Certain teachers, professors, and mentors stick with you. It’s a familiar theme. In fact, there are motion pictures dedicated to this notion—To Sir, with Love, Dead Poets Society, and Mr. Holland’s Opus come to mind—as well as books, songs, and probably dozens of other forms of communication and entertainment. One of my inspirations, Fred Rubeck, a professor in the Department of Performing Art at Elon University, North Carolina, drew my attention to an important principle over a decade ago. This was in one of the many acting and directing classes I took with him, but the principle encompasses much more than the stage. I’ve been guided by this notion in Web and multimedia design, video production, and even Flash programming. It’s summed up by Hamlet in Act III, Scene 2 of his namesake play (yes, I’m about to quote Shakespeare).

Hamlet is talking to a beloved troupe of visiting actors. He’s pleased with them, but stern in his wishes. At first, he cautions them not to overdo their craft (this is the notion of “less is more”), but at the same time …

Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion
be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the
word to the action; …

In visual design, this terrific advice can be manifested in countless ways. Sometimes it’s even the smallest of details that makes the difference. While directing the one act Lone Star in college, I had positioned my actors in a very particular way during one scene. The two lead characters were sprawled comfortably in junked-up, bench-style car seats in the grass behind their favorite Texas bar. Their goody-two-shoes friend, Cletis, was up on a tree stump, waving his hands and reminiscing with great enthusiasm.

Cletis was played by a shorter actor, because his character wasn’t as manly as the others. This particular speech was one of his very few moments to really shine, which is why I had him on the tree stump. The arrangement was good, but somehow not ideal. I didn’t have the benefit of lighting, otherwise I might have fixed a spot directly on the actor. Making due, I had the sprawled actors lean in toward Cletis. I had one of them prop up his knee and lay his arm across it, pointing his beer right where the spotlight would have made sense. Suit the action to the word.

In this case—in this one moment—the words were spoken by one person while the action was performed by another. Timed as it was, just this little detail, it punched up the scene and pulled the audience’s focus where I wanted it.

In Web and multimedia design, “the word” is usually a spec sheet given to you by a client; “the action” is the job you’re tasked with: nothing short of conjuring that list of bullet points into a website, slideshow, brochure, corporate presentation, video game, or whatever’s on the docket.

What colors best match the tone your client hopes to convey? What font faces would make sense in this context? Will you incorporate audio? Is “the word” in this case chatty or sparse? Does it make sense to add a bit of movement to your slide transitions? Should buttons bounce and jiggle, like so many in super-Flashed-out sites do? Maybe. Maybe not.

There is no single answer, of course. Sometimes less is more, but sometimes you’ll want to overwhelm your audience with the baffling ambivalence of a Slurpee headache. Whatever you do, don’t just throw in the whiz-bang because you can…but don’t be too tame, neither. Consider what the project is saying. Pretend you could convey its message to all five senses—sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch—then build on that. If you don’t have a spotlight, if you don’t have something like Smell-O-Vision, figure out another way to appeal to those five senses. Then suit the action to the word.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 27th, 2007 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Design Careers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.