April Fool’s Day

Google changed their landing page today in honor of Topeka, who had changed their name to Google for the month of March as part of their effort to convince Google to select Topeka as a beta site for the gigabit fiber project.

The effective use of humor can go a long way towards personalizing your organization and creating goodwill.

K4VAZBG25DAV

A Story Well Told

While putting the finishing touches on Reno’s Google RFI submission yesterday, I took a moment to glance through the NAGW discussion group and came across a video created by Hand Crank Films in support of Bellingham, Washington. I understand from reading some of the comments on YouTube that it took two days to shoot and another four to edit, which is a significant investment, but well worth it.

The reason I’ve included it here is that I think it provides one of the best examples of the power of video for communicating about a community. The creators tell a simple, visual story that would work without the voice over. But then they wrote copy that builds on the metaphor and provides a sincere, emotional link to the community. The concept is both apt and compelling and is beautifully illustrated. The “actors” are natural and believable. This is gorgeous work.

We should all aspire to this level of craft and creativity.

Clip Art = Agony

Ask anyone who’s ever worked for me about my biggest design peeve and they’ll probably say “double spacing after a period.” Close, but they’d be wrong.

The truth is, I hate clip art.

One of my favorite stories (and I’m probably going to be killed by my former colleague for this) involves a complex, but rather dry presentation on process improvement. My colleague had all her ideas laid out and was looking to make her presentation more engaging by adding some visual interest.

Somewhere, somehow, she discovered a cache of line drawings of clowns. Dozens of them. Cute clowns, funny clowns, clowns with balloons. Every slide had its own, distinctive clown.

Setting aside the subtext the illustrations gave to the presentation, the quality of the illustrations was part of my problem. They were simple line art drawings with a cartoonish four-color scheme. Just hideous.

I suppose that in the spirit of full disclosure I should admit to a life-long hatred of clowns, so this particular use of clip art was made infinitely worse by the subject matter. But I truly don’t believe that my odd prejudice against clowns mitigates the situation.

The trouble with clip art is that most of it is so common that it’s difficult to find illustrations that aren’t hackneyed, and is usually tacked on at the end to “spice up” the design and is therefore not organic to the piece. It doesn’t thoughtfully and purposefully contribute to the design goals.

On the other hand it’s inexpensive—free in many cases—and easy to use, and can be used as a design element when enough time is invested in selecting, sizing, and integrating the artwork into the design.

But if you want to do one thing to improve the look of your publications: don’t use clip art. And don’t double space after a period. And don’t use Microsoft Word as a page layout program. And…