ITAP2: Simple, but different

"I wish I had known that simplicity is the key" Rosy Arnold, D&AD president.

In modern culture, we are bombarded by advertising in all media platforms. These are usually a mixture of both good and bad design, but collectively tend to put off the majority of audience members. With this barrage of complexity, simplicity, as stated, is key in attracting the audience and setting apart from the rest and directly convey the message.

A key to advertising I have recently learnt in lectures, is to aim a campaign on selling a simple truth of the product; Cadbury's "a glass and a half of joy" based on the fact the bars have a glass and a half of milk in them, and chocolate released endorphins that produce joy. By selling a product one one truth, it is preferable to reduce the message down to this one key point and make it fascinating and direct to the audience; Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.

Award winning designs by Bartle Bogle Hegarty, 1993

As can be seen in the Boddington beer ad campaign here, the element of truth extracted was that this brand has a full and thick creamy head. The reason these designs are so successful is because this one usp has been extracted from the product and built on with a clever use of wit, humour and the unexpected; subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful. 

While this is an incredibly simple design; just displaying the pint of beer with one prop maximum in each layout, it is done in a different and effective way to convey the usp. Without this quirky meaningful addition the usp message, the design would simply display a pint of beer with the creamy head. This shows there is both a good and bad simple. Simplicity is a rare thing and as Leonardo da Vinci once said; "the ultimate sophistication". It is claimed as this because effective simplicity is a difficult thing to create, due to its delicate balance. By having too little the message could be either interpreted as boring, or not successfully communicated at all. Whereas by using too much in the design then it will look busy and confusing. The right balance is where the message is clear but the method in communicating it is different and original.

Since the brand logo is extremely small (as not to distract or add complexity to the simplicity of the design) the colour scheme was carefully chosen. As can be seen, they clearly represent the brand palette of yellow, black and white. These colours immediately bring association without the logo boldly displayed and so further increase the effectiveness in the simplicity. If the logo was also boldly displayed along with perhaps a disproportionately large written catchline 'With the creamiest head' and a man or woman holding the beer then the message would risk being too complex and audience members wouldn't be so intrigued but more patronised.

Simplicity and reduction in design is often used, such as here. Guinness is renowned for its witty advertisements and above is a brilliant example of reductionism to push forward one key point of the product, conveyed in simple yet intriguingly amusing ways; using the pint in place of cool objects. Again, like the Boddington designs earlier, the colour scheme is carefully chosen as the black and white is immediately recognisable as a pint of Guinness, and the icy blue resembles the extra cold. 

Another designer to bare in mind for reductionism is Helmut Krone, as mentioned in a prior post.