Taking it to Scale: SXSW Interactive

I’ve worked at SXSW for several years now, graphically recording the keynotes, curating the graphics team, and speaking on panels with some excellent folks. My graphic records from those events seem to spread far and wide on the Internet, but once they’re gone people lose the sense of scale. This post, therefore, is specifically so that folks can understand the SIZE of these murals. They happen large and live with an audience of hundreds of people (at the keynotes, 2,000) watching you work. Their size is important because it’s part of their intrinsic value. The audience sees something unfold before their eyes, cementing the knowledge they’re being exposed to into their visual cortices. When people take visual notes on a personal scale, that neurologically-compelling, shared learning is lost. So in this case, I have to say it, size does matter. (Really, Sunni? Did you have to?)