If you’ve worked in advertising and marketing for a good bit of time, then you’ve seen everything become more complicated. Creating marketing plans, the many ways to execute ideas, and the media landscape seem more labyrinthine than ever before. Yet somehow, it’s the simplest ideas, and the simplest executions, that stand out the most. Dan Ward takes a high-level view of these issues in The Simplicity Cycle: A Field Guide To Making Things Better Without Making Them Worse.
Ward is an engineer with a military background, so AdPulp readers should know that he doesn’t approach simplicity or complexity from a marketing or design background. But we all have presentations, campaigns, ideas, and tech-centric products that we’re creating, and The Simplicity Cycle gives us a framework to use that’s designed to keep our thinking in balance so we don’t end up with overly complex, and thus less effective, work.
The Simplicity Cycle uses some simple figures to illustrate its point, and I suspect it’s an ideal read for people who are at the forefront of complex marketing issues content strategy, information design, and user experience. It’s simple to say “Keep It Simple Stupid,” but Ward reminds us that in the real world, keeping it simple isn’t as simple as it sounds.
Special thanks to FSB Associates for providing me with a review copy.
