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Helpful Hints for Revolutionaries Chapter 5 12 Simple Ways to Improve Your Printed Message You're committed to your cause. You understand the issues. And you feel so strongly about what you believe that you want to tell the entire world. This describes every good activist. Yet, if you're like most people with something important to say, getting that message into a form that will inspire others to understand and act upon your passion is no easy task. In far too many cases this passion fails to make it into the group newsletter, brochure or flyer. Often otherwise profound and articulate ideas fail to get communicated because they're boring to look at and difficult for the average person to understand. If you can create bold, powerful documents, you can reach a far greater audience, and have a much stronger impact on their thinking. You will also feel an even stronger sense of satisfaction, you'll get more compliments, and perhaps you'll turn a tedious chore into a creative and rewarding experience. Here are twelve ways to create printed materials that are more attractive, persuasive and successful - all culled from twenty years of working in major advertising agencies, design studios and publications. A. Planning 1. Figure out the single most important point you want your audience to remember. The word you're going to see repeated often throughout this article is "simple". Simplify whenever possible. Page through a magazine and look at all the ads. You'll notice that all the ones that hold your attention will have one simple message. If you have more than one message, they compete with each other and both of them become diminished. Let's say you're trying to get students to join you in a protest against animal testing in the school's science lab. You might be able to think of a hundred reasons why everyone should support you on this, but if you stop and think about it, usually one key thought will come to the surface, and all the other thoughts will fall right in behind it. Sometimes one thought just doesn't seem to fit. Consider not using that one. 2. Don't limit yourself. The best message might not be obvious at first. A copywriter I used to work with would furiously scribble every thought she had about her writing subject onto a legal pad. When she went back to read it later, she claimed that her best ideas started to surface in the third or fourth paragraph. This may or may not work for you. Here are a couple of other tips: think about your message from someone else's point of view. What would your opponents say? Try defending your opponent's point of view, and see how that influences your thoughts. Another tip is to hide your first message and pretend you can't use it. Often you'll come up with another idea you like even better. 3. Think in sound bites. The simpler the message, the easier it is to understand. "If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit!" When Johnnie Cochran first uttered these now immortal words, a lot of people thought he was making light of a very serious issue. But to millions of people, including twelve very important jurors, the words summed up everything that needed to be said, and today O.J. Simpson walks free. Thanks to the endless barrage of messages each person is forced to see and hear each day, it can be very difficult to sort your message out from the clutter. That's why the simplest, boldest statement will be remembered the longest. 4. Condense your entire message into one single sentence. This should be your starting point. In an advertising agency, the account executives (the people who wear suits and "do lunch" with the clients), will usually hone the client's message into one very short, simple (see how often that word comes up?) statement that they hand off to the writers and art directors who will actually create the ad. This helps the artists and writers focus their attentions more carefully, and it also gives everyone a sense of comfort that the project is heading in the right direction. B. Writing 5. Speak to everyday people. Best rule of thumb: Write and design something your parents can understand. We weren't born with an innate knowledge about veganism, environmentalism or any other "ism". Somewhere along the line we learned about these issues in a way that had a profound impact on our lives and our values. If at any point we had read brochures or flyers that were confusing or far too complex for our level of awareness, it would have impeded our progress. Remember, as the creator of printed materials, your goal is not to show off your astonishing vocabulary or your unique grasp of the issue at hand, but rather to get the largest amount of people sympathetic to or aware of your central focus. 6. Don't assume your audience understands the issue. This point is influenced by the previous one. It's important to lay the necessary groundwork so that your statement is cogent, sympathetic and informative. This doesn't mean that little, tiny baby steps are needed throughout your piece; it simply means that giant leaps can leave confusion in its wake. It's important to know where to simplify and where to add more information. A good rule of thumb is that while the overall message should be simple, the content should range from brief, easily grasped points, to slightly more complex ideas. And remember to write from the perspective of influencing the most people possible. 7. Think about how the issue affects ordinary people. Sometimes people "shut off" if they can't relate to an issue, so it's necessary to put things within a frame of reference that the average person could understand or feel empathy for. For example, when trying to influence people to not eat fish, rather than trying to make people feel compassion for an individual fish, it might be a better course of action to stress the disasterous impact that over-fishing has had on the world's oceans. It's unfortunate that we can't force people to respond to the things we think they should respond to, for example, feeling compassion for individual fishes, but sometimes, if the end result is the same, we should just strive toward achieving our goal. The bottom line always remains: positively influence the largest number of people possible for the greatest change. C. Design 8. Think in pictures, not just words. Sometimes a single photo can get your message across faster than several paragraphs of words. And even if it can't, it can still serve as a great reference point for your text. Get in the habit of carrying a camera with you. Take pictures of anything that might be relevant. With the easy accessibility of scanners and desktop publishing software, it's really easy to incorporate pictures. On a super tight budget? Swipe pictures from magazines, books, or brochures. It's not entirely legal to reproduce some images, but as long as you're not trying to sell anything on a large scale, no one will come after you. Besides, the karmic advantage of creating positive change outweighs the karmic disadvantage of borrowing a couple of images. 9. Create a focal point on the page. Figure out the thing you want people to see first and make it the boldest. This is a kind of a tough concept to explain. Art directors can spend their entire careers trying to perfect this art. But it is well documented that a viewer's eye will quickly focus on the most interesting image in front of it, and spend the next four-fifths of a second or so deciding whether or not to give this image any more attention (To understand this, just think of the overwhelming number of advertising images each of us is confronted with each day. If we gave time to each one, we'd never be able to live our lives). Therefore,the best way to get people to stick around to read your message is to tempt them with a powerful headline or a provacative picture. Just remember to keep your "grabber" image relavant to your message or you'll confuse people. 10. Stay consistent. Have a "corporate" look and stick to it. You don't have to be a fan of giant corporations and their advertising agencies to develop an appreciation of some of their strategies. Let's take, for example, a famous advertiser that usually is vilified within the pages of this website - McDonald's. Look at how they've managed to convince the world that they're fast, friendly, convenient, family oriented, and just plain all-around good citizens. Sure, it's taken billions of advertising dollars to acheive this, but it's taken something more - every message they send out builds on the previous one by staying consistent and always reminding people of the message they want to convey. It's extremely unlikely that you'll have anything approaching their budget to work with, but you can learn some of their tricks. Think of the adjectives that describe your project. Is it serious, fun, strong, youthful, urgent, compassionate, quirky? Does it suggest any colors or images or styles? Once you've figured that out, search though all your available typefaces and pick the one or two that seem to best represent your group. Use these for everything you print. Consider having a logo made if you don't already have one. If no one in your group is capable of creating a logo, you might want to check out the nearest arts college.A lot of students would work for cheap or free just to build their portfolios, especially if they believe in your cause. Put this all together for your own special "look". This way, each time someone gets a new message from you, they'll remember a little bit of the previous one. They'll soon remember you better, and each new message will be a little bit easier because it will build on what people already know about you. 11. Use the best tools you can get. If possible, get a professional desktop publishing system. This may be a tough order for many people, but it really helps make your message shine when it's created by a desktop publishing system. The vast majority of ads, brochures, magazines and other high quality printed peices in the world are created on one of a very small number of computer programs. The most popular is called QuarkXPress, but it costs over $600 to buy. Adobe PageMaker is almost as good, although it is being slowly phased out to make room for Adobe's new desktop publishing program - InDesign. These are all expensive and challenging to learn. Your best bet is to find a designer who believes in your cause and coax her or him to donate their talents. 12. Make sure every element in your printed piece is working for you. Again, keep your messages simple and consistent. Take out anything that is extraneous or off-target. In most cases, a single, bold photo or illustration with a single strong headline is usually best for a flyer, a poster, the front of a brochure or a report, or an ad. Edit the text until every word is important. And finally, proofread everything at least twice. Check dates, phone numbers and the spelling of people's names. Make sure everything is put on straight, and that nothing important is cropped out of the photos. Then when everything is perfect, give yourself a big pat on the back. You've just created a message that will get people's attention.