I just received a direct mail piece from a local church and the text is only a shade lighter then the background making it almost impossible to read. To make it worse the font is far too small. Even with my glasses on I literally cannot read the copy. They wasted a lot of money and since they dropped to the whole area they may have created a negative perception!

I learned this lesson the hard way. The first album (dang dating myself there) I produced had a really attention grabbing photo on the cover but the graphic with the bands name was weak. Very weak! My goal was to have an album cover that you could see standing far away and would be so cool you felt compelled to walk across the store to check it out. I failed horribly although I didn’t think so at the time.

I knew the artist I hired was rushed to finish, but I thought it was OK. It was not until the album was about to go into stores and we signed with a manager who “kindly” pointed it out that I became aware of the mistake. He was right and thank goodness he had the courage to be honest with me. The band name/logo was very hard to read. Since we could not reprint the albums I made large stickers with the bands name in block letters to place on the outside of the shrink wrap and completely cover the graphic. YUCK! It worked, but it was not as professional as I wanted my first album in stores to be. 

Of course, each type of media has different rules. For example billboards should have 8 words or less and anyone should be able to easily read while passing at 70 mph. The rules are different when producing for TV and IMAG screens. People usually sit fairly close to a TV where in an auditorium or sanctuary people could be a football field away. The same graphic may not work in both applications because of viewing distance.  The point is always be conscious of how the graphic is going to be viewed. Not just used – VIEWED!

Change it up. If you are creating informational signage that is presented in the same location all the time remember to change up the design layout. If you use the same layout recurrently people will become anesthetized ignoring any new information you present.  People are always busy and you need to grab their attention as they rush by. Using the same layout each time, even though you present new information, greatly decreases effectiveness.

And last but far from least I always like to have a minimum of two people look at the design for feedback. One person who actually has good design and marketing knowledge, and one person who has no knowledge whatsoever but falls in the demographic you are trying to reach.  If possible ask more then two people but if you ask too many you’ll just get confused with all the responses. You cannot reach everyone and in today’s world if you try to reach everyone – you’ll reach no one. People have far too many choices and you must know your target demographic and then go after them.

I know all this is mostly common sense yet all you have to do is drive down any freeway and look at all the billboards to see some really bad advertising. Why I use that example is because some marketer someplace is charging some client a bunch of money for something that just creates clutter. In ministry our #1 goal is to reach people. If a person cannot read it, view it, understand it, use it or it looks like the same old same old so they ignore it, we are just wasting time and money.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 10:01 pm and is filed under Internet, Just Me, Learning, Life's Lessons, Marketing, Media, Ministry, My Big Mouth, Remarkable, Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.