GETTING INTO THEIR MINDS
As a communication designer, its one main important thing that I will have learn is how to get into the minds of the people I am designing for. If I cant do this, then my designs will fail, and all the efforts put into designing this great object or visual, will be put to waste, as the people that I intended the message or object for, will either be completely misunderstood, or will be completely useless to them.
Being able to get someone’s attention is one thing, but to communicate the physical message is the other problem. There must be a balance not to out weigh the other. You can scream at people with fluro, crazy shapes, that may be ignored due to the fact that the information is un-interpretable. You can also provide an important message through bland imagery, which no-one would even bother to look at – the other extreme.
I have found some interesting articles that describe why certain things get our attention, and what may ward us away, based from our instinctual thoughts and reactions.
The effects of observation
We know as the most basic feeling, that colours can effect the moods we are in. Colours can change the perception and size, scale of a room. Can change the idea of weight looking at an object. But colour is only one part, being mostly applied as a flat medium, like paint on walls, or the colour of a leaf. Shape is also a crucial aspect that can effect the way we look at thing.
From previous research, I looked at how looking at certain drawn shapes on a page can evoke specific feelings and thoughts. How looking at a Sharp object, we somehow will form in our head, to verbally describe the shape, would be using hard sounding words like “Shaki” or “TAZIP” (made up words for example). Where if we had a rounded shape – we could name it, just by looking at it, using soft sounding words like “mibble or dome”. The same works with actual physical objects.
Relating to lecture I had attended “the hunter gatherer brain” – (see lecture visualisations) talked about how the brain has a section called the “amygdala”, which is the “fear centre” for our brain, where it acts as a danger sensing guard, for the use of survival. The brain can make decisions at tremendous speed, whether something is good or bad, will it hurt us, will it eat us, or can we eat it, or can we mate with it. The Amygdala basically makes decisions before we do, forming a particular way of thinking to the object, obstacle, visual we have seen.
In Advertising, it is important to know how the target will think and react, as you don’t want your audience to react badly to something your going to be spending allot of money on.
An example of this is in this excerpt from an article
TO GET INSIDE THEIR MINDS, LEARN HOW THEIR MINDS WORK.
Bar, Moshe, Advertising Age; 11/26/2007, Vol. 78 Issue 47, p16-17, 2p
A few years ago, Taco Bell had billboards that depicted the arm of a man holding a taco. I didn’t mind Taco Bell as a fast-food option, but, oddly, I found this ad exceptionally aversive. I tried to figure out why.
One day I was driving and about to merge with traffic, just ahead of an approaching bus. Glancing very briefly to the left and then to the right, my impression was that the bus carried an ad depicting a cobra snake ready to bite. So I looked again and noticed it was the Taco Bell ad. My brain interpreted the configuration of the arm with the taco as a snake. Why?
It was a case of unconscious perception: Visual elements in the picture influenced my impression about it unconsciously, leaving me with a negative attitude toward the ad.
When we form our opinions, we do it extremely quickly, and once we have, it is very hard to change our impression, sometimes in the face of contradictory facts.
Here’s another example. By now we are all familiar with internet sites that force you to watch preroll spots. Most of us get somewhat annoyed by such pervasive advertising. Cognitive psychology experiments have shown that when people have to ignore a stimulus on the way to achieving another goal, not only do they get annoyed, they end up really disliking the distraction. And this disliking is very specific to that stimulus.
So, if I am interested in the latest Red Sox score, but am forced to watch a commercial for a new merlot first, chances are that I will develop an aversion to that very brand of merlot, which will create for the advertiser the opposite effect of what was intended. Or imagine a fashion retailer that would like to modify its conservative image. If we scientists have behavioral methods that we believe could modify the associations elicited in post-traumatic stress, changing associations in a retailer’s reputation should be a walk in the park in comparison, using exactly the same principles.
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In short: My notes on it
• Ads and attraction depend on the human, natural responses (instinct)
eg: Looking at sharp edges make people “fearful” of the object, humans prefer “soft looking objects”
• The amygdala is apart of our brain that makes decisions very quickly, in fact, acts before we do.
Its acts out of survival, if something is good, or if something is bad.
Eg: Taco bill ad, hand being seen as a snakes head (unconsciously), from fast thinking.
From this, bad thoughts are created for the ad.
• Also, Quick reactions to things will also form bias in the brain. If we have to avoid something before looking at something we want to see, we will get annoyed quickly and instantly have bad feeling toward the ad that seen. (also possibly connected to the previous article – People with high stimulation levels – are constantly trying to find something else to stimulate them (stimulation seekers).
