simplicity is complex

As an undergrad art student, I remember being introduced to the minimalist art movement for the first time. These artists were made famous for such things as putting just a few squares on the canvas or leaving the canvas entirely blank. My first thought, like most artists who see them for the first time, was that I could have done that. Now, I’m not so sure.

For simplicity to work in art, there has to be a conscious decision to leave out elements. When faced with a blank canvas, it feels good to put all of your thoughts, energy and passion into making that canvas not blank anymore.

TIP: The goal of art is to express while the goal of marketing is to sell. Therefore, with marketing and design, simplicity is crucial for the viewer to focus on the message at hand. To do this, there needs to be a conscious decision to focus on a couple, or one, key element(s) and to leave out the extraneous information.

EXAMPLE: Let’s say you have a tee-shirt company in Oregon and you want to establish yourself in the market. You sell slim-fit shirts with age-old sayings on them. You only use organic cotton. You are a woman-owned business. You manufacture over 10,000 shirts a year. You sell to the western US. So, with that situation, what do you say in your marketing materials?

There are a few ways to slice this one, but you could say “Oregon Shirts, Organic Wisdom”. In other words, focus on one or a couple of items to put in the forefront of the marketing and put the other information as the secondary line of marketing (further within a brochure/website). The idea is to draw in the audience by the first marketing piece, thus, getting the audience onto further information to fully gain their trust in your product/company.

-jeremy