The rule paradox

Dom — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:00:04 +0000

The worst piece of advice, professionally at least, was to throw out the rule book. As a student studying creative writing it seemed a strange sort of direction, especially coming off a module where we’d discussed how Auden was estimated to have tried almost every form of poetic structure going.

To me, rules aren’t there to be broken, not really. I like the way structure (whilst we are on the subject) channels ideas and even informs their exposition. Yep, when it comes to the rule book I’m there chapter and verse.

So it’s always strange when the way you crack a design job wide open is by ignoring rules altogether. Recently we had to think differently for an online job and the best way, we found, was to throw out the rule book.

Sort of.

What we did was to ignore convention by asking ourselves what if this wasn’t an online job. What if it were in a different medium altogether.

It got us thinking.

Differently.

So we still followed rules. Just not the ones we were meant to.

Kicking K: the impact of alliteration

Dom — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:00:30 +0000

I was seventeen years old, sat in an eighteenth century manor house and receiving the sort of English lesson normally reserved for twelve year olds.

The first day of an A-level English literature course ought to have been a baptism of fire. At least the way they used to teach it. Shakespeare was a given but Pope, Eliot (T S not George) and Bronte would demand close reading and F R Leavis would show us how.

That wasn’t how it started.

After a brief appraisal of literary terms our teacher decided to start again. This time at the very beginning.

Sweeping us through basic rhyme structures; iambic pentameter, sonnets, even limericks, it was clear he was aghast at the lack of basic knowledge. How could we be expected to comment on the beauty of Tennyson if we couldn’t hear the meter? How could we understand the literary wit of Pope if we didn’t know bathos from pathos?

So for a week, my English teacher treated us like children.

As someone who has never needed an excuse to keep things simple knows, being treated like a child wasn’t such a bad way to start the year.

Covering Topsy and Tim may not have been on the hastilly rearranged syllabus but I remember discussing how to rhyme swan with stone. Pop quiz: anyone know which poet did this and why?

Then we began on onamatopoeia, to the joy of children everywhere. As insulted as those who understood these terms ought to have felt, the simple pleasure of a refresher course as given by an inspiring A level teacher was hard to beat. I still maintain that going back to basics is essential. Certainly it could help many a marketing ‘guru’ escape from their own overwrought terminology.

Then the teacher said something that could have led me to the side of Hughes and Heaney. Instead it led me to David Abbott, Tony Cox and a school of copywriting brilliance far older and more brilliant than me.

What, he asked, can’t you do to a Knirps?

Straightaway I sat up.

“K-nacker” I said. Just like that: k-nacker.

The most effective way to introduce alliteration was through an advert. It stuck in the mind.

Because the most effective way to make a brand of umbrellas stick in the mind was through alliteration.

Advertising is like talking to children.

Make it kick, make it stick.

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The rule paradox

Kicking K: the impact of alliteration