@Ruth: yeah softly softly is always good.

@Jason: like I said, I liked the idea. Okay to be fair, as I said I was not present at the talk and was going off third hand comments. In a way your talks commentary by Jeremy Keith was the catalyst over my concern of style over substance, yes that is true.

I’m glad to hear that you’re not into promoting style over substance, that puts you as one of a rare few of late. Many seem to loosing sight of the real world of the web designer, where upselling is a hard and painful slog.

My talk is not just about storytelling, but the means we use to tell stories, what stories are good for and not good for, as well as differences in the ways we connect to our users through print and web design.

It’s fine if you want to talk a bit about the place of storytelling or upselling clients, but please don’t lump me in with people who are recommending style or technique over substance

As you say, working a story into a client project is super difficult for all but those rare few clients with the time ($) and vision.

However, spare a thought for those who work full-time for a company on that company’s website/s … it’s a different ball-game and I think some of Jason’s ideas are a decent fit for in-house designers who work on good websites and want to make them great.