Colorful details get seen, remembered
Stop writing in shades of beige
For 11 years, I’d been promising myself a visit to Seven Magic Mountains — Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone’s 30-foot stacks of fluorescent-painted limestone boulders in the Mojave desert.
I recently found myself just down the road in Las Vegas, helping the folks at Veterans Business Guide write content that grabs readers’ attention and moves them to act.
Turns out, my side trip to the Mohave was its own masterclass in hijacking attention. You don’t need a multimillion-dollar ad budget. You just need to stop writing in shades of beige.
Colorful, concrete details are:
- Easier to read. Colorful sentences are easier to read, understand, learn and remember, according to some 60 years of research. Like this: When a fly moves its wings about 200 times in a second, you hear a buzzing sound. Not like this: Our goal is to foster a culture of excellence that empowers employees to maximize their potential.
- Easier to understand. There’s an almost one-to-one correlation between how colorful content and understanding, according to three professors at Texas A&M University. Colorful headlines like Countertop Gadgets outperform boring, dry, abstract ones like Domestic Devices.
- Easier to remember. Colorful, concrete phrases like muddy village and flaming forest are four times more memorable than available knowledge and basic theory, according to researchers at the University of Western Ontario.
As American poet William Carlos Williams said, “No ideas but in things.” That means, as a communicator, it’s your job to turn ideas into things.
Paint your messages neon.
If you want your message to stick, you can’t blend into the background. Pack up the dull, beige abstractions and start painting your copy with concrete, colorful detail.
Because color isn’t decoration. It’s communication.
👉 Let’s help your team members communicate better with colorful, concrete copy.
