The power of simple language
Jay Zasa
Executive Creative Director : New York
topics:
http://tbg.cm/hXHRF3
There’s an interesting story behind how Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat, a book my 20-month old son is now obsessed with in its latest incarnation as an iPad app.
In 1954, Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss read an article in Life magazine bemoaning the sorry state of the books available to teach children to read, which at the time were all in the “see jane run” category. Seuss decided he was going to write a good book for early readers. So he took the list of the 400 words children learn first, and went from there. He spent nine months trying to craft the best possible book from that list. The result uses almost all one-syllable words, and only one word, another , that had three. From those utterly simple raw materials he crafted an incredibly creative, emotionally complex story (check it out if you haven’t read it in a while) that is super easy to understand even for tiny infants.
This reinforces a belief I’ve always had that the simpler the language we use to describe concepts, the easier the concepts are to grasp. To go a step further, I think ideas that can’t be described simply tend to not actually be ideas. There is a real tendency in our business to err on the side of trying to describe things precisely, which leads to a lot of complexity of language, use of jargon etc., and works against getting ideas across.
So I think it is better to err on the side of clarity of explanation. Unless of course the project is about defining the details of something precisely.
1 comment
Be it a non spanish speaking aussie travelling in the amazonian basin, a 37 year old dad describing the activities of hump back whales to their 3 year old
( both my own experiences) or a memeber of the Rutherion dynasty negioating trade boundaries with a native of Reigle 7 (what??).
the big question is,... how does one do this in the world of digital print whilst maintaining the target audience... perhaps pictures and video are the key.. leave the text and further written discussion up to the observer/consumer.
The beauty of the digital world and the everexpanding internet is that the user will choose their own experiences adn seek out their own requirements.....HTML it and they will read !!!
could carry for hours but i gotta work now.