The goal this week is to give book designers some time-saving tips when they are creating content. I would like to present the concept of “stickiness.” According to the book Universal Principles of Design by Lidwell et al, stickiness is “a method for dramatically increasing the recognition, recall, and unsolicited sharing of an idea or expression” (228).
It seems to me that when you are creating and designing content and putting it out there for the world to see, you want your idea (however it is presented whether it’s in the form of a blog post, a meme, a video, a tweet, or a print advertisement) to stick. Otherwise, given our information-saturated culture, the content that you so carefully designed will go the way of so many other forgotten messages. Combating what has now been termed “information overload” is now being discussed in many organizational blogs as being a serious concern – see “Information Overload and How to Get Noticed” and “5 Ways to Cut Through B2B Information Overload.”
Chip and Dan Heath talk about why some ideas survive and other ideas die in their 2007 book Made to Stick. According to these experts, there are 6 elements that help ideas to be sticky.
1. Simplicity – your idea should be able to be expressed in a simple way
2. Surprise – your idea should contain an element of surprise which will grab your audience’s attention
3. Concreteness – your idea should be specific and concrete
4. Credibility – your idea should be believable
5. Emotion – your idea should evoke an emotional reaction
6. Story – your idea will be more memorable if expressed within the context of a story
Knowing how some or a combination of these elements can improve your message’s ability to be memorable will allow designers to create content that will truly “stick,” thus, saving your book promotion campaign team much time, effort, and money. Producing fewer standout messages is a more effective strategy than inundating your target audience with high-volume but lifeless, lackluster messages.
One final example that Lidwell et al give to illustrate the concept of stickiness is Barack Obama’s campaign poster that became an iconic visual text that was associated with his presidential campaign.
Obama's Hope Poster by Shepard Fairey
Works Cited
Heath, Chip and Dan Heath. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. New York: Random House, Inc., 2007. print.
Lidwell, William, Kritina Holden and Jill Butler. Universal Principles of Design. Beverly: Rockport Publishers, 2003. print.
