有一種語言，你很精通，而你卻不自知……

最新 08-11

這個TED演講，

是目前為止我聽過的第一個，

我覺得必須要分享給大家的，

毫不誇張地說，

聽這個演講的時候，

從頭到尾都是享受！

演講者是

Christoph Niemann

一位插畫師，經常為《時代周刊》

《紐約客》做封面，並在《紐約客》上有專欄

整篇演講都充滿樂趣與想像！

題目叫做

You are fluent in this language

(and you don"t even know it)

有一種語言，你很精通，

而你卻不自知。。。

I"m an artist. Being an artistis the greatest job there is. And I really pity each and every one of youwho has tospendyour days discovering new galaxies or saving humanity from global warming. But being an artist is also a daunting job. I spend every day, from nine to six, doing this.

我是個藝術家。做一個藝術家是全天下最棒的工作了。而且我真的可憐你們每一個人，不得不花時間發覺新的銀河或者拯救人類於全球變暖。（這是個玩笑）但是做一個藝術家也是一份有挫敗感的工作。我每一天從早9到晚6，都在做這樣一件事

* be+最高級+ there is, 表示全天下最。。。比如， you are the smartest person there is, 你是全天下最聰明的人，但如果there is 後面加地點，如 you are the smartest person there is in the room, 就變成你是這屋裡最聰明的人。

I even started aside careerthat consists entirely of complaining about the difficulty of the creative process.

我甚至開創了一個副業，這個副業完全就是抱怨創作過程的艱辛。

* Side 除了表示側面，旁邊，還有表示「副」的含義-次要的，比如 side effect, 副作用，當然，還可以做動詞，表示占誰一邊，i side with you on this, 在這事兒上，我和你一頭兒，這裡面做動詞； i am on your side, 我站你這頭兒，這裡面做名詞。

But today, I don"t want to talk about what makes my life difficult. I want to talk about what makes it easy. And that is you and the fact that you are fluent in a language that you"re probably not even aware of. You"re fluent in the language of reading images. Deciphering an image like that takes quite a bit of an intellectual effort. But nobody ever taught you how this works, you just know it.

但是今天，我不想聊是什麼讓我的生活艱難。我想聊是什麼讓它輕鬆。而讓它輕鬆的是你們以及你們精通一門自己都沒有意識到的語言，這樣一個事實。你精通讀取畫面這門語言。解讀像這樣一張圖需要大量的腦力工作。但是沒有人教過你這是如何運作的，你就是知道。

College, shopping, music. What makes a language powerful is that you can take a very complex idea and communicate it in a very simple, efficient form. These images represent exactly the same ideas. But when you look, for example, at the college hat, you know that this doesn"t represent the accessory you wear on your head when you"re being handed your diploma, but rather the whole idea of college. Now, what drawings can do is they cannot only communicate images, they can even evoke emotions. Let"s say you get to an unfamiliar place and you see this. You feel happiness and relief. Or a slight sense of unease or maybe downright panic.

大學，購物，音樂。讓語言變得強大的是你可以有一個複雜的想法而將其用非常簡單有效的方式表達出來。但當你看，比如，學位帽時，你知道，它表示的不是當你被授予學位時你頭上戴的配飾，而是大學這個完整的想法。

如今，畫可以做的不僅是表達圖像，它們還可以喚起情感。假設我們去了一個不熟悉的地方，而看到了這個，你會感到快樂和如釋重負。或者一點不安亦或是徹底焦慮。

But visuals, they"re of course more than just graphic icons. You know, if I want to tell the story of modern-day struggle, I would start with the armrest between two airplane seats and two sets of elbows fighting. What I love there is this universal law that, you know, you have 30 seconds to fight it out and once it"s yours, you get to keep it for the rest of the flight.

但是視覺效果，它們當然不僅僅是圖形圖標。你知道，如果我想講述現代社會掙扎的故事，我會從兩個飛機座位間的扶手和兩組肘部之間的戰鬥開始。我喜歡的是這個普世的法律，你知道，你有30秒的時間來爭取這個扶手，一旦它屬於你的，在餘下的飛行中，你都擁有它。

Now, commercial flight is full of these images. If I want to illustrate the idea of discomfort, nothing better than these neck pillows. They"re designed to make you more comfortable --except they don"t.

現在，商業航班上充滿著這樣的畫面。如果我想用插畫來表達不適，沒有什麼比脖枕更好的了。它們是設計用來讓你更舒適的，只是它們並沒有達到目的。

So I never sleep on airplanes. What I do occasionally is I fall into a sort of painful coma. And when I wake up from that, I have the most terrible taste in my mouth. It"s a taste that"s so bad,it cannot be described with words, but it can be drawn.

所以我從來不在飛機上睡覺。我偶爾會陷入痛苦的昏迷中。而當我從昏迷中蘇醒過來，我口中有最糟糕的味道。這種味道如此糟糕以至於無法用語言形容，但卻可以畫出來。

The thing is, you know, I love sleeping.And when I sleep, I really prefer to do it while spooning. I"ve been spooning on almost apro levelfor close to 20 years, but inall this time, I"ve never figured out what to do with that bottom arm.

有個問題，你知道，我愛睡覺。而當我睡覺時，我更喜歡抱著睡。我以職業選手的水準抱著睡了近20年，但是從始至終，我從沒弄明白怎麼放下面那隻胳膊。

* Pro Level, Pro名詞，職業選手，行家。you are like a pro, 你就像個行家。

* All this time, 固定片語，一直以來，從始至終

And the only thing -- the only thing that makes sleeping even more complicated than trying to do it on an airplane is when you have small children. They show up at your bed at around 4am with some bogus excuse of, "I had a bad dream." And then, of course you feel sorry for them,they"re your kids, so you let them into your bed. And I have to admit, at the beginning, they"re really cute and warm and snugly. The minute you fall back asleep, they inexplicably start rotating. We like to call this the helicopter mode.

而唯一一件讓睡覺變得比在飛機上嘗試睡覺更複雜的就是當你有年幼的孩子.他們帶著一些非常扯的理由於早上4點出現在你的床邊-我做了個噩夢。然後，當然你為他們感到難過，他們是你的孩子，所以你讓他們進入你的床。我不得不承認，一開始，他們真的很可愛，溫暖而舒適。你又睡著的那一刻，他們莫名其妙地開始旋轉。我們喜歡稱之為直升機模式。

Now, thedeepersomething is etched into your consciousness,the fewerdetails we need to have an emotional reaction. So why does an image like this work? It works, because we as readers are incredibly good at filling in the blanks.

現在，被刻入你意識中的東西越深刻，我們需要產生情緒反應的細節就越少。那麼為什麼像這樣的圖像有用呢？它有效，因為我們作為讀者非常擅長填補空白。

* The more...the more, 越。。。越。。。， the more, the merrier, 越多越開心，通常指人越多越好。比如你邀請朋友來家裡，她問能不能帶個人來，你就可以說， the more, the merrier.

Now,when you draw, there"s this concept of negative space. And the idea is, that instead of drawing the actual object, you draw the space around it. So the bowls in this drawing are empty. But the black ink prompts your brain to project food into a void. What we see here is not a owl flying. What we actually see is a pair of AA batteries standing on a nonsensical drawing, and I animate the scene by moving my desk lamp up and down.

現在，當你畫畫時，就會出現負空間的概念。而且我們的想法是，不是繪製實際對象，而是繪製周圍的空間。所以這張圖中的碗是空的。但黑色墨水會促使你的大腦將食物投射到空白處。我們在這裡看到的不是貓頭鷹飛行。我們實際看到的是一對AA電池站在一張荒謬的畫上，並通過上下移動我的檯燈來我賦予了場景生命。

The image really only exists in your mind.So, how much information do we need to trigger such an image? My goal as an artist is to use the smallest amount possible. I try to achieve a level of simplicity where, if you were to take away one more element, the whole concept would just collapse. And that"s why my personal favorite tool as an artist is abstraction.

圖像真的只存在於你的腦海中。那麼，我們需要多少信息才能觸發這樣的圖像？我作為藝術家的目標是儘可能少地使用信息。我試圖達到一種簡潔程度，即如果你要帶走一個元素，整個概念就會崩潰。這就是我個人作為一個藝術工作者最喜歡的工具是抽象的原因。

I"ve come up with this system which I call the abstract-o-meter, and this is how it works. So you take a symbol, any symbol, for example the heart and the arrow, which most of us would read as the symbol for love, and I"m an artist, so I can draw this in any given degree of realism or abstraction. Now, if I go too realistic on it, it just grosses everybody out. If I go too far on the other side and do very abstract, nobody has any idea what they"re looking at. So I have to find the perfect place on that scale, in this case it"s somewhere in the middle. Now,once we have reduced an image to a more simple form, all sorts of new connections become possible. And that allows for totally new angles in storytelling.

我想出了這個我稱之為抽象儀錶的系統，這就是它的工作原理。那麼，你用一個符號舉例，任何符號，例如心和箭，我們大多數人都會將其視為愛的象徵，而我是一個藝術家，所以我可以在任何給定的現實主義程度或抽象程度中繪製它。現在，如果我對它過於現實，它只會讓所有人都噁心。如果我在另一邊走得太遠並且做得很抽象，那麼沒有人知道他們在看什麼。所以我必須找到那個尺度的完美地方，在這種情況下，它位於中間的某個地方。現在，一旦我們將圖像縮小為更簡單的形式，就可以實現各種新連接。這使得講故事的角度更加全新。

And so, what I like to do is, I like to take images from really remote cultural areas and bring them together. Now, with more daring references.

所以，我喜歡做的是，我喜歡從非常偏遠的文化區域拍攝圖像並將它們組合在一起。現在，有更多大膽的參考。

金槍魚壽司波蘭國旗芥末醬

I can have more fun. But of course, I know that eventually things become so obscure that I start losing some of you. So as a designer, it"s absolutely key to have a good understanding of the visual and cultural vocabulary of your audience. With this image here, a comment on the Olympics in Athens, I assumed that the reader of the "New Yorker" would have some rudimentary idea of Greek art. If you don"t, the image doesn"t work. But if you do, you might even appreciate the small detail, like the beer-can pattern here on the bottom of the vase.

我可以有更多的樂趣。但當然，我知道最終事情會變得如此模糊，以至於我開始失去你們中的一些人。因此，作為一名設計師，了解觀眾的視覺和文化辭彙絕對是關鍵。對於這張圖片，對雅典奧運會的評論，我認為《紐約客》的讀者對希臘藝術有一些基本的概念。如果你沒有，則這幅圖完全沒意義。但如果你有，你甚至可能會欣賞細節，比如花瓶底部的啤酒罐圖案。

A recurring discussion I have with magazine editors, who are usually word people, is that their audience, you, are much better at making radical leaps with images than they"re beinggiven credit for.And the only thing I find frustrating is that they often seem to push me towards a small set of really tired visual clichés that are considered safe. You know, it"s the businessman climbing up a ladder, and then the ladder moves, morphs into a stock market graph, and anything with dollar signs; that"s always good. If there are editorial decision makers here in the audience, I want to give you a piece of advice. Every time a drawing like this is published, a baby panda will die.

我與雜誌編輯，這些通常擺弄文字的人，經常反覆討論-他們的讀者，也就是你們，在對圖像進行激進跳躍上要比他們認為的好得多。而我唯一感到沮喪的是，他們似乎經常把我推向一小組非常疲憊的視覺上的陳詞濫調，這些陳詞濫調被認為是安全的。你知道，就是商人爬上梯子，然後梯子移動，變成股票市場圖，任何有美元符號的東西; 那總是好的。如果現場觀眾中有編輯決策者，我想給你一些建議。每一次這樣的圖被刊登出來，一隻熊貓寶寶就會離開我們。

* give credit for xx, 認可，讚揚什麼

When is a visual cliché good or bad? It"s afine line. And it really depends on the story. In 2011, during the earthquake and the tsunami in Japan, I was thinking of a cover. And I went through the classic symbols: the Japanese flag, "The Great Wave" by Hokusai, one of the greatest drawings ever. And then the story changed when the situation at the power plant in Fukushima got out of hand. And I remember these TV images of the workers in hazmat suits, just walking through the site, and what struck me was how quiet and serene it was. And so I wanted to create an image of a silent catastrophe. And that"s the image I came up with.

什麼時候視覺套路是好或者壞？這是有細微差別的。這真的取決於故事。 2011年，在日本的地震和海嘯期間，我想到了一個封面。我查閱了經典象徵：日本國旗，Hokusai（一位日本藝術家）的「大浪」，這是有史以來最偉大的畫作之一。當福島核電廠的情況失控時，故事發生了變化。我記得這些穿著危險品工服工人的電視畫面，正好走過這個地方，讓我震驚的是這個地方是多麼安靜和平靜。所以我想創造一個沉默的災難形象。這就是我提出的形象。

* Fine line, 一個固定搭配，表示微妙區別。比如 there is a fine line between ambition and greed. 野心及貪婪間是有微妙差別的。

What I want to do is create an aha moment,for you, for the reader. And unfortunately, that does not mean that I have an aha moment when I create these images. I never sit at my desk with the proverbial light bulb going off in my head. What it takes is actually a very slow, unsexy process of minimal design decisions that then, when I"m lucky, lead to a good idea.

我想做的是為你，為讀者創造一個「啊哈」時刻。不幸的是，這並不意味著當我創建這些圖像時，我有這樣一個時刻。我從來沒有坐在我的辦公桌前,而我腦子裡的燈泡熄滅了。成就這個時刻需要的實際上是一個很多微小設計決策構成的非常緩慢也不性感的過程，然後，當我很幸運時，這個過程會產生出一個好主意。

So one day, I"m on a train, and I"m trying to decode the graphic rules for drops on a window. And eventually I realize, "Oh, it"s the background blurry upside-down, contained in a sharp image." And I thought, wow, that"s really cool, and I have absolutely no idea what to do with that. A while later, I"m back in New York, and I draw this image of being stuck on the Brooklyn bridge in a traffic jam. It"s really annoying, but also kind of poetic. And only later I realized, I can take both of these ideas and put them together in this idea. And what I want to do is not show a realistic scene.

所以有一天，我在火車上，我正在嘗試解碼窗戶上的水滴圖形規則。最後我意識到，「哦，這是包含在清晰的圖像中對於背景的模糊顛倒。」（看下圖能發現水滴顏色順序和外面背景的順序是相反的）我想，哇，這真的很酷，而我完全不知道該對它做些什麼。過了些時日，我又回到了紐約，我在交通擁堵中畫了這張被卡在布魯克林大橋上的照片。這真的很煩人，但也有點詩意。後來我意識到，我可以把這兩種想法都放在這個想法中。而我想要做的並不是展現真實的場景。

But, maybe like poetry, make you aware that you already had this image with you, but only now I"ve unearthed it and made you realize that you were carrying it with you all along. But like poetry, this is a very delicate process that is neither efficient nor scalable, I think. And maybe the most important skill for an artist is really empathy. You need craft and you need creativity to come up with an image like that. But then you need to step back and look at what you"ve done from the perspective of the reader.

士兵在玩俄羅斯方塊，從將軍的胸前的資歷牌在直播這個遊戲

但是，也許就像詩歌一樣，讓你意識到你已經擁有了這個形象，但只是現在我已經挖掘出它並讓你意識到你一直帶著它。但是，就像詩歌一樣，這是一個非常微妙的過程，我認為既不高效也不可擴展。也許藝術家最重要的技能就是真正的同理心。你需要手藝，你需要創造力來想出這樣一幅圖。但之後，你就要往後退一步，從讀者的角度審視你的創作。

I"ve tried to become a better artist by becoming a better observer of images. And for that, I started an exercise for myself which I call Sunday sketching, which meant, on a Sunday, I would take a random object I found around the house and try to see if that object could trigger an idea that had nothing to do with the original purpose of that item. And it usually just means I"m blank for a long while. And the only trick that eventually works is if I open my mind and run through every image I have stored up there, and see if something clicks. And if it does, just add a few lines of ink to connect -- to preserve this very short moment of inspiration.

我試圖通過成為更好的圖像觀察者來成為更好的藝術家。為此，我開始了自己的練習，我稱之為星期日草圖，這意味著，在星期天，我會選我在房子里找到的一個隨機物體，試著看看那個物體是否會觸發一個與該物體最初用途毫不相關的想法。它通常只是意味著我很長一段時間都是思想一片空白。最終有效的唯一技巧就是如果我敞開心扉並瀏覽我存儲在腦海里的每一張圖片，看看是否有碰撞。如果有，只需添加幾行墨水即可連接 - 以保留這個非常短暫的靈感時刻。

And the great lesson there was that the real magic doesn"t happen on paper. It happens in the mind of the viewer. When your expectations and your knowledge clash with my artistic intentions. Your interaction with an image, your ability to read, question, be bothered or bored or inspired by an image is as important as my artistic contribution. Because that"s what turns an artistic statement really, into a creative dialogue. And so, your skill at reading images is not only amazing, it is what makes my art possible. And for that, I thank you very much.

而由此而來的重要一課是，真正的魔法不會發生在紙上。它發生在觀眾的腦海中。當你的猜測和你的知識與我的藝術意圖發生碰撞時。您與圖像的互動，您閱讀，質疑，困擾或厭倦或受圖像啟發的能力與我的藝術貢獻同等重要。因為這才是真正將藝術的表達變成創造性的對話。因此，您閱讀圖像的技巧不僅令人驚嘆，而且使我的藝術成為可能。為此，我非常感謝你。

小何老師真的覺得看他的作品，

是一種精神享受，

所以再放上幾張