Good ideas and good writing need to be backed up by good design

In this month's first anniversary issue of Fortune India, editor D.N. Mukerjea looks back at the cover stories and features of the past 12 months and, more important from the media student's point of view, explains what it is that helps these stories to grab attention:

[It] is not just how they are written but also how the pages look. Design, which includes photos, graphics, fonts, colours, and the overall layout, has always played a significant role. As I often remind myself, and tell whoever cares to listen, Fortune India stands on four pillars editorially — reporting, desk, photo, and design. Magazines are meant to be visually rich and, I dare say, Fortune India is the richest of them all. Our pages have won international design awards from the Society of Publication Designers and IFRA, and private art collectors are forever after me to sell them some of our images. (So far, I have resisted the temptation.)

Mukerjea's thoughts on the importance of design should find resonance with production journalists everywhere.

THE COVER OF THE LAUNCH ISSUE.

Fortune India does not have a website, sadly, so you will have to study the magazine itself to understand what Mukerjea is trying to say when he writes, and I agree with him, that Fortune India "is the richest of them all" in visual appeal.

I must add here that the magazine is also home to some brilliant story ideas that, thanks to the editors, have not just remained ideas; they have been executed so well that it is an undiluted pleasure to leaf through the magazine even when the articles, because of their business orientation, may not truly interest the general reader.

• Undoubtedly, Fortune India is the best-designed magazine in India. What would be the newspaper equivalent? My vote goes to DNA. As for the general interest magazine with the most intelligent writing, I think Time Out Bengaluru would win hands down if there were a contest.

What creative advertising really means-1

Commits alumnus RIGVED SARKAR (Class of 2010), a copywriter with Saatchi&Saatchi in Bangalore, gives us the lowdown on how to take A SHOT AT CREATIVITY:

Noun: Creativity; Latin: creō, "to create, make".

Creativity could be anything. It is this article/note/self-help guide/comic relief. Yet it would never have seen the light of day if not for this little Calvin & Hobbes strip. Last-minute panic translated: RP Sir’s knock-knock e-ssage.

But, actually, a wonderful insight into what creative advertising is like. In reality, what it should never be like. In short, a whirlwind ride no one/no course can ever prepare you for — briefs, round-table-conferences, scribbles, scratches, re-scribbles, scripts, layouts, storyboards, deadlines, selling, hits-and-misses, artworks, late nights, too tired to even appreciate your hard work, the proud feeling with which you tell someone else that that was your ad.

Welcome to the world of creative advertising.

Ever seen an ad you wish you had made? Ever wondered how the whole idea came about? Ever envied those who did it? Ever wished you could be “creative”? Of course you have. So why aren’t you doing it? The common mistake people make is to assume that they can’t because they are not creative.

RIGVED SARKAR: "An idea can come from anyone/anywhere."

I beg to differ.

It’s all in the head. Ask yourself: “Am I not?” Creativity is in anything that we create — a product, a service, an ad, a work of art, a solution, a joke — which adds value in some way or the other to your life or anyone else’s. Thinking already? Then ask yourself: “Why am I creative?” Everyone will have a different answer, none wrong. Creative advertising is just a means of expressing that creativity — in writing or in design.

IN THE BEGINNING COMES THE BRIEF
So where does it all begin? With the brief: a document that contains one thing the client says his product has/does that sets it apart from the rest. Without a brief there can be no creative. It is the what, why, to whom, how, with what benefit, in-a-language-they-understand of any creative process. Understand the brief well and always remember: God is in the details. Once you are clear, write down the proposition in five words. If you can’t write it, you can’t create it.

Once you have your proposition it’s time to bring that ad to life. This usually means cracking heads in a brainstorming session with your design partner (art director) and team to arrive at a possible route/way in.

Food for thought: Never believe you, as a creative person, are the sole custodian of ideas. An idea can come from anyone/anywhere. What sets you apart is the skill to know which idea to use and the craft to frame it. There can be a hundred great ideas but not a single right one. Learn to keep yourself open to everything around you. And that means reading a lot, observing a lot, and asking lots and lots of questions (yes, you can Facebook too; surprisingly it does spark many an idea). Only then will you be inspired.

BRINGING YOUR IDEA TO LIFE
Do not be afraid of a blank piece of paper/art board. View it as a window to a world of possibilities. As a writer, don’t just pen that one great headline. Visualise it. Read it out to yourself. Read it out to others. Does it make sense? Everyone may not have your vision so never assume one’s job is done after simply putting the copy together. See the complete picture in your head. If you can’t how do you expect your partner to?

The art director is your partner in creativity. And you need your partner to bring your idea to life. Share thoughts, brainstorm together. We all have our limitations — a writer’s when it comes to visualising, an art director’s when it comes to writing. But that’s the hallmark of a great team — the ability to step in where the other’s horizon ends. To jazz up a layout is as much a conscious decision as it is to keep it simple and clean. To use a font-based visual is as much a conscious decision as it is to use a stunning visual/scene/model. But try not to over-art direct. Some of the greatest ideas in the world are the simplest ones.

And always, always, create two options. One, which the client wants, and two, the one you think fits the brief and works best creatively (and two options do not mean one with a blue background and one with yellow).

Value-add wherever possible but, remember, the client is the custodian of the brand, and so may know it better than you do. Accept the client’s ideas, find worth in them, and then build upon them. If the client still persists, give him what he wants. But never stop trying. If you submit good work, he WILL see value in it and you’ll be the one smiling at the end of the day. That is the greatest reward.

ORIGINALITY IS AT A PREMIUM
It is said that there is nothing in this world that is an original idea. And it’s probably true. Something you thought of might have been executed elsewhere already. You might even see it in your own backyard. But if it fits your requirement, why not? Of course, don’t copy blatantly.

Food for thought: Do watch the “Everything is a remix” films.

Creative advertising. There is no starting point. But there is a finishing one. The challenge is in how you reach it. Defining one’s thought process is very hard. Everyone has their own way but there are some commonly acquired skills that are definitely beneficial. Finally, practise, and always keep some sheets of paper on you. You never know when you might have to scribble a thought. Now go on and give your creativity a shot!

• Rigved Sarkar's Commits batch mate ARPAN BHATTACHARYYA gives us his views in "What creative advertising really means-2".

• Further reading: "The power of creativity" (scroll down to the piece) by Commitscion AJAY KURPAD (Class of 2011), also a copywriter with Saatchi&Saatchi in Bangalore.

• Also read: "David Ogilvy on why reading is important". And "Bajrangi and the case for brand security".

Mint shows the way by not kowtowing to advertisers

As far as I know, Mint is the only publication in India that makes it a point to not genuflect before advertisers. For Mint, readers come first, not advertisers. Which is as it should be.

Some well-meaning people may argue that newspapers and magazines will die if advertisers pull out. True, advertising revenue plays a huge role in the financial health of both print and electronic media, but I believe that it is a good editorial product that attracts readers and viewers in the first place, which then helps to draw advertisers. Which is as it should be, but is often not.

Back to Mint and its stringent policy with regard to advertisers. On October 13, the newspaper distributed a four-page supplement on the royal wedding in Bhutan along with the main section. This supplement was clearly labelled "Mint Media Marketing Initiative". Even so, the editor published this note on Page 1 of the main newspaper:

This is the first time I am reading such a note in an Indian publication. All credit to Mint editor R. Sukumar for taking a bold stand at a time when the line between editorial and advertising appears to be fast blurring (read "Paid news and the influence of newspaper owners").

Why did Sukumar feel the need to write that note? He explains in his regular column in Mint:

A Media Marketing Initiative [MMI] is essentially an advertorial, but both advertisers and publishing firms prefer more ambiguous terms. MMI is one such. Then there are others including special feature, special report, and the like. Some publishing companies prefer to use their own coinages — the India Today Group used to prefer the term Impact Feature when I worked there (I have no idea what it uses now because I don’t read any of its magazines); and the Outlook group uses Spotlight. Then, there are other publishing firms that choose not to say anything at all, leaving it to the reader to figure out whether a report on Sudan or Russia is an editorial feature, advertorial, or, still worse, a paid-for editorial write-up.

Sukumar also explains later in his column that, apart from warning readers, he also hopes that this message "will dissuade at least some advertisers from asking for advertorials in Mint, and some basic reporting and research I have done over the past few days makes me believe they will".

All journalists, and media students, will do well to read Sukumar's column in its entirety: "The inviolable line".

• Also read: R. Sukumar on Mint's response to being blacklisted by companies — "Dealing with thin skin". And on the separation between news and opinion — "The authoritative voice".

•  You can read a few of the many pertinent points in Mint's Code of Conduct here.

A bizarre encounter with Gaddafi

...if I refuse to accept your Jamahiriya [congress of the people], what will you do to me? Will you arrest me, shoot me, hang me?

ORIANA FALLACI

This was the audacious question thrown by Oriana Fallaci, one of the world's most courageous journalists, to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi when she interviewed him in Tripoli in 1979.

The Libyan dictator replies: "But you cannot refuse it! Jamahiriya is the destiny of the world! It's the final solution!

Fallaci presses on relentlessly:

The forty officials that you had shot last year refused it. The other fifty-five that you had shot in 1977 refused it. The ten students who you hung publicly in a square in Benghazi a few months ago refused it!

Gaddafi counters: "Lies. Slander from the West. These are the things that make me lose faith in you. Why do you say these things about me?"

Fallaci's response is laden with sarcasm:

Because we are envious, I suppose we say them out of jealousy. Anyway, tell me one thing: are you really sure that your little book will change the world?

Fallaci continues:

The rope gave a final, definitive jerk. [Fallaci had written earlier, after one session with Gaddafi, that her aim was to give him, in the form of her questions, "enough rope to hang himself".] And while his sick brain hung down above the cord and his lifeless body, the delirium exploded again: this time so tremendous and so terrifying that the crisis of the previous day seemed like a sneeze by comparison. He got up slowly, he slowly raised his linen-wrapped arms and in a thundering, Messiah-like voice, he began to yell his answers directly in English.

What did Gaddafi begin to yell? And what was the dramatic conclusion to a bizarre interview? To find out, read the 56-page article in Oriana Fallaci's superlative book, Interviews with History and Conversations with Power. In addition to the interview with Gaddafi (who was killed in Libya by rebels two days ago), Interviews also features Fallaci's encounters with a host of world leaders, famous and infamous, including Ayatollah Khomeini and the Dalai Lama, Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Fallaci, who died in 2006, had a reputation for being fearless and for asking the most probing of questions, questions that were a reflection of her chutzpah. Here, for instance, is Fallaci's opening gambit when she met Indira Gandhi, who, at the time, was the all-powerful prime minister of India:

Mrs. Gandhi, I have so many questions to ask you, both personal and political. The personal ones, however, I'll leave for later, once I've understood why many people are afraid of you and call you cold, indeed, icy, hard...

This is a book no journalist, or aspiring journalist, can afford not to read.

• Another must-read: Oriana Fallaci and the Art of the Interview: In a eulogy written for Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens recounts "his last visit with the tempestuous Italian journalist, and her last — never published — scoop, a sit-down with the Pope".

Lengthy. Reliable. Talented. Influential. Tremendous.

MATTHEW ENGEL

Did you know all five words in the headline are American in origin? I had no idea. Not until I read a feature on Americanisms by veteran British journalist Matthew Engel on the BBC website.

American culture is ubiquitous in Britain on TV and the web, Engel writes in the article. He continues:

As our computers talk to us in American, I keep having to agree to a license spelt with an s. I am invited to print something in color without the u. I am told "you got mail". It is, of course, always e-mail — never our own more natural usage, e-post.

Don't we grapple with the same issues here in India, too?

There's more:

In many respects, English and American are not coming together. When it comes to new technology, we often go our separate ways. They have cellphones — we have mobiles. We go to cash points or cash machines — they use ATMs. We have still never linked hands on motoring terminology — petrol, the boot, the bonnet, known in the US as gas, the trunk, the hood.

(In some respects, at least, the English spoken in India and that spoken in America are coming together in the form of "mobile" and "ATM".)

Engel then gives us examples of "ugly and pointless new usages [that] appear in the media and drift into everyday conversation:":

• Faze, as in "it doesn't faze me"

• Hospitalize, which really is a vile word

• Wrench for spanner

• Elevator for lift

• Rookies for newcomers, who seem to have flown here via the sports pages.

• Guy, less and less the centrepiece of the ancient British festival of 5 November — or, as it will soon be known, 11/5. Now someone of either gender.

• And, starting to creep in, such horrors as ouster, the process of firing someone, and outage, meaning a power cut. I always read that as outrage. And it is just that.

Read Mathew Engel's piece in its entirety here: Why do some Americanisms irritate people?

Also read readers' reactions to the article: Americanisms: 50 of your most noted examples.

• Thank you, Swagata Majumdar, for the tip-off.

Top 10 reasons why EDITING is cool

(10) It's like solving a puzzle.

(9)  You find a whole world of other people who go crazy over the "10 items or less" sign in the grocery store. (Or, as one new editor put it, "I can constructively satisfy my obsessive-compulsive anal-retentive
tendencies and get paid for it.")

(8)  Your job changes constantly; you're never bored.

(7)  You become a more interesting person. You can talk about Arafat, Albright, Agassi or Aguilera and sound like you know what you're talking about — because you do.

(6)  You have responsibility and power. You decide how readers will perceive the news, how they'll perceive the world.

(5)  Catching a dumb mistake before readers see it is a rush. Helping someone make a story better is the best drug there is.(Or, as one person wrote, "It's as close as an English major can come to being a doctor, or God.")

(4) Newspapers never ask writers to edit, but they love it if editors write.

(3)  You could be the world's best quiz show contestant because you're a dictionary of useless information.

(2)  You can move anywhere and find a job.

(1)  You never have to wear decent clothes.

• Compiled by Jane Harrigan, University of New Hampshire (Courtesy The American Copy Editors' Society)

• Also read: Why subs, or copy editors, are the lifeblood of a news organisation.

Stephen King on what writing is about

Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, or making friends.

In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.

Some of this book — perhaps too much — has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it — and perhaps the best of it — is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free, so drink.

Drink and be filled up.

And where do you find these pearls of wisdom? At the end of the master storyteller's brilliant book, On Writing.

Actually there's more to the book.

After the conclusion comes a long passage. King urges the reader "to look at it closely before going on to the edited version".

The edited version has notes on the changes he has made. Isn't that a huge learning for aspiring writers?

• Also read: More gems from On Writing.

• UPDATE (March 18, 2013): To understand why Stephen King says the adverb is not your friend, read this post by my favourite blogger: "Stephen King on Simplicity of Style".

• UPDATE (June 21, 2013): Journalist and editor Eric Olsen discusses On Writing as well as four other books on the craft of writing: "Eric Olsen's recommendations".  

• ADDITIONAL READING: "Stephen King’s 'Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully — in Ten Minutes' "

Get rid of clutter if you want people to read what you have written

V.R. Narayanaswami

And it is really not that difficult to eliminate clutter in your writing, as V.R. Narayanaswami helpfully explains in his regular column in Mint.

Wordiness is the bane of good writing, he advises. And he continues:

Many words are unnecessarily burdened with tags that do not add to meaning. “Advance forward” is a simple example. My list of words like “added bonus”, “final outcome”, “clearly evident”, “future potential”, “revert back” and “end result” runs to four pages.

There are some useful tips for novice writers, especially for those young people who hope to have a media career (when you think about it, there are very few professionals today who do not have to do any writing):

There are two kinds of lapses in writing: turbidity and turgidity.

Turbid means thick, muddy or cloudy. Your writing becomes turbid when you use inappropriate words and tangled structure.

Turgidity results when the writer tries to impress with pompous language rather than to convey meaning. Such writing makes liberal use of clichés and buzz words.

Read the column in its entirety here: Getting rid of clutter in writing. And here's another illuminating piece by Narayanaswami on you should tailor the content of your message to your reader: Why writing should be about 'you'.

Also read: 

• Top 5 Tips to Cut the Clutter (with examples)
• Ten Quick Tips to Improve Your Writing

Beware! Punster at large!

FAHAD SAMAR

Contrary to what many believe, humour writing is possibly the most difficult kind of writing. And when a comic piece depends largely on puns, widely considered the lowest form of wit, the writer better be really good. He better be someone like Fahad Samar, the filmmaker and columnist.

Take Fahad's recent column in the Indian Express. Titled "Heat and Dustoor" — a dead giveaway, if ever there was one — the piece expounds on an evening the author spent with other media professionals compiling a list of “Parsi films that never made it to the silver screen”.

Here are some gems (you may have to know something about Parsis and Parsi customs to be able to appreciate a few of the titles):

• Moby Dikra
• The Towering Inferno of Silence
• Indiana Jones and the Fire Temple of Doom

 And my personal favourites:

• Where Vultures Dare
• Murder by Dikri

Read the column in its entirety here.

• Also read Fahad's "interview" conducted "via satellite" with Julian Assange of Wikileaks in the aftermath of the Mayawati controversy: "India's Most Detestable".

What our newspapers can learn from The New York Times

How often do we find grammatically incorrect sentences, misspelled words, and wrongly used punctuation marks in our newspapers?

How often do we readers bother to complain?

And how often do our newspapers respond to readers' complaints?

Perhaps our dailies should study how seriously The New York Times, one of the world's greatest newspapers, views errors. And, perhaps, we readers should also emulate NYT readers and take our newspapers to task when necessary.

These thoughts came to mind on reading a recent "After Deadline" blog post on the NYT website by Philip B. Corbett, the associate managing editor for standards, who is also in charge of the newspaper's style manual. Titled The Reader's Lament and based on a memo Corbett received from a colleague who oversees the NYT's copy desks, this post is, from an Indian newspaper's viewpoint, an extraordinary mea culpa.

Look at the opening salvo:

Times readers expect nothing but the best in our writing and editing. Too often, they’re disappointed.

We then get to sample some complaints from irate readers:

“As a 35-year subscriber to The Times, I continue to be disappointed in the number of typos that have become chronic and, sorry to say, expected on a daily basis,” one reader wrote recently. “Where are the proofreaders and editors? Where are the standards for punctuation and grammar? The Times used to be the gold standard.”

The memo continues with a plausible explanation for the increase in errors:

This era of news publishing has put a greater emphasis on speed, across multiple formats and platforms. Thanks to blogging and continuous updates, more people in the newsroom find themselves in the role of publishing live material. The same forces have increased the workload and distractions faced by reporters, backfield editors, copy editors and producers.

There is also an explanation of the newspaper's working guidelines:

Our policy is for every article to get at least two reads, preferably one of them by an experienced copy editor, before publication. And then you should check your work again, or have someone else check it.

The memo then provides "some proofreading tips culled from years of journalism tip sheets" and offers this succinct conclusion:

Last of all, think of our readers — and care what they think of us.

Both journalists and media students (and, of course, newspaper readers) will benefit greatly from reading this post in its entirety: "The Reader's Lament".

• Thank you, Rohita Rambabu, for alerting me to this post.

• "After Deadline" offers a highly instructive contemplation of issues regarding "grammar, usage and style encountered by writers and editors of The Times". Want to know when to use "who" and when to use "whom"? Check out "Too Many Whoms." Want to be cheered by some sparkling writing? Read "Bright Passages". Unsure of when to use commas? This post has some helpful advice: "Commas? Sure, throw a few in".