Comedy Illustrated

"Creative people defend the world from predictability, one idea at a time." 

Sally Hogshead

As I hunt for the answers to the secrets of humor, I am continually delighted by the visual display of it. 

Illustrating humor connects people who are passionate about their world by their feelings. As the saying goes, an image is worth a thousand words. 

I believe that a million dollar smile is worth so much more. Isn't it funny how adding those words to the photo bring them into our perception so much more vividly than reading them here in the body of the post? Most of us seek thoughtful language, models, and guidance that support what we love doing and how we love feeling. 

Utilizing illustrations, or what a comedian might call "a prop," unleashes humor in a way that engages people's visual cortex and transforms and heightens thoughts and ideas into a higher frequency that is expressed in smiles, laughter, and the feelings associated with love. 

Humor is much more transparent when it is visually displayed. It may not always engage, delight, or even be noticed if there isn't a subjective feeling associated with the concept, however, by illustrating humor, we immediately know if it is or isn't offensive. 

Teaching children that people live happier, fuller lives by laughing at others is like going to the zoo and laughing at the monkeys behind the cages. Sure, some things we see in life make us laugh, but we're not really laughing for the right reasons. 

(The below picture is probably not funny to someone who lost an arm). 

And yet it's mistakingly called humor. 

Great ideas are not only powerful, they're transparent. The next time you want to know whether or not something is funny, display it and see how people react.