 How to keep your next creative challenge on track
We know a woman who was expecting her first child, and was obsessing over what to name that kid. There’s nothing unusual, or wrong, about that. Thing is, she was just as concerned about the middle name as the first name. And that’s dead wrong. This story can help you with design layouts, writing assignments, proposals, and RFP responses. Don’t believe it? Read on. What are you really doing? That’s the big question. What are you really doing? What is your assignment, in essence? It’s so easy to get distracted by, and mired in, the details, that you can lose your perspective on the big-picture issues that matter. (Heck, we wrote an entire article about this—one of our most popular, by the way—entitled “Squint to See Clearer.”) And that’s a shame. Because—and here’s the big takeaway--the big-picture elements will dictate the details to you, easily and organically. Yup. If you start on details too early, not only do you lose the thread of the assignment, but you actually do extra work. It’s, in a word, harder. When you start with the broader requirements (the “first name”), they’ll guide you along—assuming you’ve put the proper care and effort into developing them. Sketching it out We recently were called upon to design a big wall poster that would be the centerpiece of a direct-mail campaign. This poses some interesting challenges. Our client, naturally, wanted every recipient of this thing to proudly hang it on his or her office wall. So did we. But the tricky line to walk was “How much value” vs. “How much sell.” If you receive one of these posters in the mail—unsolicited, of course—what’s going to impel you to take the time and effort to hang it in your office? What, to put it another way, would ever prevent you from simply tossing it in the trash as so much expensive junk mail? This is the “first-name first” challenge. The poster provides three chunks of really valuable information: exactly the kind of stuff you’d love to have on your office wall, ready to help you at a glance. It also contains “sell” copy for our client, along the lines of “If you find this information interesting, contact us to learn more about how we can put this information to use for you.” If you’ve been keeping track, we’re now up to four “chunks” of information for this poster: Three chunks of useful info, and one chunk of “sell.” Much as the client would love to divvy this poster up in half, with the three chunks of useful info crammed into one half, and all the sell copy sprawled across the other half, we argued that that approach would be counter-productive. We felt that it should basically be divided into thirds, with one third for each chunk of useful info, and just a smidgen left over for the elegantly-presented “sell.” This way, recipients would be more likely to trade off a tiny bit of “being sold to” in exchange for “a lot of value, worth hanging on the wall.” Thence the sketch. You don’t have to be a great artist to do this yourself. Simply draw a little rectangle in the proportions of the poster (in this case, it was to be horizontal), and divide it into three equal columns. Then “cheat” a little extra room on one side. That’s what we did. The “sell” amounted to about ten percent of the entire real estate. After sketching out that poster shape and the little guidelines in it—which took all of about 15 seconds—we roughed in areas for the “umbrella” headline which would cover the three chunks of info, the subheads for each info-chunk and the “sell” chunk, and so on. Within a couple minutes, we had a nicely rendered sketch which we scanned and sent along to the client and their talented graphic artist, who had no problem transforming it into a tight layout with minimal rework required. It was just a matter of first-name first. The name game Think of naming a baby again. What is the name that people will use to refer that person, every day for the rest of his or her life? The first name. Of course. So you want to put all the effort in the world into that first name. How does it sound when reduced to, say, two syllables? Is there any possible interplay between the first and last names that might invite nasty nicknames? (We can’t help but think of the real race car driver with the unfortunate name of Richard Trickle. You guessed right: He’s better known as Dick Trickle, and we don’t think that’s the nicest thing to do to your kid.) Once you have the first name you’re happy with, then work on the middle name. It will simply drop into place. It’s how “John Astor” just naturally becomes “John Jacob Astor.” For the poster we described above, “Jacob” is the subheads. It just fell into place nicely, without any work or hardly even thinking about it. Now think about the next creative challenge that’s awaiting you. Step back. Look at it from a distance. What part of it is the “first name”? Choose only one element; that’s where your initial discipline is required. Then focus all your energy on developing just that element, and holding off on the others until you’re done. That’s the second burst of discipline you’ll need. The rest is easy. Need help wrapping your head around that next creative challenge? Contact us. We tackle these kinds of assignments all the time, and certainly practice what we preach. That translates to strong results, not to mention competitive pricing, for you.
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