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By Simon

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By Simon Jones @motivecopy

At this time of the year with our dull grey days, colour is in short supply. We’ve just had a riot of colour that was Christmas, now just the tonic is something to brighten up the gloom. Just simply because a splash of colour can be great for the soul. It’s wonderful how colour can dictate a particular mood, whet an appetite and evoke strong memories. Often we think of colour as an option only when it comes to painting the walls of our homes or making a fashion statement. But it has an important role in business too. You can use colour to define areas of your office for different functions - bright tones to create buzz and energy (for meeting rooms where brainstorming takes place) and muted tones for contemplation, for instance.  Choose wisely and the right spot of colour in a logo can project the appropriate image for your company. 

There’s more to colour than meets the eye; each one has powerful psychological effects…

Red We associate red with passion, power and energy. This fiery colour has so much power it is known to raise heartbeat and blood pressure. Bizarrely, it also stimulates appetite and is often used in restaurants. In business it can be used to show dynamism and boldness. However, if overused, it can have some negative traits including anger, aggressiveness and being domineering.

Pink Traditionally feminine, pink is often used to communicate to the female market.  Unlike its darker parent, red, the colour is non-aggressive and projects feelings of comfort and hope. Bright fuchsias and magentas bring a more energetic mood compared to calming soft pinks.  When teamed with greys and muted colours, pink has an air of sophistication.

Orange Vibrant, stimulating and optimistic, orange is great for exhibiting positivity and a sense of adventure. It is favoured by the young for its energy and for its excitement and often used by travel companies. However, if overused, the colour can come across as being cheap and superficial.

Yellow A cheery and uplifting colour, yellow is thought to inspire mental clarity and creative thinking. Yellow attracts the eye and is effective for promotional signs commonly used with black to communicate hazards.  The colour can also convey uncertainty and anxiety. Those acid yellows in Van Gogh’s paintings are thought to reveal his mad side. Yellow is also associated with impatience and is used in public areas where people need to move on quickly.

Green Green is associated with growth. A green logo shows obvious green credentials. Green also stimulates feelings of calmness and assurance. Lime green (verging on yellow) feels fresh and zingy, creating an image of modern vibrancy.  Whereas dark green, such as British racing green, demonstrates traditionalism, prestige and wealth.

Blue When we think of blue we think of the cold. It’s the opposite of warm red. It can also signify negative emotions like ‘feeling blue’.  However, blue is the colour of the sky and the ocean and when we think of the azure, turquoise and aquamarine tones our mind conjures up feelings of serenity and escape.  It’s also calming and safe. No wonder to evoke feelings of safety and reassurance many of the leading banks and building societies opt for blue in their logos. Curiously though, despite blue being often thought of as a rather neutral, subdued colour studies have shown that it promotes increased productivity in workers.

By Simon Jones, Motive Copywriting (@motivecopy)

Without it you wouldn’t be reading this blog and you probably wouldn’t be as well connected. I’m talking about the internet. As it’s International Internet Day today (Wednesday 29th October) we should probably spend a moment contemplating how the world wide web has changed us. So why today?  Well on 29th October, 1969, Charley Kline, a student programmer at the UCLA in California, USA, sent the first ever electronic message (email as we know it) from one computer to another.

And my oh my how things have changed since then.

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I’m from that generation that today’s marketeers would call Early Computer Adopters. In the early 80s new-fangled computers very slowly made their way into homes. It’s hard to see why now but aged ten I was mesmerised by Pong – a staggeringly primitive ping pong video computer game. Chasing a ball (represented with a ‘.’) around a TV screen with a paddle (a ‘-’) was as high tech and as exciting as things got in those days. Then came the ZX Spectrum (colour graphics at last but still blocky). By 1992, though, I saw technology move on in leaps and bounds, venturing into designing an intranet site at college. The intranet was the forerunner of the internet; similar to the latter but limited to one site, which was only internally accessible.  In 1999, I made my first tentative steps onto the internet.

Fast forward to today and there’s no escaping internet-enabled computer technology. It’s integrated into TVs, mobiles and even in some fridges and kettles. Now the trend is extending to wearable tech, with wrist watches measuring your health and fitness and Google Glass eyewear, providing maps and weather forecasts literally in front of your very eyes. Whatever next? The days when the web is connected to our own neural network (ie, transmitted directly to our brains) cannot be long away surely.   

The internet has brought about fast thinking, fast working… Fast everything. It has broken down every barrier imaginable. With once secretive data now in the public domain, society and whole countries have become democratised. People continents apart can share information within milliseconds and collaborate faster and more efficiently in business. As a result decisions can be made quicker than ever before. There is a trade-off though: a more hectic way of life, in which everyone feels compels to be reachable, answerable and so-called ‘connected’. To not be connected can make you feel left out the loop.

The benefits of tapping into its huge information resources are numerous, however. It has replaced trips to library for me. Researching topics, delving into family history records and getting hold of recipes is quicker by far online. Thanks to forums I’ve found answers to problems that’ve been dogging me for a while like: ‘What does that Tongan inscription on my coffee table mean?’ and ‘Why is my car making a strange knocking noise under the wheel arch?’ I’m also able to research and plan every part of a holiday from the flight to trips and get exclusive deals on virtually everything I buy.  

The internet also enables me to work remotely as a freelance copywriter with companies around the world.  All thanks to the web’s connectivity.

But strangely enough over connectivity brings about dis-connectivity. We are already seeing teenagers become screenagers – spending more time in front of a screen than actually hanging out with their friends.  The obsession with social media slightly baffles me. You can’t have banter via a tweet. A message of 140 characters or less won’t capture the subtleties of ironic humour or empathy. Inarticulate messages can also land you in all sorts of bother. Ask any politician or celeb. That’s when only face-to-face interaction will do. Interaction – that’s another word that seems to have come from this internet age.

  By Simon Jones, Motive Copywriting (@motivecopy)

Have you been sharpening up sentences, appreciating apostrophes and jettisoning jargon lately? After all, the 13th October is English Language Day.  It commemorates the date, back in 1362, when Parliament was opened for the first time in English.

Our language, the world’s third most widely spoken, is much celebrated. Thanks to our great writers like Shakespeare and Dickens it has rich complexity and colour. But are you using English in the most effective way?

In business it pays to write in ‘plain English’ because it’s what best engages the reader and gets points quickly across without fuss. If you’re composing a sales letter you need to make a powerful impact in just a few paragraphs. So plain English could make the difference between making or not making a sale.

10 tips for writing in ‘Plain English’

1)      Simple is often better Some people presume that by using long or obscure words they’ll impress the reader with their intellect and savviness. However, uncommon words can create a stumbling block. A less formal and simpler writing style is often the best option. If you want to make a great impression, ensure your writing is quick and easy to understand.

2)      Use jargon sparingly

Jargon is useful when writing for particular audiences such as in the legal, medical, financial and military fields, which have their own unique shorthand. If you use this jargon on anyone outside those worlds you may risk being understood, so stick to plain English instead.

3)      Avoid tired clichés

To be in with the in-crowd, so many people have adopted phrases like ‘blue sky thinking’, ‘touch base’ and ‘push the envelope’ that they have become tired and cringe worthy. So use simple alternatives instead.

4)      Vary the length of sentences Readers can be lulled into a sleep after reading a successive rhythm of sentences of the same length. Keep them alert by changing things up and mixing both short and long sentences.

5)      Use concise phrases If there’s a shorter way of saying something, use it. Instead of ‘we have every intention of’ have ‘we intend to’.  You can shorten ‘the email conversations I had with her recently’ to ‘our recent emails’.  

6)      Take out redundant words Remove any words you feel don’t contribute anything to the sentence such as  ‘generally’, ‘basically’ and ‘at the end of the day’. 

7)      Write in the ‘active’ not ‘passive’ voice Writing is more dynamic when you use ‘active’ rather than ‘passive’ verbs. For instance, focusing on the word ‘devised’ change ‘The menus will be devised by staff’ to ‘Staff will devise the menus’.

8)      Be particular about punctuation Have you seen the grammar book ‘Eats, shoots and leaves’ with a panda on the front? The book’s title cleverly references the perils of comma placement. The  comma after ‘eats’ implies that the panda is a callous gun-toting creature! Therefore, for clarity be careful where you place commas and other punctuation.

9)      Check it over and make it better Not even the best writers can write perfect copy in one go. Great copy needs some thought and refining to get right. Giving it a thorough check will reveal sentences that could be better phrased, unnecessary words and possibly the odd spelling mistake.

To celebrate World Book Day, Avery UK, asked our blogger Simon Jones @motivecopy to review a book of his choice.  He shares his thoughts on his book of choice below.

The kitchen drawer contains the innards of an old transistor radio. Secreted behind a filing cabinet is a stash of corrugated cardboard. Copper wire snakes around a tangle of alligator clips. So who lives in a house like this? A tinkerer that’s who.

Tinkerers, for the un-initiated, reuse old objects in clever new ways.  You may be familiar with a similar term – upcycling – that’s trending in home styling circles.  It’s recycling all the same but anything destined for landfill is saved through reusing it. Vintage china cups filled with wax make pretty candles. Old circuit boards reincarnate as coffee coasters. That sort of thing.

I suppose I could be a tinkerer. And for all these years never really knew it. While my brother was genetically programmed to take things apart, stopping short of actually putting them together again (much to my mum’s annoyance),  I used anything laying to waste and got creative with it.  At Art College I painted on old bubblewrap.  I made a plant pot out of the housing of an old ceiling spotlight with a shaving foam can lid for a saucer.

Mushroom punnets and cellophane tomato container lids became windowsill propagators. And then there’s my conversation piece lamp, decorated with a mosaic of broken china. Ironically it ended up in the bin after shattering in a hundred smaller pieces. 

I tinkered for a while then stopped. Now there’s a book which Avery kindly gave me to review that could well reawaken my interest.

The Art of Tinkering celebrates the largely unseen creations of tinkerers everywhere. And what lies inside is pretty amazing stuff. The ‘how to’ type book manages to bring together the polarised worlds of science and art with projects for creating everything from whizz-bang electronic gear to decorative objects full of homespun charm.  You can learn how to take aerial photos, create a funky felt bracelet that lights up and a model town out of toothpicks (a lot of patience needed for that, I think). You can even try your hand at Tapigami. A variation of origami using sticky tape, folding and rolling it to form flower, cone and box shapes. You can also knock up your own Scribbling Machine – powered by markers taped to a motorised base (strawberry punnet). Pimp it up with a sound sensor and it’ll leap into action with a simple click of your fingers. Clever tinkering thinking eh?

There is certainly a lot to get a tinkerer excited about. Within its 227 pages is a veritable treasure trove of projects combined with inspirational masterpieces by over 150 artists. And even if not everything floats their motorised boat, there is enough to no doubt spark a garden shed load of other ideas in many a creative mind.

There are few books that are capable of being both instructional and inspirational - and so eclectic. It could be because the book is authored by the eccentric and enthusiastic co-directors of the Tinkering Studio based at San Francisco’s Exploratorium (science museum).  So as you would expect the sheer excitement of making and reinventing leaps off each page. 

Another appealing factor is its design. What we are treated to is not a formulaic recipe book approach with boxed in photos of every step but an arty montage of materials and instructions on each page. Following each project are artists’ creations that can’t fail to leave you in awe of their ingenuity and skill.

A half inch long replica of the Star Wars’ Millennium Falcon made out of folded and cut paper

Intricate doilies created by a sewing machine that was programmed with images of viruses such as the flu as a template pattern

An old record player modified to play actual music from the ringed grooves of a sliced tree trunk.

Just how do they dream up these things? Ever wondered what a cactus sounds like when you stroke its prickly spines? Hook up a battery-powered amplifier to a tiny contact microphone and you can find out.  Would you believe it… you can even hook a circuit to the book’s cover (because the ink is made from special pigments that conduct electricity). The book is a Willy Wonka factory of ideas.

My only slight gripe is that a few projects left me needing further instruction. Such as the coin-operated machine. How and where exactly do I make the microswitch connection?  Only because I have no experience of electronic circuitry that can be safely relied upon.

The Art of Tinkering (please forgive me for gender generalising here) would appeal to both a male and female readership. It covers all bases from crafty fashion things to tech-powered gadgetry.

If it were a TV programme it would be a hybrid of Bang Goes the Theory, Blue Peter and Kirstie Allsop’s Handmade Home. While some of the book’s less complex projects give it kid-appeal it appears to also be geared to an adult or realistically ‘kidult’ readership. Amid the plethora of fun projects are absorbing overviews of the latest breakthroughs and hints on where the future could be heading. All written in a lively, chatty style.

That’s all folks for now… please excuse me while I crack on with the important task of making some fuzz ball felt meerkat figures. Where’s the cat when you need it.