Lots of tiny ideas may work better than the big idea. Today there are audiences, not just an audience. There are so many languages. So many platforms, all different in some way or the other. One idea fits all may not work anymore. Adapt, but not in the way you usually do.
To hell with the headline. What if the picture says it all? What if the headline is a part of the image? What if you start with a big chunk of text straightaway? What if, what if, what if? Break format and explore. If nothing else, it will open your mind more.
Getting paid for what you love to do sometimes takes the love out of what you do. It happens. You have to understand that we are in the business of creativity. There’ll be days when the former takes over.
Make the logo disappear. The goal with your branding game shouldn’t be a big visible logo. People should recognise your brand when there isn’t one. That’s success.
With all the focus on generative art currently, we thought we will shed light on what it has taught us until now.
A) Give up control after a certain point.
B) Don’t chase perfection down to the last detail.
C) Focus more on a different way of imagining things.
D) Allow yourself to experience the joy of randomness.
E) Open your mind to a whole new world of possibilities.
F) Learn to enjoy the process.
We have always liked tinkering with old and new tools. Exploring generative art was a given. So when it came to building our website, we thought, “Generative art instead of standard graphics. Why not!”
Here’s a sample of what we came up with. Click here to check the entire series 🙂 If you would like us to experiment with your brand communication, let us know. We’ll be happy to help.
Quite a few times, we read the brief in reverse. In our experience, we have always found the main points buried at the bottom.
What we like to absorb first is what is to be done, the main message, and when is it needed?
This way, we don’t get tired by the time we reach the essence of the brief.
Once we take in the main points, we can relax and read the context written in the beginning. Situation background, brand updates, business objectives and then some.
As for the buzzwords and other big terms used, that’s a separate article in itself.
We are in a time-starved work culture. Everything is needed “yesterday”.
So until the time briefs adapt to that*, this bottoms-up strategy works for us. If you find yourself nodding your head while reading this, I guess it might work for you too.
*One-liner briefs not applicable.
More than the HP, Titan and the Kissan logos, my ever-lasting memory of Sudarshan Dheer is munching channa in his office.
Besides art and typography, his favourite topics (in no particular order) were: the philosophy of Jiddu Krishnamurti; who designed the first shoelace?; why most clocks are round? He said, “Is it because the planet is round? Or is it because time has a circular continuous concept?”
And then it was time to step out for lunch. There were five options in Colaba: the Sea Lounge (whiskey sours and bumping into Dom Moraes by the window), Paradise (scotch broth and raspberry drink), Martins (beef and more beef), Kailash Parbat (chaat and dal pakwan).
“This is India,” he said, “When will our designs be able to reflect this?”
In case you were wondering, this was from a conversation between Sudarshan Dheer and Ramu Ramanathan. It’s an insightful article on Campaign India.
Many moons ago, a brilliant strategist and a fun human being once shared this gem: Whenever you come across a project with an unclear brief, remember to extract answers for the four main Ws: What, Who, Why and Where.
1. What are you aiming to do: sell, solve, tap, make?
2. Who will be seeing, reading, listening to this?
3. Why now?
4. Where will you use it?
This basic structure still comes in handy. And surprisingly, quite often. Especially useful during verbal and one-line briefs, which is quite the norm nowadays.
There are times when we insert an additional W between What and Who—When do you want this?
I learned about cars, robots, food, soap, toys, cigarettes, sweets, fountain pens, timber, fish, newspapers, oil, wine, nuclear fuel, the army, the police. I visited hospitals, refugee hostels, sweet factories, oil refineries and nuclear plants, was taught how to drive a Land Rover through a river, how to fire the cannon of a Centurion tank and have sat quaking in a police car during a high-speed chase. I learned how the insurance and banking systems work, as well as about human rights, our plundered environment and the scandal of places like Bhopal. Through my work l learned about the deep interconnectedness of these things. Society is a web of myriad causes and effects. Tugging at a thread on this side of the web can twitch apparently unrelated strands on the far side. Quite by accident l discovered that the copywriter has real power in the world.
In case you were wondering, this is Indra Sinha, one of the advertising greats from a powerful article he wrote: How copywriters can change the world.
Despite YouTube and Amazon’s efforts, record numbers of teens are still eating Tide Pods. Hey, even we feel like popping one in the mouth. It looks delicious! Maybe Tide knew what it was doing. As the saying goes: Any publicity is good publicity. What do you think?
Via The Verge