Skip to main content

The long and short of it


When there is no limit to the amount of space available - why not fill it?
I was reading Russell Davies column in Campaign magazine. Well, not in Campaign but on his blog. In it he discusses the differences between writing copy for a blog and for print. He raises many interesting points. It strikes me that the most significant difference is the lack of inhibition there is when writing a blog. When I write my column for Idealog it is constrained to 500 words. If there were fewer my editor would probably ask me for more. Or ask someone else. Without the copy the page would be empty. Too many words and there wouldn't be enough room. Interestingly, in part, these are design issues. The content affects the presentation of the magazine.
In a blog design is irrelevant. Content is the only thing that matters - even more true if you are reading an RSS feed. Blog sites like Blogger, WordPress and Vox offer free, simple templates that can be used in minutes. It doesn't seem to matter that my site's design is exactly the same as millions of others. In a curious way it is refreshing; you can filter out 'design' issues and concentrate entirely on content.

Russell also shows a photo of a sign he has encountered and offered a surgical improvement to it, referring us to his inspiration a blog entry about Saatchi & Saatchi creative director Simon Dicketts' technique of covering words in headlines with a finger to determine if they are absolutely necessary.

This seems to be a common thread in some of the blogs I routinely visit. Guy Kawasaki reprinted in full an article by George Orwell on matters of style when writing which created a storm of approval in his comments.

I guess with so much blog content available there comes a time when neurotic rambling isn't going to cut it anymore. We compete for attention with an infinite amount of content. The rules of good communication really should apply.

Which reminds me of an excellent little publication from Ogilvy & Mather called "How to Write Better". Must dig it out.

Comments

  1. Anonymous11:10 am

    I work for Guy Kawasaki. Thanks for your comment about Guy and the link to his posting on George Orwell!

    Mary-Louise

    http://blog.guykawasaki.com/

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St
Post a Comment
Read more and leave a comment

Ze Frank thinks so you don't have to

Ze Frank appeared on my radar when I saw his presentation among the excellent TED Talks videos . This morning I was reading Russell Davies planning blog in which he referred to a clip by Ze Frank - Where do ideas come from. Here's the transcript: "...Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima [sic] writes, "Are you ever gonna break into song again? Are you running out of ideas?" Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima, that's a good question. I run out of ideas every day! Each day I live in mortal fear that I've used up the last idea that'll ever come to me. If you don't wanna run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do 'em right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you'll get to later. Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer they wait, the more they convince themse
1 comment
Read more and leave a comment

Sexist Advertising and stereotypes

Advertising lives in the short-form world. Because mass media is so expensive the 30 second commercial is conventional and because there is so much clutter simplified signals are essential to 'cut through'. One form of communication short-hand used as a default is the stereotype - "A stereotype can be a conventional and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image, based on the assumption that there are attributes that members of the "other group" have in common. Stereotypes are sometimes formed by a previous illusory correlation, a false association between two variables that are loosely correlated if correlated at all. Though generally viewed as negative perceptions, stereotypes may be either positive or negative in tone." In the 1950's and 60's when men dominated advertising stereotypical impressions of women as inferior or subservient were not only commonplace but usual. It was normal to show women as housekeepers, largely because most wer
9 comments
Read more and leave a comment