Here’s the cutely animated result of a short script we wrote recently to explain QuidCycle, a new ethical peer-to-peer lending programme. totalcontent was brought in by branding agency Collider to help with launch materials for this new venture — and to write their website too. The aim was to take the fear factor out of money by using reassuringly friendly, accessible language.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Strange yet gratifying when something you've written pops into your email inbox unexpectedly. Here's a little something we crafted recently for Godiva, the luxury Belgian chocolatier. Sweet.
Over the past 18 months or so, we’ve been working extensively with branding consultancy Bostock & Pollitt, mainly on (London) property projects. Their particular strength is unearthing something unique about a given development, and then bringing this to life through their branding ideas. We’ve been helping out by expressing B&P’s creative theme in words, naming, straplines, developing an appropriate tone of voice, and then creating copy for digital and printed collateral.
One of these projects was Devonshire Square, an architecturally diverse campus with 630,000 sq ft of office space, shops, homes, restaurants and bars, tucked between the City and Shoreditch.
One of these projects was Devonshire Square, an architecturally diverse campus with 630,000 sq ft of office space, shops, homes, restaurants and bars, tucked between the City and Shoreditch.
It all started with a slightly skewed phrase that popped into my head one day for no reason... ‘A leopard never changes his spats’. This conjured a comical image of a dapper feline with an immaculate top hat and cane but inexplicably dirty footwear. A children's illustrator could have a field day, I thought.
Building on the theme, I racked my brain for more well-known sayings, and made a rule for myself... each idiom could only be changed by a single letter. And then I came up with a title that explained the concept by almost acting it out — ‘From Idioms to Idiots — How One Letter Can Make All The Difference’.
We were drafted in by design company hat-trick to provide words around the theme of a 'day in the life' of the college, quite a radical approach for an institution of this kind. In reality, the times of the day became pegs on which to hang different aspects of the school, from its emphasis on 'co-curricular' activities, to the benefits of boarding, to its impressive facilities. Underlying all this was the idea of promoting a broad, joined-up education, which offered more than just academic excellence.
Christmas seems to have come early at totalcontent. Last week we brought you Royal Mail's Madonna and Child stamp presentation pack. This week, we unwrap the children's Christmas stamp competition pack, charmingly designed by our good friends at NB Studio.Here, we were asked to tell the story of the nationwide hunt for designs striking enough to grace first- and second-class during the 2013 festive period. The challenge was open to children in the UK aged 4–11, and there were prizes of £100, £500 and £1000 to be won. This is only the third time Royal Mail have staged a kids' stamp competition, and the response was overwhelming, with over 240,000 entries covering all kinds of Yuletide subject matter in every conceivable style.
I’m really pleased to have contributed to this rather classy pack showcasing this year’s Madonna and Child Christmas stamps. The set of five (plus two extended large-letter stamps) feature depictions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus through the ages, as well as a specially commissioned (and strikingly beautiful) new painting by neo-Coptic artist Fadi Mikhail, which sits on the £1.88 stamp. I helped Royal Mail tell Fadi’s story, including his tutelage under neo-Coptic master Isaac Fanous; his process and thinking; and the heavy symbolism of this very prescribed genre of painting. On the reverse side of the sheet, there’s a potted history of Madonna and Child paintings by art historian Rowena Loverance. You can get hold of a special Christmas presentation pack, designed by Robert Maud and Sarah Davies here. Or of course, pick up Christmas stamps for all your cards from your local Post Office.
What a 17-year-old book on the language of technology means today.
On Saturday mornings, I’ll often be found in Leamington’s Oxfam Books and Music on Regent Street. It’s a great place to pick up second-hand vinyl and old Penguin paperbacks, and you never quite know what you’re going to find.
The other day I snaffled ‘Wired Style — Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age’ for a couple of quid, which got me thinking not only how rapidly English is evolving now, but how technology is constantly changing the way we write and speak. It was ever thus, I suppose, but these days it’s happening at warp speed. Doing what I do, I’m a bit of a sucker for style guides, and own everything from the Economist and the Guardian, to Oxford and Fowler’s. But ‘Wired Style’ has a different agenda, proclaiming itself a celebration of writing that “jacks us into the soul of a new society”.
On Saturday mornings, I’ll often be found in Leamington’s Oxfam Books and Music on Regent Street. It’s a great place to pick up second-hand vinyl and old Penguin paperbacks, and you never quite know what you’re going to find.
The other day I snaffled ‘Wired Style — Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age’ for a couple of quid, which got me thinking not only how rapidly English is evolving now, but how technology is constantly changing the way we write and speak. It was ever thus, I suppose, but these days it’s happening at warp speed. Doing what I do, I’m a bit of a sucker for style guides, and own everything from the Economist and the Guardian, to Oxford and Fowler’s. But ‘Wired Style’ has a different agenda, proclaiming itself a celebration of writing that “jacks us into the soul of a new society”.
 |
| Bucket... just add content |
Suddenly, it seems, our 12-year-old company name has (global) currency.
As it happens, I’m a bit conflicted about totalcontent these days. Because, as with so many words (or conjunctions of words), its context and meaning has changed. As someone who spends a good deal of time naming things for clients — we’ve come up with everything from shirts to colleges to mobile phones and a cheese — it’s perhaps something I should be more wary of… but on the other hand, there’s not a jot you can do about it.
‘Content’ has an entirely different connotation than it did a dozen years ago. I originally homed in on it because of the slight play on ‘content’ = ‘what is contained’, and ‘content = ‘peaceful happiness’. But today it tends to just mean stuff, filler, goop… if a website is a bucket, then content is the stuff you fill it with — generic pictures, words, headlines, links etc. It’s become a tag with no romance or resonance — you buy content by the yard, it fills the space, no more no less.
But clearly, this doesn’t put too many people off. Content services have come to contaminate the Internet, selling words as a commodity — off-the-shelf articles ‘optimised for SEO’, or new material ‘competitively priced’ by length or quality level. A quick Google search unearths Content Now, Star Content, Constant Content, Pure Content, Snappy Content Writing (could be snappier), Content Equals Money, Content Proz, and many, many more. Occasionally I get emails from similarly named companies offering to help out with my content. Thanks for that.
I’m not going to throw stones in the dark. For all I know, Content Equals Money may have the verbal virtuosity of Jane Austen. I’ll just observe that there’s a difference between buying a suit from Burton or Savile Row. Ours tend to fit a lot better and don’t fall apart at the seams so readily.
The word ‘copy’ is one step up from ‘content’ — functional and commercial, but at least honed and targeted. And ‘writing’, of course, implies real craft and dexterity, the ability to create light and shade, achieve emotional nuance, make people chuckle or empathise.
So all in all, the service we offer couldn’t be further removed from providing ‘content’. You’d hope that people think of our name as a kind of knowing, post-modern joke, a clever anti-name that flies in the face of the word’s current meaning. Like Andy Warhol’s Factory or Factory Records, hotbeds of creativity and originality with a wink in their nomenclature.
Next week, maybe we’ll move on to the ‘total’ bit.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)