Here are some scary facts about our ‘age of interruption’… The average American receives more than 15 hours a day of digital media, everything from YouTube videos and Netflix movies to computer games and text messages. In 2007, Yankelovich, a market research firm, estimates that a person living in a city 30 years ago saw up to 2,000 ad messages a day, compared with up to 5,000 today, like the Christian Dior logo which is one of hundreds (or even thousands) of visuals that bombard us in a shopping mall.
These numbers highlights the fact that while some people might think communications is just about producing content, there’s already plenty of it around. Not only do we now have the traditional producers of content (ex. journalists, creative agencies, organizations, governments, etc.) putting things out via established channels, but ‘normal’ people now have the tools and platforms to create their own content whether it’s text, video, sound or animation. Producing more content doesn’t mean that it’ll get to the right people at the right time. Instead, science can actually help explain why some forms of communication work or not. Take the logo for example.
Logos play an important emotional role in influencing decision making, especially when information or time is limited. Neuroscientists have been studying how the brain perceives and recognizes a logo design, and how much it impacts decision making.
According to the graphic of “The Incredible Way Your Brain ‘Sees’ a Logo“, the essence of a logo comes down to color, shape, and meaning. These seemingly simple factors can have a profound impact on why certain communication aspects work with the simple reason that our brains are wired to accept and process information and uses this to interpret or translate what we see or hear into something meaningful.
Perhaps studying science isn’t so dry after all… I mean, Spock was the ultimate scientist – logical and objective – yet his profound interest in and curiosity for meaning had touched many lives. Isn’t that the ultimate aim of why we communicate?
Rest in peace with the stars, my dear friend. pic.twitter.com/D2dVG6I9Xi
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) February 27, 2015