle here, no volcanoes or glaciers or cliffs, but silt and peat and terrain relief of only half a meter. Illustrations solve that.
2 Getting very close to the subject.
You would want to replace the scientific distance with first-hand information. Seeing the place through the eyes of someone who is always in the landscape. Not difficult: I suggested selecting and interviewing users of the landscape, such as farmers, rangers and ecologists. On location, not via Zoom of course. Great fun to do, you immediately gather intriguing observations.
3 Being with the subject for a long time.
To know which picture is the best, and what you want to represent in a drawing, and then to decide what the soul of the landscape is, you just have to go there. I suggested visiting all the places in the Geopark on foot. Really on foot, not by parking next to it first. I’ll bring my little tent.
The client was convinced.
And I was motivated, eager to start. Only someone very close to the subject can make something valuable. Although I imagine that walking 593 kilometers is not the only way. It is my way.
May the reader decide to visit the Geopark.
I hope the stories convince him to.
Because once you are in the landscape, you are sold.
Geopark Scheldt Delta website
My instagram reels about this project are also fun to check out.
‘Here beauty flows’ brochure, English translation and back cover
The inside cover includes a map of all geological sites
The drawings contain very un-geological details, such as this man with cap, who does not like being on the beach.
One edition is bound with a cahier stitch.
Hard work, this project. The 6 hikes I took in the fall of 2022. 600km visiting most of the 40 geological sites.
The booklet contains 12 stories and 12 drawings. Below each drawing is a ‘tourist text’.
I experimented a bit with different eras in 1 drawing. This is only done in 1 drawing. The clay mining at Boom is the origin story of the landscape.
The cabbages of the Noë brothers near Sint-Margriete in the Meetjesland are in the picture, along with the Escholtzia they grow for tinctures.
Each story has a “navigation thingy” where reference is made to the Geopark locations, numbered on the overview map.
In the same style as the landscape drawings, there are block diagrams on geology and geomorphology. It doesn’t get any simpler than this.
Reclamation, accretion and embankment explained with a kind of maps.
The block diagrams are accompanied by a very short text referring to the locations.
Most of the photos were taken by me while on the road in the landscape. From really close up. Most “official” landscape photos about the geology of the area are very nice, but often they give “overview,” or try to show the whole, and that doesn’t work so well, I think.
There is also an English translation.
With Soan Lang Ie (IVN hostess of the landscape) along Het Zwin near Cadzand. An interview about sea buckthorns, sea fennel and cyclists rushing on.
6 walks totaling 600 kilometers resulted in 12 stories and 12 drawings. Those drawings go from sketch (choosing location and choosing what you see there) to researching source material, to final result. The view as shown in the drawing can’t be seen like that in reality. But that is precisely the power of drawings. Visual stories for visitors are engaging, not scientifically correct.
Sometimes the first sketch is in a different place, and with a different subject. On the left the Kalkense Meersen near Schellebelle, later it became a peat pit in the paleomeander of Berlare, because that is where the focus of the story is. Middle: The first style I chose was woodcut. I gouged out (digitally, but by hand) all the white. That style did not fall well, so it was honed (right) into the successor to Japanese woodcuts, the clear line. Sort of.
The very first visual style was even simpler, really a woodcut with few print runs, bright colors and overprinting inks. Foraging spoonbills in a tidal channel in the Drowned Land of Saeftinghe take all the attention. The one on the right is a bit more neutral, with the ship less prominent, but the banks of the gullies (the geological share) much better in view.
Yerseke. On the left there is still a cut between below and above water, but that trick has been abolished (only 1 drawing with an inset remains). Center the earlier woodcut style, right the more plain line and much fresher colors. My goodness such a lot of work. Very impossible point of view, by the way. You can’t see IN the oyster pits from anywhere near the floodline of course 😉
Then there is a section in the booklet explaining all the geological phenomena involved in the area. Here, writing was especially a chore: how could I explain Quaternary geology and geomorphology in 16 x 50 words?
The drawings are block diagrams, sections and views, in roughly the style of the large drawings. For harmony and a hint of comprehensibility (in the booklet, of course, all parts are labeled).
Really, seeing everything up close, and smelling, and feeling, is essential. (Tidal mudflat near Sint-Annaland, Tholen)
Camping at De Wachtsluis near Cadzand. Good conversation with the farmers. I did all the visiting of Geopark sites on foot. Makes you see more. Brought the tent, wonderful isn’t it?
Very tempting: showing what it looked like 4,000 and 1,500 years ago. But only in the NL part have measurements been made, and even then, how would you convert information about soil types into something of a landscape image? An important message for scientists: better not call these maps, people would think they are accurate. Better call these impressions. (They would have been 45×45 mm in the booklet)
A spin-off: three maps for Zonneland magazine, for children. 12,000 years ago and 1,500 years ago. In such a magazine, the maps immediately feel like impressions, not accurate maps. For children, my fictional Flemish country is allowed to be drawn. (Based on all kinds of studies)
Of course, I had to watch out for an overly Dutch focus. But Flanders, and especially the banks of the Scheldt, are so interesting, I became a fan. Flemish correctors did their best to keep things Flemish. Freshwater tides and so on. Those visual stories for visitors must, of course, appeal to Flemish people as well.
