One of our art directors, Simone Micheli, was sitting opposite me in the office, looking through The Art Direction Book.
Because he was opposite me, I was looking at the pages upside-down.
Somehow the ads looked fresher, bolder.
One of them that particularly struck me, was an ad for TWA that Neil Godfrey had done ages ago.
It had a plane in the middle distance, and a red carpet cutting across half the white page in powerful perspective.
Apart from anything else, it was a just such a strong piece of graphic design.
How come I never noticed that before?
Then it struck me.
It was because it was upside down.
So I couldn’t read the words.
Normally I take a cursory glance at something then, within a nanosecond, start to read it.
Once I’m involved in the words, the left side of my brain takes over.
The right side (the visual side) immediately gets put in second place.
That’s why I was so much more impressed with the layout when it was upside-down, and I couldn’t read the words.
For the first time I was concentrating solely on the graphic qualities.
That’s why Japanese art direction always looks so beautifully designed to us.
Our brain isn’t engaged in reading the words.
To us, there aren’t any words.
The calligraphy is just another graphic element, so we’re impressed with the design rather than getting sidetracked by the words.
This knocks on to semiotics.
The structuralist view is that we never actually see what we’re looking at.
Rather we decode it for meaning.
So actually, language is the only reality.
All we ever see is symbols and concepts.
Symbols and concepts that exist only in our minds, not in reality.
I once read a book called ‘Drawing With the Right Side Of Your Brain’.
At first I didn’t get it.
I thought the right side was the visual side, so don’t we always draw with the right side of our brains?
Apparently not.
We don’t draw what we see, we draw symbols for what we know is there.
So, if I see a face, I start to draw the symbol that I know works for eyes.
A shallow curve for the top lid.
An inverted shallow curve for the bottom lid.
Similarly for lips.
A flattened-out letter ‘M’ for the top lip.
A flattened-out letter ‘U’ for the bottom lip.
And so on.
I draw symbols for what I know to be there rather than what I actually see.
I’m drawing in language: semiotics.
Which is how pretty much everything in the world works.
Road signs, packaging, clothing, cars, offices.
Everything is designed for the signals it gives off.
Everything is communicating, so everything is a language.
Mike Gold showed me a great way to prove the power of the left brain to over-ride the right brain.
When I was making a speech, I had words printed on large cards in different colours.
I asked the audience, “Please shout out the colours the words are printed in, not the words themselves.”
Then I’d hold up the word YELLOW printed in blue.
Then the word GREEN printed in red.
Then the word PINK printed in green.
Then the word BLUE printed in red.
In each case everyone shouted out the word, not the colour it was printed in.
Try it yourself.
Your mind reads the words aloud and steamrollers right over the colour your eyes actually see.
I noticed it again this morning.
I’d been through the Saturday paper, and bypassed all the ads without even noticing them.
Then I left the paper on the table.
My wife sat opposite me and started flicking through it.
And upside-down I started to actually notice all the ads I’d ignored.
When I couldn’t read the words I started to appreciate the design.
Try it yourself.
See if it makes you think differently about how you do ads.
See if there’s an opportunity there.
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Dave, it’s been observed that copying an upside-down image often produces better results than doing the same with the picture the right way up.
At least, it’s true for those of us who aren’t exactly Michelangelo. Because it forces us to draw what we actually see. Rather than, as you said, symbols.
Which has the potential to make portrait painting more interesting. “Be a love, and stand over there on your head, Your Majesty.”
http://ex-blank-page.blogspot.com/2009/07/in-reply-to-daves-great-posts-55.html
The upside-down trick also works with images that don’t have any words. Particularly useful if you’re drawing/painting the image yourself - it helps you see it fresh and spot where you’re going wrong.
Leonardo da Vinci used to look at his paintings in the mirror so that he could critique and improve them. He also used to leave the room, with the painting facing the door - then stick his head around the door quickly, so that the image appeared suddenly in front of his eyes, and he saw it for a moment as if for the first time.
Mark, I might try that leonardo door trick on my girlfriend
by the way Dave, there’s a site called
http://www.filmtheblanks.com/
where you can look at film posters with the text and images obscured - it seems to produce a similar sensation of artistic re-appraisal to that which you allude to in your excellent post.
An AD I used to work with wasn’t happy until he’d looked at a polaroid in a mirror. If he felt comfortable with it in reverse, it was OK. When I shoot portraits, I quite often flip the image. People see themselves in a mirror…….
Maybe that’s where i’ve been going wrong with my internet dating.
I was a paste-up artist in the studio at DDB when the ad was put together. So this is a bit boring.
The Neil Godfrey ad was for Lufthansa.
The headline read ‘Promises, promises.”
The ad was written by either David Abbot or Dawson Yeoman.
The ad really looked at its best when it appeared in the Financial Times as the carpet really stood out against the pink.
In my opinion the ad was much affective the right way up. They usually are when they are that good.
David, what intrigues me more about this piece and that is what was Simone doing reading a book with ads in that were done nearly forty years ago?
Is that the middle of the brain kicking in?
john o’d
Dear Dave,
This is not a response for today’s topic, but a kind feedack about your site, for your website’s manager: The Twitter button in the menu is not linked to your account; I had to figure it out from the latest tweets.
Also, I’m suscribed to your mailist but haven’t got any article so far there. So I made up an unofficial email suscription with Feedburner -and it works! http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=cstadvertising&loc=en_US Here I leave it for anyone who wants to follow you by email
Thank you once again for sharing your thoughts and experience with all of us!
Best,
Betty.
Thanks Betty,
This week the blog (and even agency email) has been down.
The guy who normally runs it is on holiday and I’ve been trying to talk to technical support in the Philippines.
Their first language isn’t English and mine isn’t computer.
So it’s been a nightmare.
The person who eventually sorted it out is one of our planners, young James.
It would be great, if you’ve got any suggestions, if you could email him direct, he does speak computer:
jam…@cstadvertising.com
I’m sure you probably are already aware of this Dave, but that trick Mike Gold showed you is used in an extremely addictive Nintendo DS game.
John,
I’m impressed, I never knew you started off in the studio.
Respect.
Why Si was reading the book is because he went to Watford so, unlike you, he had to learn his craft after he got a job as an art director.
I encourage all our young ADs to learn from the greats, not just current fashionable techniques.
I think art directors, like everyone else, were better when they learned their craft from the bottom up, instead of just being glorified art-buyers.
Okay, this is a bit right side I’m afraid. When I’m proofreading copy, as well as reading it in the normal manner from top to bottom, I read it backwards from bottom to top. I frequently find silly typos and spelling errors that I missed when reading it the ‘right way’. reading backwards forces you to read the words as individual words and not connection points so you can’t mentally skip over them.
Working in foreign markets (particularly Asia) has the same effect for me.
Korean or Japanese ads are the best as you need the strongest visual to even get near the sell.
Yeah, I remember we had a single copywriting ‘lesson’ at Watford. It consisted of getting the facts behind a David Abbott Sainsbury’s ad and attempting to turn that into his copy.
That’s why I spent so long re-reading his work and the Copy Book after I left.
On the plus side, you get out of Watford in nine months and you’ve learned most of what you need in the first two weeks anyway.
Hi Simone! (And Rob)
This is a bit right side I’m afraid. When I’m proofreading copy, as well as reading it in the normal manner from top to bottom, I read it backwards from bottom to top. I frequently find silly typos and spelling errors I missed when reading it the ‘right way’. Reading backwards forces you to read the words as individual words and not connection points so you can’t mentally skip over them.
Hallo Dave
Nice to have you(r blog) back.
When your site went down and was replaced with the ‘domain for sale’ notice, I even tried to email you.
But it bounced.
Still bounces.
But at least the blog’s up.
Hi Ben,
Yeah that’s strange isn’t it, a lesson writing body copy in David Abbott’s style?
That’s like a lesson in writing a commercial in John Webster’s style, then a lesson art directing an ad in Paul Arden’s style.
That’ll be fresh and creative won’t it?
I always liked this quote:
“Seek not to copy great men. Seek what they sought.”
As an alternative to turning things upside down you can also stand on your head. ‘Seek what they sought’ is sublime Dave. I think all greatness comes from that place.
The wisest words can be the worst advice.
WANT Page 106
“Acdricong to a rreesach at an engilsh urniivsety, it deosn’t mtater in what odrer the lteetrs in a word are, the only iopmrtant tihng is that frist and last ltteer is at the rgiht palce. The rest can be a ttoal mess and you can sitll read it wthiout prbloem. This is bcaeuse we do not read eevry lteter by isetlf but the word as a wohle.”
I sitll am haivng iusses with the wohle left barin/rgiht barin tihng. I tihnk the bttoom-line issue to me is with tetriang rgiht-barin tiinkhng as “iittinuve”, wihle tiaetrng “lgicoal” left-barin tknihing as “dcetuidve” only. Who says that tehre is no ititiunon in diong math?That’s just slily.
Most of this cmoes down to to an oilnogtocal deabte: does one dicovser mciahmtateal cnetarity, or cerate it?
mm
Michael,
Wasn’t that the debate between the British sceptics (like Locke and Hume) and the continental idealists ( like Liebniz) that Kant’s “synthetic a-priori’ apparantly sorted once-and-for-all?
Wasn’t that the debate between the British sceptics (like Locke and Hume) and the continental idealists ( like Liebniz) that Kant’s “synthetic a-priori’ apparantly sorted once-and-for-all?
Watch out, or you’ll get me started on this!! Haha. Too late.
Believe me, Kant was spot on IMHO in most every respect, and the fact that western thought post-Kant is but a footnote to his work (“Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato” – Whitehead) attests to this; see K’s categories of understanding and corresponding antinomies as basis for modern view of logic in reality. But mysteriously, Kant treats Mathematics - in what Frege famously, derisively, calls “pebbles and gingerbread” mathematics – as a product of the transcendental aesthetic (i.e. empirical). How or why Kant would do this is beyond me given everything else he wrote on the subject, though I think he suffers mainly from pre-dating Frege-Cantor-Russell-Whitehead by a generation or two, and would find merit to their arguments. [Ed note: Hume is by far the more personable. I would much prefer having Hume at a party with me, the personable cunt. Kant, on the other hand, seems to me more like the guy beside the beer keg at the party, talking your ear off, and following you around afterward discoursing on this and that until you are hard put to get rid of him; yet somehow after the party you find yourself thinking “who WAS that German guy I couldn’t get rid of last night?”] Have some fun and google the phrase “pebbles and gingerbread” and see where it takes you.
mm
Michael,
You have to remember I went to art school, not Uni.
So the logical (mathematical) part of philosophy is where I bail out.
That’s when, for me, the exciting ideas start to feel like algebra.
But I thought Kant’s ‘Copernican Revolution’ was an interesting take on your question “does one discover mathematical certainty or create it?”
@Worm - I hope the Leonardo door trick is well received by the lucky lady!