When designing any brand touch point, be it an advertisement, a menu, whatever, there’s a knee-jerk tendency to want to fill it all up with content. Designers usually bulk at this for good reason. Instead of ranting about the use of white space and readability, I want to take a step back and discuss the negative effects of “And.”
Adding things makes sense at first. I mean, why not show the viewer as much as you can? However, when you start to think about it, adding things to a brand touch point actually does the opposite of what you want.
What you really want is to convey and communicate a point. A singular message. A restaurant’s brand touch points that communicate a singular point are the strongest. So, when you add another point (an “and”) you’re actually detracting from the original. Even if it’s small visually, it’s weakening the original message. Add another “and” and you’ll continue to weaken your message. Fill up that entire space and you’ll have a jumbled mess that says nothing.
Think about it like a room where every person talking is one message. One person in that room speaking is easy to understand. Two people gets a little harder. Three or more.. well.. it’s a cacophony and you walk away annoyed with no grasp on any message.
Solidify your singular message for every brand touch point and stay away from AND.
One Response
I didn’t really know how a conjunction can weaken a message. Advertisers should surely have knowledge about this. Thanks for the tip Joseph!