Wednesday, September 21, 2016

AMiable Solution #203: Setting Up for Success

Everything about a play affects your experience and your reaction to it.  The lighting in the lobby.  The comfortableness of the seats.  The accompanying music.  The projection of sound.  The costumes on the actors.

The sets on the stage.

When done well, set design enhances the story being told.  Its presence is appreciated but almost unnoticed.  Nothing seems out of place.  You feel like those props are supposed to be there.

Overdone, however, and audience members not only notice the ridiculously large lamp in the corner, but they are also distracted by it.  Instead of focusing on the actors and the story they’re conveying, the audience is staring at the lamp, wondering what it’s doing there, what it has to do with the story, and how the theater got it to glow so brightly.  The lamp detracts from the experience.

Like theater sets, graphic elements in marketing create a mood and an atmosphere.  They should maintain the style and tone of the marketing piece and your organization.  They should support the “location” of your story with images of the “characters” affected by your products or services.  They should visually tell the story you’ve written--not serve as a glaring, irrelevant, “look at me” gimmick.


Whether you choose a marketing design that’s minimalistic or full, it should be natural to the content.  It should move the story--your pitch and offer--along.  When they do, that’s when you create the desired reaction.  That’s when you get your encore.

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