I say that because recently we’ve been involved in a series of conversations about capitalization. Thrilling, right? Sad to say, in my case, it’s a subject that continues to grow ever more interesting. In any case, recent conversations on caps has led me to believe solutions are found in thinking of capitals contextually – not in absolute terms.

So… here is a designer’s exploration of the different ways of thinking about caps.

Title Case
We Rarely Use Title Case Because  It is So Distracting And Hard To Read. The Added Contrast of Contrast Caps Makes it A Good Choice for Trying to Make a Subhead Stand Out Against Other Competing Information. Ok, enough. I think title caps makes stilted, phony language. To my mind’s ear, it has the same strained, self importance of  James Lipton – as per this excellent parody by David Cross.

ALL CAPS
 Used in body copy, all caps reads as SHOUTING… but for subheads and labels ALL CAPS looks more geometric and structural. Where other caps treatments have an uneven top or bottom surface, all caps is inform. The shapes it produces can fit – Tetris like – into structures of content. All caps seems more like a label, and has a more authoritative feel to it. To the eye, all caps has a quality that makes the eye slip, tractionless, over the surface, as per:

lower case
Lower case is easily read. Each letter has a different shape that gives traction to the eye as it alights the different words. Lower case is casual, accommodating to the reader, and natural. Lower case is 98.6 degrees. The different vertical space of each letter occupies has a distinctly musical quality to me, as per:

Sentence  case.
Like lower case,  sentence case is easily read. An initial capital separates each sentence as a separate thought or helps direct the eye to the beginning of a line. For my way of thinking, if you are not writing in complete sentences there is no need to use sentence case.

Wrap up
As designers, of course we use lots of different caps schemes all the time. There is no universal standard… just whichever works best for your application. Think contextually!

This is an enormous jar; when full, it will probably contain several thousand dollars.

I like the design on the front. It made me want to throw in a few dollars, which I did – happily. This design breaks tons of rules, including:

• numerous technical errors
• no mention  of the speaker, timeline, contact info, or other similar details
• no production quality – just a wrinkled piece of loose leaf and some tape

This makes me think with fondness of the pure love children have of animals, the fascination they have with money and with giant things (which this very sizable jar must surely be  to the person who wrote the note).

Thanks to Avenue Bread for supporting local animals. Why not stop by and throw in a few dollars to support a worthy cause?

As always, the process begins with focusing on your message, ideally your one message.  Deciding on a core message is often the biggest challenge, especially if multiple decision makers are involved. However, once you have it, the rest is, in a sense, “just details.”

In the ad above, profitability is the key message; the function of the ad is to help the audience trust the company and the product it sells. Conveying trust is a task well suited to structural thinking, as is evidenced by the language of trust  (e.g. “a solid partnership,” “an upright citizen,” “a stand-up guy,” a “shaky deal”).

I think it’s easier to trust something that’s perfectly centered and perfectly straight, than a crooked something that leans one way or another. That was the reason behind conceiving the middle as a backbone for this ad. It connects the perfect vertical of the man’s weight bearing leg with the copywriting and the frame holding the various logos. I think of these organizational elements as power lines (like power chords), combining the function of support beams, taut string, and a live wire.  Not using them at all creates visual oatmeal, using too many is like a pile of glass shards.  A handful is just right.

Color provides another critical point of connectivity, in this case linking the message with the logo – a relationship reinforced by both elements using the same type set at the same size. Visually, we are prompting the audience to associate profitability with the Fireline brand. Conveying this message verbally and visually makes it more interesting and believable.

A final structural component is the consistent use of spacing between the various elements – depicted above through the lines and squares of equal length.  Building consistency into a design in this fashion subtly communicates a methodical, professional reliability into the message, but I think the real purpose is to be invisible. We don’t want waste the audience’s attention on these details. Their function is always to support – never compete with-  the primary message.

I’ve found that thinking structurally about design has helped us convey messages relating to corporate success, trust, reliability, and strength. However, there are times when a too structured approach ruins a concept by slowly draining the life out of it. The middle ground between too much chaos or order is different for every project or person. As always, the best strategy is to understand how the choices you are making figure into the final product.

the abyss looking back

I’ve noticed how problem solvers often become strangely “infected” with and by the problems they are attempting to solve.

In communications projects, this translates into a tendency to unconsciously fixate on the problem and be seduced into talking about its causes, outcomes and complexities at the expense of talking about the solution. Marketing is usually about promoting a positive choice, so fixating on negativity represents a significant hazard.

One strategy we use for avoiding this outcome is to “ghettoize” the problem, isolating the negativity to one small section and focusing on the positive (i.e. solutions, benefits, ideas, etc.) in the remaining areas. This framework helps create more focused conversations and better work.

I presented this idea to a group of healthcare providers last week. This group was considering pushing for legislative changes for helping children benefit from a more integrated, progressive health care model. It was great to see how they made the collective agreement to focus on positive outcomes in their messaging. Choices like this translate into more  focused work as well as shorter, less numerous meetings, and set the stage for a successful partnership to follow.

"This is not a pipe." René Magritte, The Treachery of Images

I had coffee with a friend this week who asked me for my thoughts on a brochure draft. The purpose of the brochure was to encourage people to donate to an organization that protects communities from a mechanical failure that can result in enormous harm and loss of life.

The writing was straightforward enough, but the graphics struck me as odd. A picture of an explosion filled the entire front panel. Below it, a logo highlighted the word “trust” featuring a symbolic depiction of the faulty equipment in fire engine red. This pattern was repeated throughout the entire piece.

I told my friend that I thought the piece was crazy, literally. Where the verbal message was about creating confidence and security, the graphic message was about the exact opposite. The result was a brochure that was difficult to understand or believe in. It was fundamentally compromised as a fund raising tool.

My advice was to frame the piece within one message, and to make the graphics and words support one another so that the resulting piece could be easily understood by the audience. Instead of the explosion overwhelming the entire panel, it could be framed – contained as it were – by text describing the organization’s purpose.

Creating consistency between the verbal and visual parts of a message is a great rule of thumb. If more people used it, it would keep a lot of bad marketing safely out of sight. Obvious culprits include things like the aforementioned images of disaster to sell safety or peace of mind, or stereotypes of used car salespeople or criminals to sell the importance of trust or reliability.

The exceptions to this rule are many, often necessary, and occasionally brilliant. It sometimes makes sense to show overweight people to sell the importance of exercise, for example, or a deforested landscape to talk about the importance of ecology.

And sometimes saying one thing and showing another is effective marketing, particularly in political messaging through words like “peace keeper” or 1984′s “Ministry of Love” which was essentially an instrument of torture. It’s a bizarre human truth that you could stick the name of something onto its opposite without raising eyebrows. Here in Bellingham, Washington, the “People for Progressive Transportation” are essentially arguing for dismantling a bus system in favor of cars. Such is the power of names.

My recommendation is to be mindful of the distance between words and the visuals that accompany them. Make sure they match one another unless you have a specific reason for doing the opposite. If you are promoting a solution to the problem – especially an abstract problem – be especially careful about depicting the problem. Consider “containing” the problem so that the problems and solutions never comingle and become one in the minds of your audience.

yearning - by William Steig

For the past few months, I’ve been exploring a powerful tool that has exerted a subtle but profound influence on my professional life. Google Insights has become a backdrop for our strategic work, and truth be told, a bit of a fascinating toy as well.

On a technical level, Insights is a free search engine analysis tool, and it’s extremely easy to use. It breaks down search engine results by time and location; it also provides feedback about trends related to the terms you query.

In terms of my own use, I think of Insights as a window into the desires of the Internet’s hive mind. Its obvious uses are powerful indeed. One client, for example, provides a service available from multiple sources in our community but with limited availability in BC, just north of their location. Insights pinpointed one community – Surrey – in which this particular service saw over 5,000% growth. Wow.

I challenge you to invest 30 minutes exploring terms related to your own business or occupation without experiencing a shift of perspective. In time, you can sculpt your queries to ask very nuanced questions. I recommend paying particular attention to the related terms that appear on the bottom of the search.

Its less obvious uses are even more fascinating to me – particularly as they relate to the viral quality certain ideas, words, and behaviors have. I’ve been exploring slang, jargon, pop culture, and misinformation of all kinds. Climate change vs. global warming vs. global warming hoax? Even our collective shift from coughing into our hands to coughing into our elbows play out in interesting ways in Insights.

Where even I wouldn’t claim that this information is always useful, I can’t help but think that use of this tool has given me a new perspective on marketing and a new insight into the ideas that are top of mind, both today and yesterday. If you’re in the business of capturing minds at any level, I think you’ll find that it’s an indispensable tool.

A recent survey by ExactTarget indicated that 70% of Facebook users don’t want marketing to be incorporated in social media applications – even when they opt to become fans of a particular business.

Of course. Given the choice, few people would claim they want to be marketed to, ever – regardless of the medium. It’s a bit like asking if they want a headache or a pebble in their shoe.

Yet, Facebook is obviously filled with people cheerfully engaged in all sorts of marketing activities – downloading coupons, answering polls, signing petitions, benefiting from discounts, playing games, earning badges. Companies are providing many of these activities, and of course they are marketing themselves.

It’s a matter of how a word is perceived. “Marketing” as the hard sell, the interruption, the phony friendliness, the lackluster product with a glossy polish is clearly not what Facebook is for. This is how many people perceive marketing today.

“Marketing” as an envolving form of communication – a free resource, a clever idea, an insightful observation, and the occasional promotion, gimmick, or self congratulation – is clearly at home at Facebook.

I’m curious to see what comes next. Facebook will eventually be replaced, almost certainly because the commercial aspects of it will overwhelm the other content. Will our perception of the word  “marketing’ shift as well? I wonder if it will always have a negative ring to most people, and if it will be something whose obviousness makes it seem a thing of the past. Most importantly, I wonder what will replace it.

I think it’s an exciting trend to watch and participate in, and with Facebook’s 300 million users, the effects are going to be far reaching indeed.

Some people separate risks into different categories – physical, social, monetary, etc. – where others think in terms of high or low involvement.

A low involvement choice is a product like detergent, gum, or paper towers.  These sorts of decisions are quickly made on the basis of cost,  convenience, recognizability, and familiarity.  There is little risk involved.

Low involvement marketing materials don't involve a lot of trust or risk. Standing out is hugely important for the success of these products.

High involvement choices evoke  a higher decision process because of greater of risk. The decision is much more thought out, possibly more emotional, less subject to being driven by  price,  convenience, or similar considerations.  For obvious reasons, health care is almost always considered  a high involvement message.

High involvement marketing is much more reliant on trust and understanding, and a brand  functions to create a connection between the organization and the client.

When developing high involvement marketing materials, we often use inclusive language (“we,” “you,” “us,” etc.) to address a relationship, and we respect the audience by providing them with  the information they need to a make an informed choice.  We position our client as the organization that helps solves the audience’s problems , relieves an anxiety, or creates an opportunity.  Design in these circumstances is minimal and uncomplicated, created to calm and frame content without competing with it.

The excessive formatting of this ad is just one of the things about this ad that make it untrustworthy to modern eyes.

If your proposition is high involvement and  your materials are cluttered, busy, or inconsistent, you may want to consider the corrosive effects these qualities have on your audience’s ability to extend their trust.  The perceived need to “stand out” is usually the culprit, taking a potentially simple message and ornamenting  it with extraneous formatting, effects or clipart.

Better to focus on a simple message  that differentiates you, use creative concepts that speak to that message.  It’s been my experience that focusing on a message opens the door to more interesting, creative concepts because they were born out of a real need and won’t change every time there’s a new project.  Over time, these choices will make it easier for your audience to understand, value, and ultimately trust you.

Though our eyes can distinguish millions of different shades of colors, our color vocabulary is limited in comparison –  about thirty words in all.  As a species, those  words enter vocabulary at a snail’s pace, using  a sequence that remains much the same from culture to culture.

All languages have words for black and white. Red is always the third color to have a word associated with it, followed by green (or yellow) and then yellow (or green). Blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, and grey follow suit.

There are a few  variances to this general pattern.  One African tribe has no word for green but six for red. The ancient Greeks had no word for blue. There is no Old English word for orange.

Personally, I like the fact that red is always the first color to get a word. This reinforces a notion I have about red, white, and black being the most striking color combination there is.

Source: The Art of Looking Sideways, Alan Fletcher