“Everything you need to know about planet Earth”
‘K The explainer Philipp Dettmer
Kurzgesagt
29 years old Munich, Germany youtube.com/Kurzgesagt 5 million views per month
urzgesagt’ was the name chosen spontaneously by Philipp Dettmer, Stephan Rether and their group of information designers for their Youtube channel. They didn’t stop to think about the problems non-German speakers might have with its pronunciation, because their original intention was just to create a private channel for uploading science videos. But then their click counts went through the roof, and soon there was an immense demand for more from the USA and England. They could hardly have chosen a worse name for their site, given that it’s so difficult for English speakers to pronounce. So they had to choose an English name to match the German: ‘In a nutshell’. Today, most users won’t even notice that these videos aren’t from one of the big animation film studios, but are in fact produced by a small design office in Munich. They deal with all kinds of topics and have been watched at least several hundred thousand times – some of them even reach into the millions. All the same, “we couldn’t ever live from this”, says Dettmer.
Clicks don’t bring money Even a well-visited Youtube channel hardly brings in any money – at least not enough to pay for all the work that goes into one of their five-minute videos. Dettmer writes the scripts himself – and he’s a non-specialist too, having studied history before turning instead to information design. Their research lasts between several weeks and several months, and his team invests at least as much time again in the actual animation. “There are no scientists in our team”, says Dettmer, but today they can at least call on the help of a whole network of experts. The immense amount of attention they get has other benefits. The ‘Kurzgesagt’ videos are an advertisement for their office’s commercial activities, and ever bigger clients are now commissioning work from them – companies such as Dell and Adidas, and even the EU. But why science? “Out of sheer interest”, says Dettmer. The videos are a real labour of love for everyone in the team. Professionals in the communication sector have been somewhat non-committal in their reaction to these newcomers, however. Universities, for example, are not very interested in their colourful little films, at least not in the German-speaking countries. “The USA and England have progressed much further in that sense. They’ve understood that it’s a good thing to put across a topic in an engaging way”. In this regard, people in the communication sector in Germany are still very elitist. And inasmuch as things are changing at all, they’re only changing “very slowly”, they say.
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Swiss National Science Foundation – Swiss Academies: Horizons No. 107
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