Gary Paulsen

Gary Paulsen is a well-known author of young adult literature. With over 175 published books and 200 articles,  I trust he knows a thing or two about writing. Paulsen has not been on tour in the Boston area for over 5 years so when Barnes & Noble sent out an invitation to see and hear Paulsen speak, my son’s 5^th grade teacher jumped at the chance to bring her class to the event. While not mandatory,  32 of the 44 kids from his 5^th grade team showed up at the event this week with parents in tow. The children beamed with excitement to meet this author of “Hatchet,” required reading for all 5^th graders here.

Paulsen is an interesting character; some may say he’s a bit gruff, rough around the edges. Still, he captivates his audience in a soft-spoken, jovial manner, talking about his life–from running away from home at 14 to travel with a carnival, shooting his TV and alarm clock (what fun!)–then switching gears and reminiscing over his Iditarod runs and his dogs in Alaska, sailing adventures, and lessons learned.

Still, his advice to children is sound and applicable to all of us when it comes to his craft. When asked how to become a writer (be it professionally or just to be able to write well) he gave these tips to a roomful of young (and older) adults that I’ve expanded on because I believe they are applicable to all of us.

• Read, read, and read more. Paulsen said, “Read everything you can. Hide under the covers, sneak down to the basement. Do whatever you have to in order to read. Just keep reading.”
  Reading expands your mind, your knowledge, and your vocabulary. Read fiction, non-fiction, fantasy, adventure, and current events. You need to read to understand your own preferences. Then pick what interests you and soak it up like a sponge. See what other writers are doing and model behavior that suits you.
• Be adventurous.
  You need to experience life to become a writer. Challenge yourself everyday to explore new things, to learn new skills, and to test you. See what your personal limits are. In this way you will find who you are and what really excites you.
• Write about what YOU enjoy.
  One sure way to stifle creativity is to write about things that don’t interest you. Sure, some of us in the real world do have to write about things we don’t care about in order to earn a paycheck. But, don’t do that forever. A sure way NOT to become a good writer is to get stuck in a cycle of uninteresting content over and over again.
• Write about what you know.
  Writing from experience provides depth and personality to your writing. If you are passionate about your subject it will come through in your writing. If you’ve never experienced your topic, it will show. Make it fun and take creative license to embellish your story. Maybe a simple experience, like a trip to the zoo, is the foundation of your story. Then build upon it with your imagination.
• Use your vocabulary.
  OK, I added this one. Where Paulsen may be considered a Luddite, I’m an advocate of technology, particularly when it enhances an experience. I think Paulsen would agree with me here. Now my son’s teacher, on the other hand may cringe at this advice. An avid reader, she often talks about the smell of books. She loves the dusty old jackets. It’s like coming home. But with today’s electronic readers like the Nook and the Kindle, readers can quickly look up words; so don’t be afraid to use some BIG words in your writing. We’ve been trained in the past to write to an 8^th grade audience for business, but these tools let us expand both lexis and grammar.

Get reading!

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1. The first cut.

Imagine. You navigate the myriad of typefaces and find that perfect font, the one you absolutely can’t live without. It’s tall, trim, with just enough edge, but not too showy to take away from the message. But, hold on! Don’t get too attached to that pretty face just yet. Unfortunately, all fonts are not created equal.

2. Read the label.

You see, font designers, including those at Adobe, and Bitstream, personalize fonts. It’s like a signature. The serif turns up, it turns down, maybe it disappears altogether when it becomes italic. Or perhaps it is a bit fatter, squattier, or even thinner. Don’t assume your Century Roman is the same as client X, or client Y, or even mine. They may be subtle changes, but different nonetheless. Make sure we all have the same font, from the same foundry, so we see the same thing.

3. Salt or Pepper? Mac or a PC?

OK, so you chose the perfect typeface, you have the same creator, but wait, are you a Mac or a PC? That’s right, many fonts are platform specific-Postscript and TrueType on the PC, Postscript or T1 on the Mac. And they don’t like to talk very much. But you need a little of both, perhaps? Well, thanks to the recent collaboration between Adobe and Microsoft, thousands of fonts now work on both systems. This new cross-platform font file format, called OpenType®, makes translation back and forth between systems easy.

But, beware. Not all fonts are available in OpenType yet. The good news is that there are some great converters available, including one I particularly like called FontXChange® from FontGear.

Fonts. They’re enough to send any designer into a tizzy, never mind the average PC user! Happy Fonting!

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Today’s Boston Globe has an interesting article about the renaming of Jurys Boston Hotel to The Back Bay Hotel, in an effort by its Dublin-based parent company to rebrand all of its properties to reflect their geographic locales. In a time when I often hear the lament, “all of the good names are taken,” and “you need to make up a name to stand out these days,” this article made me think. Are companies who might otherwise benefit from the use of solid, descriptive names missing out in their corporate and product naming efforts because of our own cynicism?

The last quote in the article should make any naming expert, corporate executive, or product manager take a pause. Stephen Johnston, general manager of the hotel stated it simply. “It’s kind of amazing that the name hasn’t been used before.”

Yes, many of the “good” names are taken, but as you venture into the naming game don’t get discouraged. Perhaps you may best be served by having a unique name created just for you. But the lesson learned is don’t discard any options in the early stages of development. Use all of the search engines to your advantage before you settle. Name development is a critical element of your overall brand and any effort should be conducted thoughtfully, thoroughly, and with the aid of experts who know how to sort through the alphabet soup of naming.

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OK, that was a mouthful, but I will press on since the conference was chockfull of information about advertising, innovation, blogs, podcasting, broadband, mobile, in-video, in-game, social networks…the list goes on. New media has definitely made information more accessible but personally (my true confession), it has become a bane to my existence. As a marketing communications professional, keeping up with all of the new venues for spending ad dollars, coupled with the demand to prove a direct correlation between spending and sales, makes this job more challenging than ever. And that doesn’t just go for those of us who are going it alone. Any senior marketing executive faces the same challenges, whether he or she is in a corporate environment or working in an advertising, marketing or creative agency.

However, gaining conversion data that is real and adds value is not always easy. Too often useless numbers are thrown around to fool clients (or senior management) into approving a program that may or may not work. For example, if you use click-through data to measure the effectiveness of an online campaign that is being managed through your own site and shopping cart, you will get solid data. However, if you are trying to measure the effectiveness of an advertisement in a consumer magazine in the sale of products that are carried in thousands of retail chains (say for example, toothpaste) that’s a different animal. More direct research that may not, in reality, be worth the expense is the only way to get viable data.

The point here is that in some cases you just have to work with experience. A solid advertising campaign, designed for reach and awareness in a targeted market, is still a valuable element of your marketing strategy, and will help to drive sales even if not directly measurable.

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So how do you break through the clutter? Build a scanable path for your readers through headlines, subheads, and imagery that visually sit on different planes. Regardless of the medium, following a few simple tips will make your communications pop and ensure salient points are visible in seconds.

• Level 1: Write headlines to pique curiosity. Headlines are the first level of messaging that readers receive from you. A strong headline conveys the start of your story in a few simple words. Your objective is to move readers to the next level-your subheads.
• Level 2: Use subheads to tell a story. Most readers scan subheads, first, so build a snapshot of your message here. Focus on the top level of your message here, to create interest and draw readers in so they want to read more.
• Level 3: Supply supporting details on a sub level. You’ve created interest with your headlines, now it’s time to provide supporting details with short paragraphs under your headlines for those readers who require more information. Here you can use more words to get into the nuts and bolts of your offerings for those readers who are intrigued to move beyond the headlines.

To distinguish the information presented at these levels, how you design the content is just as critical. The best graphic designers I know truly make this an art and are a valuable resource in achieving optimal results.

• Choose different fonts and colors to accent key information. Choosing different sizes, weights, and colors for your headline and subhead fonts will draw readers to this information first. However, be consistent to support the visual path you are creating for your readers.
• Use photos as a visual storyboard. Images that support headlines and subheads as readers scan your information are powerful, visual reinforcements to the text to help the reader follow your message path.
• Incorporate transitions strategically. Whether you use white space, folds, fades, light, or any other method, be sure to place these transitions strategically so they do not disrupt the flow you created, but enhance and support it.

If you have more thoughts to contribute, please comment or send me an email.

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A company’s positioning, its core messages, and how it wants to be viewed should be the driving factor in all creative decisions. That includes color, type, and imagery, across any delivery medium—online, print, video, etc. Whether you have the benefit of working with a creative team or you need to “go it alone” as a smaller start up operation, here are some tips for making your creative execution work.

Before you begin any creative work, take the time to:

1.    Define your corporate positioning. Clearly communicate who you are, what you do, and where you fit in your market.
2.    Define your company’s personality. Are you aggressive or compassionate, youth-oriented or mature?
3.    Define your audience. Are you talking to financial executives, consumer gamers, or software engineers?

Once you know who you are and what image you want to portray to your target audience, then you can move onto developing a creative platform that can be used across the spectrum of communications tools:

1.    Choose 3-5 core colors that fit your corporate image. Don’t choose purple because YOU like it. Think about the look and feel you want to convey to your audience. Are you eco-friendly? Then you may choose browns, greens, and yellows. Financially-focused? Then perhaps darker, muted colors are more your style. Aggressive, hip? Then you’ll probably gravitate to clean, crisp, bolder colors. Regardless of your personality, sticking to 3-5 colors from a complementary palette that you repeat across the spectrum of marketing tools is a good start in designing a consistent image.
2.    Use 3 complementary typefaces that are applied consistently, for example, in headlines, body text, and accents. As a conservative company you may take a traditional approach and choose a bold, sans-serif font for headlines, an elegant, serif face for body text, and a simpler italic font for captions. But, if your business is more progressive, you may opt for a complementary selection of all sans serif faces. Note that if you are working with a designer he/she may take the liberty with more, but for the novice this will keep you out of font overload. With thousands of typefaces available, and the advent of desktop publishing it’s easy to mix and match and quickly distract the reader from your message.
3.    Select imagery that reflect your personality and supports your messaging. The choice between photography and illustration, stylized or direct approach, can sometimes be subjective. However, try not to influence image selection with your own preferences. Think about what would be best communicate your message to a customer. Is it important to show a piece of hardware or product packaging that will be recognizable to a consumer? Or, do you need to invoke an emotion with your audience that is best conveyed through artwork?

Regardless of the color, type, or imagery choices you make, the important thing is to remain consistent in your use of these individual elements across all of your marketing materials. And, be cognizant in your selection that all colors, and in particular, typography, translate well in traditional print, digital print, online, and video applications.

Thoughts, comments, any additional tips you’d like to share? Let me know.

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