Client’s love to have things bolded … in advertisements, in their books, in brochures, their logos, in blog posts … it doesn’t matter what, they just want their words to have force. They can never trust that the words will do it on their own. THEY HAVE TO MAKE THEM SHOUT. See how annoying that is?

Even at art fairs and conventions, people love hanging those big vinyl banners out. Or they have somebody loudly coercing people to come into their booth. It’s obnoxious and does not make people want to buy, much less listen. What gets a person to come to you, to listen to your client’s message, or buy your artwork is just showing them the solution to their problem is with in reach or that you have an object they desire (even if they didn’t know it).

My favorite example of this kind of thing is the Google home page. Google is about searching for something. Their page is about searching for something. Their page is mostly white space. It does not presume to tell you what you want to know. It leads you directly to its primary product and the thing that you desire to find most on this page, the search box. They don’t shout about all the things the service can find for you or make it so pretty and slick you forgot why you came. The page says, here, search and below the box, a few links, humbly offered like little gifts to help you search further. And as we all know, Google is the most widely used search engine in the world. That page is a huge part of their success.

So, no shouting. Show your customers (or your client’s) what they want to see, not what you (or your client) wants them to see and they will stick around long enough to hear what you have to say next.