Archive for August, 2008

anyone impressed by that

Sunday, August 3rd, 2008

I used to work in a bookshop. At one time, a management type decided that it would be a good idea if we published a newsletter to inform customers of signings, new releases etc. I liked the idea.

Until I saw the first draft. Which was, to put it mildly, rubbish. Phrases like “Comic sans is a bad choice for body copy” and “that lo-res image blown up 300% makes you look silly” sprang to mind, only for me to realise that this was somewhat overanalysing the problem. Which was that this was something just shy of the competence level of a homework project from a seven year old schoolchild.

Instead, I went with

Anyone impressed by that would be impressed by anything.
& is therefore never worth going out of your way to be impress

Which is a phrase that I have re-used extensively since. In fact, I use it as a rule for all of the marketing initiatives that I have to deal with. Who exactly is going to be impressed by this? if the answer is ‘a teenager circa 1997′ then we probably haven’t got this right yet.

Moral of my story: If you aim higher, you impress all those other people by default. Just about good enough leaves you alienating the more discerning people out there, and actively damages your brand.

simpler please

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

If there is one thing that impresses me consistently, it is simplicity done well.

Not that I have anything against things that are complex per se. But in things that are more complicated than they need to be. In fact I love complicated abstractions, I am fascinated by Cricket for instance, which is nothing if not a very complicated set of arbitrary rules that seems completely impenetrable on the first encounter.

But if it wasn’t for that, then the game itself wouldn’t be half as interesting. It’s a great example of a situation where adding layers of complexity actively adds to the value of something.

When I have discussions about how the accounts department of my company works though, or when I look at the shrink-wrapped tomatoes at my supermarket, something dies inside at the complete stupidity of just how complicated this thing has become, for no tangible benefit at all.

A little strongly stated perhaps. but the point remains – do we really have to make four payments back & forth where a conversation & one would do, & everyone would be sorted out & happy much quicker? Do you_really_ think that there is enough wrong with the methods of storing tomatoes that people have been using for the last thousand years that there is any real benefit from the waste you are generating? Not to mention the extra hassle involved in my actually getting at them.

So please, can we just keep things simple?