What’s your blood elevator?

I wanted to go to bed but then The Shining came on TV. So I watched a little bit of the beginning. It’s such a classic.

The blood elevator. The twins.

Whether you’ve seen Stanley Kubrick’s movies or not, you’re probably familiar with his iconic images. The Shining is full of them. Jack Nicholson breaking through the door, grinning “Heeeere’s Johnny!” The boy riding his little bicycle in the hallways. But Kubrick’s other movies too. HAL’s “red eye” and the rotating spaceship from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or the cowboy sitting on top of a nuclear bomb in Dr. Strangelove.

Part of what makes Kubrick such an iconic director is that he is a visual storyteller. He uses powerful shots that stand out. They may be hard to create, like an actual flood of (fake) blood, but he knew these shots were worth it.

As designers, we are also visual storytellers. And we can apply Kubrick’s techniques in our work as well, for example whenever we create slidedecks or screen designs. What’s the one slide that will stand out and your audience will remember a week later? What is the key screen in your flow that will pop out? What’s your “blood elevator”?

We may not have the cultural impact Kubrick had, but if we want, we can be little Kubricks every day.