Words and design for a better world.

This is how it's done:



I found this quite captivating. It's a perfect example of being brave about tone of voice. Poverty, AIDS, malnutrition, education... are these subjects about which we can be light - even funny - and still get the message across? This little video shows that not only is this possible, it can actually be the best way to get the message across.

I love the little "(dramatic pause)" title that comes up. It's a joke. Nothing else; no clever angle. Just a gentle little joke. In a message about AIDS and poverty. Then there's the light, conversational tone of the words. It's deceptively effortless.

What these touches do, of course, is engage you. Make you want to hear more. They open the door in your head and let the rest of the message in. (It doesn't hurt that the message is so clear, so potent and so intuitive, either.)

Lastly, of course, the words live in the graphic approach, and the graphic approach is inspired by the words. It's lovely to watch. So you do - and then you hear.

(Many thanks to Tim Rich, who posted about this inspiring marriage of writing and graphic design on the 26 message board.)

Oh my Wordle

Wordle is a rather splendid thing. (Discovered, as is so often the way, via Russell.)

If you paste a chunk of text into Wordle, it creates a cloud of the most frequently used words, their sizes relative to their usage. (Like a tag cloud.)

The one here is from the first 61 pages of my novel, Rag and Bone Dreams. Goodness, a copywriter with a novel on the go. Who'd have thought it?

Great guerilla stickers for VW

This is a lovely idea from Brazil:



If you can't be bothered to watch it, VW looked for cars with dents and scratches on their rears. Then they put stickers against these marks, promoting the Polo's parking sensors.

A nice touch is that the stickers are the same colour as the cars (as much as possible, presumably), so it looks like the type has actually appeared on your bodywork.

Via Adverbox

Now Orange has made a Sony ad.

There's a thread developing here, isn't there? I've been noting TV ad rip-offs for a while now (here and here), and now there's another one. We've just had BMW doing Honda, now Orange do Sony. When the ad below began on my TV the other night, I thought, 'Here we go: Bravia again.' But it wasn't.



It was Orange, whose marketing continues to get up my nose in all sorts of ways. Not only are they persisting with their wilfully bewildering dolphin/badger/artichoke/frog tariff system (or whatever it is), they've made a Sony ad about it. I mean, it's not quite on the same scale, but don't all these people reaching up for floaty orange things remind you just a weeny bit of all those people reaching up for floaty foamy things?


Presumably the international market has something to do with this. The ad was shot in Buenos Aires, but it could just as well be Paddington or Grand Central. And there's no dialogue. So you can stick whatever voiceover and titles you like on it. Bingo: globally consistent branding, plus lower production costs.

Both spots, of course, are made by Agency Du Jour, Fallon. They're making it pretty easy on themselves these days, aren't they? They must still be laughing even when they've been back from the bank for some considerable time.

Why has BMW made a Honda ad?

Bizarre. Oh, and I know I'm just a lone voice in the wilderness, but that end line? That should of course be 'Fewer emissions'. Tut.

What's your Question Mark Inside?

I've just come from tea and cakes at the Chapter House of St Paul's Cathedral. This is not the sort of thing I do every day, as you might imagine. In fact, I've never done it before and probably won't again. So I should thank Martin Firrell for inviting me.

Martin is a public artist, known for projecting often provocative messages onto public buildings. (He's also a branding consultant and writer, off and on, which is how I met him.)

He's been commissioned to create a work to celebrate the 300th Anniversary of the topping-out of St Paul's. His response is The Question Mark Inside: an attempt to explore that part of ourselves that leads people to religion or other forms of spirituality. The part that wrestles with all the big questions - why are we here? What's the meaning of life? What's the secret of happiness? All that stuff.

The project blog invites people to contribute their own thoughts on the subject, and has become an archive of deep thoughts from around the world (and some not so deep). Martin's plan, as he told the assembled throng at the Chapter House today, is to 'put all these thoughts into the hugest blender in the world, and press pulse, and create a Question Mark smoothie. Then I'll spread some of that smoothie onto the dome of St Paul's'. Well, there's a thought.

It's an ambitious plan, and an exciting one. The first sneak preview will be on 8 November, to coincide with the Lord Mayor's Show, and then there will be a full, three-week run of the project later that month. Martin and the Cathedral are busily fundraising for the project, so if you feel like helping - either in cash or in kind - you can email emma at martinfirrell dot com with offers.

Why it's important to capitalise proper nouns

From the BBC website this morning. Enough said, I think.