Bass notes: Saul Bass at London's Kemistry Gallery

Saul Bass is acknowledged as one of the 20th century’s most successful corporate designers, responsible for (amongst others) the logos and identity systems for AT&T, United Airlines, Alcoa and Warner Communications.

Bass’s work is instantly recognisable for its directness, its simplicity and the way it makes its meaning felt. Breaking all conventions in the 1950s and 60s, Bass virtually invented film titles as we know them today, and he was the first to synthesize movies into compelling trademark images.

Looking at his poster designs on display at the Kemistry Gallery, I wondered how much his style was driven by the silk screen process and the need to reduce the visual idea down to it's simplest, most expressive components.

His later posters were more colourful and visually complex, yet seemed to have less impact.

In a period when graphic imagery can be easily manipulated electronically, Bass reminds us that to cut through the visual clutter, a strong idea is always at the heart of a great design.

Structured content

The organisation of content directly affects our ability to receive a message.

Some people want to know all the details, others just require a general understanding. Structuring information in a way that provides the viewer with multiple levels of understanding is a fundamental principle of communication design.

Will the editorial approach be story, news or feature? Narrative or bullet point? Q&A or monologue?

Understanding the structure of your content, having an overview of the likely sequence of content types and applying the LATCH and AIDA communication models will help you to structure your design.

LATCH and AIDA structural models
There are two standard models for organising content. Created by Richard Wurman, LATCH (Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, Hierarchy), identifies five key ways to categorise information and is generally used at the document level. AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action), Developed by E St Elmo-Lewis describes the sales process and is a generally used in advertising and at the story level in narrative.

LATCH (Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, Hierarchy)

• Location - Structures information based on spatial positioning ie. transport guides, the human body. Use location when physical connections are important to understanding.
• Alphabet - Organises content structure on letter sequence. Use the alphabet when seeking a structure that will be broadly familiar to a diverse audience.
• Time – Chronological frameworks should be used when users need to understand a sequence of events ie. calendars, timelines.
• Category – Group together information with similar features or attributes. Organise data by category when you need to emphasise connections between data sets.
• Hierarchy - Organise information by measure or perceived importance. Use when assigning weight or value to information.

These categories are not mutually exclusive. For instance, a newspaper is divided into different categories; business, sports, arts etc. Within these sections, editors use hierarchy to place stories in order of perceived importance. The obituary section is ordered alphabetically, whilst the sports results are listed chronologically and weather is mapped by location.

AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action)

• Attention or awareness must be developed so that the audience is aware of the product or service.
• Interest must be generated so that the audience learns more about the offer.
• Desire must be created, evoking an emotional response.
• Action is then taken.

For example, in a magazine article or advert you grab attention through an engaging image or arresting headline. The copy creates interest in and desire for the product or service. Finally, the call to action prompts the viewer to act.

You can see that the AIDA model can be used most effectively if you fully understand the needs of your customer or end users.

Creative clusters and innovation

Putting creativity on the map

NESTA research report 2010

NESTA is the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts - an independent body with a mission to make the UK more innovative. NESTA invests in early-stage companies, informs policy, and delivers practical programmes that inspire others to solve the big challenges of the future.

Their report into Creative Clusters, published in November 2010 makes interesting reading for both businesses looking to foster creativity within their organisations, as well as policy makers and planners looking at creativity locally and nationally.

The creative industries are a force for innovation at the national, regional and organisational level. At 6.2 per cent of the economy, and growing at twice the rate of other sectors, the economic importance of the creative industries to the UK are proportionately the largest of any in the world. Nurturing high-technology clusters can also be seen as a way of rebalancing the economy away from the construction and financial services sectors.

The UKs creative industries are more innovative than many other high-innovation sectors, providing a disproportionate number of the innovative businesses in most parts of the country. Analysis of the innovation performance of Britain’s creative industries confirms that they punch well above their weight in terms of innovation across almost all regions in the UK.

NESTA took the concept of creative clusters as a starting point to examine the role that creative industries play in local and regional innovation systems.

Industrial clustering benefits businesses by giving them access to skilled staff and shared services, and the opportunity to capture valuable knowledge spillovers.

Creative firms tend to locate close to each other even more than
most other sectors. Advertising and Software firms often cluster near each other; the same is true of Music, Film, Publishing and Radio and TV businesses.

Creative hotspots
London is at the heart of the creative industries in Britain, dominating in almost all creative sectors, and particularly in the most intrinsically creative layers of the value chain for each sector.

The nine other creative hotspots across Britain are Bath, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Guildford, Edinburgh, Manchester, Oxford and Wycombe-Slough.

Different cities across Britain have different profiles of creative specialisation: cities across the South present more diversity in their range of creative services, whereas Northern and Midlands cities (Manchester excepted) have similar creative profiles.

However, the mere existence of a creative agglomeration is not enough for the benefits from clustering to emerge. The other crucial ingredient is connectivity between firms within a cluster, with collaborators, business partners and sources of innovation elsewhere (both in the UK and overseas), and finally, with firms in other sectors that can act as clients, and as a source of new and unexpected ideas and knowledge. These three layers of connectivity are underpinned by a dense web of informal interactions and networking.

NESTA’s report identified a range of proactive steps that can be taken to help boost creativity internally, locally and nationally;

Look for latent clusters rather than try to build new ones from scratch
Identify whether there are any latent clusters ‘hidden’ in your locality that would benefit from networking and awareness-raising to develop a dense web of internal and external links.

Think about which sectors work well together
There are important synergies between some creative sectors, but not others. Avoid potentially wasteful ‘one-size-fits-all’ strategies for creative clusters that don’t pay sufficient attention to the distinctive needs of different sectors.

Adopt better targeted, and more realistic strategies that focus on ‘building up and connecting’ those sectors that are already present – and are complementary with each other.

Technological innovation is increasing the potential impacts from the creative industries…
The creative industries do not have a monopoly on creativity, but neither do manufacturing and engineering have a monopoly on technological innovation.

Universities should do more to promote innovation in increasingly tech-intensive creative industries
Technology intensive creative industries, for example, have something to gain from tapping into the public research base in their local universities.

In the context of the creative industries, universities tend to be seen mainly as a source of skilled labour. This contrasts with the technology and science-based sectors, where universities are a crucial source of knowledge for innovation, as well as high-growth spinoffs. It is important to ensure that the local creative industries engage more actively with universities to harness research outputs that might enhance their productivity and innovative performance.

Nurture talent, and give it reasons to stay
The presence of a specialised and knowledge-intensive pool of labour is a key factor in business.

Help remove barriers to collaboration
Even if they are aware of each other, local creative businesses may be keen to protect their valuable ideas or client portfolios and be wary of collaborating for fear of disclosing sensitive information.

Capture creative value locally
The generation of original intellectual property (IP) is at the core of what many creative businesses do. Where they retain ownership over their IP, they have more incentives to innovate to exploit it, generating additional revenues that can be reinvested in growth, and building commercial and collaborative relationships with other local firms.

Build bridges as well as towers
Although investments in iconic public buildings can produce undoubted cultural and economic benefits, building links between potentially collaborative businesses and sectors may produce longer lasting impacts.

East London Tech City as the beginning of a new approach for creative cluster development?
The Prime Minister’s announcement (in November 2010) of the East London Tech City set of initiatives, aimed at building up the vibrant high-tech and digital media cluster in Old Street and Shoreditch is a step in the right direction. Rather than trying to create a new cluster from scratch, East London Tech City aims to take an organic, already competitive cluster to the next level, by providing it with the right infrastructure (both physical and digital), and developing its connections with global companies.

Ideas

Visual communication depends on creativity taking place with a framework. You can’t give your imagination free reign because you have to come up with ideas about your subject in a context that will not confuse the receiver.

But working with a framework need not stifle creativity. Restrictions provide something to react against, or a tradition to break. The challenge is in pushing the boundary but not necessarily exceeding it.

Most people would agree that creativity means challenging conventions and producing, or being open to, new ideas. Of combining things that are not normally associated together in different or unexpected ways to create something new and exciting.

A good idea is a thought that may offer a new overview of a communication problem, or a starting point for a new solution. Often it adds something new to the message through the wording or design.

A successful idea captures attention and invokes an emotional response. It should be simple and clear and have the capacity for further development.

Practical creativity often follows a familiar pattern that starts with an insight to the nature of the communication problem to be solved, establishes and clarifies the goals that you are trying to achieve, involves a period of desk research or mystery shopping to understand the context of the problem and the target audience, before finally generating ideas and reviewing their value and currency.

Thinking laterally about applying new information or providing a different context to your message is important in creativity. Avoiding habitual solutions by finding a new perspective or angle on a familiar problem allows the creative thinker to see things in a new light.

But where do ideas come from? There are two levels of dialogue that can take place, internal within the creative mind and external with your colleagues. Unlocking those dialogues involves breaking strong forces of internal and external habit. Everyone must feel able to think and to voice ideas that may be unworkable or plain daft.

Tricking your brain into avoiding self-censorship for fear of criticism or rejection often involves using creative tools or role-play. These techniques may include;

• Brainstorming – Ideas by association where all suggestions are welcome
• Nine boxes – your problem in the middle, eight possible solutions around the outside. Take each idea in turn and repeat.
• Opposites – ideas using opposites and conflicts
• Six thinking hats – Edward de Bono’s classic methodology
• Sketching – drawing often triggers new ideas
• Starting at the end – work backwards to discover the prerequisites for success

And finally, there’s your idea, ready to be developed and tested and grown into a full creative solution.

As an untried solution to a problem, your idea only becomes meaningful when it is applied to the communication problem. But when your idea successfully addresses problem, is in line with the goal of your client, reflects the vision and values of their business and is capable of being deeply embedded in all communication channels, then you have your creative solution.

This is Tomorrow

And so to the Whitechapel Gallery to see This is Tomorrow, an account of the production process of this seminal exhibition.

During the 1950s mass production and new technologies were celebrated by the Media. Novel materials were to influence all areas of life, from the daily maintenance of living spaces and the built environment as well as the production of art.

Architect, writer and founder member of Pentagram Theo Crosby’s initial idea for an exhibition involving architects, artists, designers and theorists resulted in This is Tomorrow, which took place at the Whitechapel in 1956 in collaboration with members of the Independent Group. The theme was the ‘modern’ way of living and the exhibition was based on a model of collaborative art practice. The 38 participants formed 12 groups, which worked towards producing one artwork.

Just What Is It that Makes Today’s Homes So Different,
So Appealing? © Whitechapel Gallery

 

 

One of the group members, Richard Hamilton, produced his 1956 collage Just What Is It that Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? for the exhibition. It is considered by critics and historians to be one of the early works of Pop Art.

An iconic show in its conception and realisation it has continuously interested artists, theorists and curators ever since due to the challenge it posed for the creative practitioners and visitors alike. The former, as each group was formed by an architect, a designer, an artist and a theorist, were requested to amalgamate their individual approaches and produce a work by deploying a new methodology. The public, with no interpretation panels and other information available, had to make their own judgements as to how to navigate inside the gallery and interpret the works they viewed.

Messaging

According to the New York Times, the average person is subjected to over 5,000 advertising messages a day. The more messages we perceive, the greater the background noise.

The more you shout, the more noise is created. Everybody wants to be heard. Everybody shouts. To rise above the noise, you need to shout louder.

Or do you?

What your clients need is a message that cuts through the noise, even if you only whisper.

Formulating and structuring your message is therefore critical to making sure you are heard.

Needs
Establishing the needs of your target group – and therefore the types of messages that are likely to resonate with them – is a key component of your message.

Maslow expressed his triangular hierarchy of needs in 1954. Basic physical needs form the base of the pyramid. Once these are satisfied, people’s desires move up to the next level, safety needs, and then social, esteem and self-actualisation at the apex. We move up and down through these levels depending on our lifestage and circumstances.

To be successful, messages, goods and services need to be aligned with the needs of your target audience at their appropriate lifestage.

For instance, expensive makeup is neither a physiological, safety nor social need. Loreal plays on esteem needs of the professional woman with disposable income ‘because you’re worth it’.

Arguments
Rather than shouting louder, it is better to convince a person with a series of statements establishing your proposition.

That’s right, you came here for an argument.

The first stage in an argument is to delimit the terms of reference. What is in and what is out. Provide too much unnecessary information and your audience gets bored.

Then there has to be a structure to the message to make it worth listening to; a narrative with a beginning, middle and end; a dialogue; a setup and a payoff.

The actual message itself can consist of a primary argument (eating 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day is healthy) and secondary arguments (fruit and vegetables are cheap and easy to prepare) that help convince the receiver by supporting the main argument.

The optimum message is based on the primary argument, but where there are several supporting arguments, the strongest one is normally used first with the second strongest left until last and the weakest ones in between.

Both primary and secondary arguments may appeal to logic (health benefits) or emotion (better skin tone) to get their point across. However, whilst the receiver can be convinced by rational arguments, logic is no more important than emotion in decision-making.

This is because the receiver firstly identifies with and adopts a position on your message. Based on the position takes, the receiver then filters all the arguments and counter-arguments. If the pros outweigh the cons, then a subconscious decision is made and the receiver rejects the opposition position. In essence, the receivers convince themselves of the course of action to take.

Generally arguments are one-sided, as the receiver can be relied upon to provide the subvocalised opposition. However, two-sided arguments, where the sender expresses the disadvantages as well as the advantages of their position, can suggest honesty and integrity.

Finally, it is important that your audience feels involved and proactive in the messaging process. Your story leads the way, but by allowing the receiver space to work out your message for themselves, they are more likely to come to the desired conclusion.

Aligning your message with the needs of your audience and developing a clear argument gives you the cut-through that you need and the best chance of being heard.

Perception II (discernment)

In previous posts I looked at some theoretical tools to refine and improve messaging. Among these, some of the more practical ones are chunking, perception, scanpaths, wayfinding and content structure;

In perception, there are two key structures involved, difference and discernment.

Discernment and Gestalt pschology
Adjacent objects are generally perceived and processed as a group and considered to have a like meaning. Objects which share similar attributes – size, colour, shape, direction – are also perceptually grouped together.

Grouping objects to create contextual relationships and create implied alignments helps a designer to guide the viewer’s eye through the content.

These principles of perception are explored in the theories of Gestalt psychology, that examine ‘the essence or shape of form’. The phrase ‘The whole is greater than the sum of the parts’ is often used when explaining Gestalt theory.

Fundamental to Gestalt are the laws of Pragnanz, which state that we tend to order things in a manner that is regular, ordered and symmetric;

• Principle of closure – the viewer infers elements in order to complete a regular figure
• Principle of similarity – the viewer groups similar elements together
• Principle of proximity – spatial proximity induces the viewer to perceive a group
• Principle of symmetry – symmetrical images are perceived by the viewer as a group even if separated by distance
• Principle of continuity – The viewer infers continuing patterns
• Principle of common fate – Elements with the same direction are perceived by the viewer as a group

Gestalt psychology is frequently used in user interface design, for example where text fields and buttons are placed with reference to the laws of similarity and proximity.

Designing familiarity in to layouts through consistent placement of similar types of content creates a rhythm and flow in your designs that allow the viewer to process information quickly and efficiently.