Do Customers Deconstruct Advertising?
It's all too easy to get bogged down in analysing advertising given the investment of time, money and reputation that it represents. I'm not always sure what good it does and I'm far from certain that non-marketing professionals ever do that - unless of course we foolishly ask them to do so in focus groups.
But I'm going to do it anyway because this ad from a company close to my heart has appeared everywhere. Can you see what grabbed my attention? It's the small i in innocent, juxtaposed with the capital J in juicy in the line at the bottom - a design conceit that means that the start of both sentences is different and, to me, visually jarring.
Designers rightly talk about fonts being important - but what's the point if simple consistency is overlooked? In the great scheme of things, it probably doesn't matter. It's unlikely to stop people from buying juice, but it irritated me and I wonder if I am not alone in that.
posted by john dodds @ 10:30 AM
6 Comments:
I agree. Produced by committees.
There will be post-rationalisation.
Assuming the small "i" was deliberate and not a mistake (such things happen) you kind of gave a clue in your reaction as to why it was done. Your eye skimmed over the line then stopped and read it more carefully. That presumably is why they did it.
The i is deliberate - they always use a lower case i.
While I like the idea that the J emphasises the juiciness, I'm not sure if it was intentional. That said, I know somebody who will.
Hello. This is Dan from innocent (creative director and font heretic). The reason we did it is because it stood out more, following on from the preceding sentence. You actually read it, and the fact that it's grammatically correct is good too. It's one of those decisions you make where a few of our designers wanted one thing and a few wanted another. Nobody is right, everyone is wrong, and I hope we sell more orange juice as a result.
And the commenter who said that we always write innocent with a lower case 'i' is correct - it's our one wilful bit of grammatical disobedience.
I told you I'd know someone far wiser in these things. Thanks Dan - long live heretics.
And I thought I was nit-picky... ;-)
Post a Comment
<< Home