A Little About Me and A Little About You

Hi folks

I wanted to give a brief history of my Background

I am a middle aged man (61), I have worked every day of my life since I was 16 years old, numerous jobs, from Bookshop managers, Labourer, Farmer, Postal worker, Retail Managers, Arts administration and now Data Management

I have a Diploma in Fine Arts, a Bachelors degree in Visual Arts and a Post Grad degree in cultural studies, as well as having numerous Certificates in Database creation, Management and implementation, Web site design and implementation and even Art Therapy. I started my Academic career in the mid 70’s with a Diploma in Commercial Art.

I tell you this because I have had a background in the Arts since day dot and have always had an interest in how as a visual artist you can actually guide and manipulate people into seeing and feeling a certain way about things and have always had an interest in telling the story from a visual perspective

I am also fortunate to be with a very smart and intelligent partner who is currently a PHD candidate researching in Cognitive Neuroscience, with Degrees in Sociology and Psychology as well as being an Art Therapist and Visual artist.

Her current area of study is a condition known as Synaesthesia. Synaesthesia is a condition where cross modal processing happens. Some known Synaesthetic aspects are things such as;associating colour to letters, tasting when hearing sounds, having colours for days of the week, assigning personalities to letters and numbers, smelling shapes. These are just a skimming of the many different types of Synaesthetic experience that there is.

The Research shows that approx. 10% of the population has Synaesthesia, however I believe it to be even more, as often it goes unnoticed because those who have it, either do not realise that it is unique and believe that everybody things Wednesday is green, or they are too frightened to speak of it in case of being seen as weird.

There are many different instances of our language having been adopted from synesthetic experience . such as ‘That’s a Loud Tie” (are Ties Loud, do they make a lot of Noise) That cheese is Sharp, (Hmm, most cheese I know is soft and pliable). These are just two examples, there are many more out there.

Now the research also shows that most Synesthetes are creative people, Tori Amos, Will I Am Pharrell Williams, Billy Joel, Kanye West, Vincent Van Gogh, Wassily Kandinsky, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, these are just a small pin prick of documented synesthetes.

Synesthetes have a different degree of sensitivity to their environment and are influenced in different ways than most. They react to colours differently, sounds differently, shapes differently and text differently.

My point for bringing all of this up

Marketing of course 😊

The hard and fast methodologies that we use for advertising our products and getting people to respond, is not quite as Hard and Fast as you would think. When we are catering for an audience, we need to realise that Creative people are also entrepreneurs, which means that as entrepreneurs are creative and chances are they are also Synesthetes and entrepreneurs are looking at your advertising more than the average joe.

So when we are creating our ads we need to have a full understanding of how our creations may affect others.

I have mentioned it before and I will keep mentioning it, what we like ourselves quite possibly will not work for others, I saw an Ad the other day, the text was all centred (A design nightmare) the font was coloured, not just one colour but multi coloured and not just each word a different colour but the letters in the words were different colours, not only was this unreadable for me, I can guarantee this was unreadable for most, in Fact it was jarring, I couldn’t get away from it fast enough.

If we create ads that jar the senses then you may as well put up an ad that tells people they are better off going elsewhere

All people will have reactions to the colours you use, the fonts you use and the shapes you use, so use them wisely, use them informed, and use them effectively.

After all we want our audience to relate and knowing that a great percentage are sensitive to what they experience let’s show a duty of care in what we present.

There is a mountain of information out there on Design and layout, use of colour, how shapes affect our perception and how to advertise wisely. Google University is a blessing, and for those more inclined, use Google Scholar as your main search tool. You will be pleasantly enriched for the many researched papers that are out there.