Communications that go the distance

Amongst the sweary titled business books on my Christmas reading list was the table-shattering thump of Thomas Heatherwick’s paperback, Humanise.??

As designer-not-architect and eponymous studio founder, Heatherwick has built a reputation for delivering some of the most brilliant and controversial public projects, from the beloved 2012 Olympic cauldron to the less-than-beloved Vessel in New York.?

In Humanise, Heatherwick rails against the “global blandemic of inhuman buildings” arguing that boring buildings make us sick, stressed and depressed.??

The book shares a behind-the-scenes sketchy and scrappy view of how to create human spaces that make you smile and bring people back into how we consider designing buildings. The corresponding campaign is a call to arms to re-humanise cities by making the design of buildings more joyful and engaging.??

One of the ideas I loved was that a building should hold your attention and be interesting from three distances: from city, to street, to door.?

I’m 100% stealing this concept as a great test for your communications.

City View?

Being interesting from this distance is the first test. Does your brand draw us in? Does it captivate? Do we feel anything? Do you stand out from the crowd??

Street View?

You might lose the immediate impact of the brand, but here you’ll be able to communicate in greater detail. Is there enough interest to draw people into your channels? Enough curiosity to make people want to look again??

Door View?

Great communications are worth experiencing up close. This is where you can see the considered and nuanced details of story, design and data.

I believe that in the quest for efficiency (and “best practice”) we’ve lost the importance of creating communications that connect with actual people. The good news is that increasing standardisation and comparability of disclosures give us an immense opportunity to be radically distinctive in our brand, narrative, content, and channels.?

Great communication is worth spending time with.

Boring communication is not.?

And to steal directly from Humanise... ?

What we need in the future isn’t more conformity but more creativity. More emotion. More humanity.? ?

So, does your communications pass the three distances test??