I've been thinking about simplicity lately. Over the weekend I watched Objectified, which is a fantastic movie and I recommend it to anyone with the slightest interest in design. I’m not a designer but I think many design principles apply to writing, especially a designer’s quest to simplify. What makes a good design work and what makes a good ad work is essentially the same thing. Simplicity. The less moving parts the better.
[Objectified movie trailer.]
Yesterday, I came across a presentation by Luke Sullivan the author of Hey Whipple, Squeeze This—an amazing book that I’ve read half a dozen times at least. The topic of his presentation, you guessed it, simplicity. I’ve included the video below. It’s a bit long but there are some great insights buried in there. Here’s one nugget I excavated yesterday.
Luke Sullivan gave an example of a car print ad. The ad shows the headline, an image of the car, some body copy, then a tagline and the logo. Pretty standard ad. Then he starts stripping elements away. First it’s the body copy because a good headline can do most of the heavy lifting. Then he takes the headline because sometimes an image can do all the necessary talking. Then the tagline gets canned. He has some strong opinions about taglines something like “If it’s not “Just Do It”, don’t.” So all that’s left now is the image and the logo. Finally he strips the logo because the logo can be incorporated into the image. So all you’re left with is an image, one simple thing that does all the work. The idea is to take away everything that isn’t necessary. You have to find the balance between superfluous and cryptic. And that’s hard.
I have a habit of over-writing. So I’ve rededicated myself to simplicity. I’ve decided to be brutal with my assignments. Anything that doesn’t have a good reason to go in gets kicked out. No questions asked. It’s been an interesting exercise.
Luke Sullivan from Mediastash.tv on Vimeo.
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