April 28th, 2010
There’s a commercial on TV lately. A lady talks about how she sprays one of those fresheners all over houses she wants to sell. If I were buying a house that smelled like freshener, I’d probably be a little suspicious – but I guess that’s not the point of the commercial.
The copy for the commercial is just mega formal – the kind of thing you’d expect in an email from someone you hardly know. Or maybe a well-rehearsed Powerpoint.
I mean, I actually think the copy is pretty good. Because a lot of people talk like that. Eight hours a day.
That ‘professional’ way of speaking. Which sounds like it was written with a business communications guide in the writer’s lap. Not necessarily full of buzzwords – pretty sure nobody likes those – but that real stilted speech – ‘thanks for your inquiry’ level stuff.
Are people impressed? Beyond just being aware the speaker is making an effort. Do people hear or read those words and think – wow, I like that professionalism?
Or maybe – wow, the speaker is sure trying hard. Nice.
If professionalism is about accomplishing things, then the real mark of it would be candid and direct speech. Conversational. So the message gets through without having a bunch of tie clips and pressed suits hung all over it.
Tags: advertising, copywriting
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March 10th, 2010
I just mentioned this to someone and then thought it might be helpful here. A quick little tip. A Quicktip™!
Using white hairlines in logos and stuff. Like you’ve got a big solid colored box and some text inside that’s like Helvetica Neue Light or something. Not really safe to do unless you really trust your printer and you know you or your client will always use them.
Ink on an offset press has volume. Now I don’t know a huge amount about presses so I’m just going to explain it like it was explained to me. But you can imagine a drop of ink like a ball of mud. And when you step on a ball of mud, what happens? It gets bigger.
So this drop of ink gets smashed the same way. By the blanket or something, I’m probably revealing my ignorance here. But it doesn’t matter how, point is it gets smashed. And it gets bigger.
So back to the logo. You’ve got this big area of ‘mud’ and a narrow channel of ‘not mud.’ When the ‘mud’ gets bigger, where does it go? right into the channel. Fills it in a bit, I believe this is called ‘choking.’
Anyway, this doesn’t always happen, and its probably mainly a concern at small sizes. But then, logos are frequently printed at small sizes. So there you go!
I first posted this on the Behance Tip Exchange.
Tags: print design
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