Blog Posts About: language

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Randall Munroe is known for his  comic series XKCD , which offers hilarious and insightful commentary on technology, geek culture, and more. Awhile back, Mr. Munroe published something very different: an  annotated blueprint  of the Saturn V rocket that took men to the moon.

This was no normal blueprint. Munroe added an interesting constraint: He could only use the 1,000 most-used English words for his annotations. This constraint forced him to think carefully about how to capture these complex mechanisms and features using a completely different style of communication.

 See the entire blueprint 

Your Turn: The UpGoer5 Text Editor

This constraint - communicating with only the 1,000 most-used words sparked a small movement. People began to challenge each other to present their work using this method, which is now known as “UpGoer5”.

In fact, a website soon appeared with a  text editor  for evaluating what words are in the top 1,000 list.

The Challenge

Can you describe your work using only the top 1,000 most-used English words? The text editor will show you what's in or out.  Give it a try !

This post is based on a bonus chapter in our  Explanation Master Course .

What if you had to explain something very complex, like a rocket, and only use drawings and the 1000 most-used words in the English language?  

That's the constraint that Randall Munroe made famous a while back when he explained a Saturn V rocket. For example, because the word "rocket" is not in the 1000 words, he called it an "up-goer" and that became the informal name for this kind of communication. You might remember a guest post by Sally James on this blog about the idea.

Mr. Munroe, whose work you may have seen on the web comic xkcd, is set to publish an entire book called Thing Explainer that explains "Complicated Stuff Using Simple Words". In fact, it's only drawings and the 1000 most-used words. I think this kind of constraint is a brilliant idea. It simply eliminates jargon and provides a new (and often hilarious) way to think about complex ideas.

Explore computer buildings (datacenters), the flat rocks we live on (tectonic plates), the things you use to steer a plane (airliner cockpit controls), and the little bags of water you're made of (cells).

Here's an example of the Mars Rover:

Want to test your skills in using the 1000 words? Try it here.

Here's the cover:

Find out more about the book.

Thanks to Kottke.

The Web really is a wonderous thing. Thanks to e-commerce tools like e-junkie and paypal, two people can run a home-based business with global reach.  We've been offering digital downloads of our videos via this website for about 2 years and recently took a look at the makeup of our customers in terms of nationality. We've licensed videos in 41 countries in all.  Below are the top 20.

We've always had a goal of being as global as possible, which is why we've had ten of our videos translated with voice-overs in 5 languages.  We plan to do more translations in the future.  Over time, we've also tried to move away from using text in the videos because it makes translated videos more difficult to understand.

We've re-thought our website from the ground up and soon you'll see the all the changes we're making.  For now though, I want to highlight a few things that make a big difference.

1. A Focus on the Business. This may be the best way to explain how the focus has changed:

• The current Common Craft site says "WE HAVE A BLOG - and we sell videos"
• The *new* Common Craft  site says "WE SELL VIDEOS - and we have a blog"

It's true - the new site is more closely aligned with the goal of finding, viewing, purchasing and downloading videos.

2. Simplified Video Organization. Our videos used to appear in two places, depending on their version: "free" or "presentation quality."  We've consolidated the display of videos one a single page. This means:

• No More "Common Craft Store" - Instead of trying to attach a video store to the site, we're integrating the purchase experience into the pages where the videos appear.
• No More "Common Craft Show"- The "Common Craft Show" was simply a way to organize the free versions of our videos.  Now higher-quality versions of the videos will appear in a single place on the site. 

3. Videos in 5 Languages

We're taking a big step to internationalize our videos.  For the first time, 10 of our videos (including the Social Media 9 Pack) will be available with voice-overs in 5 languages (English, French, German, [Brazilian] Portuguese and Spanish.)  These videos will be available for viewing, purchase and download.

4. Organization by Major Topics

Our video library will be organized into four major topics, which outline our direction in the future.  The topics are: Green, Money, Society and Technology.

5. Overall Look and Feel

Our goal was to make the site look and feel like our videos.  We've integrated our artwork, used a white background and tried to make the experience as focused as our videos.

Of course there are many more changes, but I think these points capture some of the big ideas that drive the new design. More soon... 

When asked what sort of videos we make it's a bit hard to explain in normal terms.  They're not really instructional or how-to, they have elements of marketing and promotion and some say they are entertaining.  Here's a few options - maybe you have more?

Infodocutainmercials?

Explanatainment?

Docuinfotainment?

Explanapromomercials? 

Explanadocuinfotainmercials?

or maybe just...

explainment?

By the way, don't expect to see any of this on the Common Craft business cards - just for fun. 

Any suggestions? 

We've been friends and fans of dotSUB since we first started making video for The Common Craft Show.  They make it easy for videos to be translated into multiple languages via subtitles. 

The RSS in Plain English video has been translated into 20+ languages on dotSUB. A truly useful and innovative service.

I've gotten permission from the Google Docs team to share the Google Docs video on dotSUB so it's acessible for the hearing impaired and our non-English speaking friends.

Are you bi-lingual?  Multi-lingual?  Please help us get the Google docs video translated.  All you need is a dotSub account and a visit to the video's page (right side) to start the translation.  

Here's the video in the dotSUB player - you can click the arrows at the bottom to see other languages (once the translations are complete).