News

With regard to your article on packaging, design and copy (“Too much information”, MW September 20), I feel it’s worth commenting on the generally lacklustre level of copywriting ability shown on all too many forms of packaging.
There are, it must be said, some brilliant exceptions, but why is it that a great deal of copy does not reflect or enhance the essence of the brand it is trying to promote? It’s a great opportunity wasted.

The are to creating exciting and succinct copy that can persuade the reader to react and purchase the promoted product seems to be diminishing. Might it be that part of copy’s demise can be attributed to the collapse that are forever encouraging “conceptual creation” instead of art and (particularly largely) copy specialism? Surely these two subjects are mutually exclusive yet they seem to have been inextricably spun together in the minds of many.

Many of today’s creative graduates are now taught to take the big brand idea and deliver it across a range of mediums. This is all very well. However, few are taught the intricacies of each discipline, especially how to complement design using persuasive copy and tone of voice. At the other end of the process the lack of importance that many brands and agencies attribute to copy is most readily demonstrated with its virtual absence in brand guidelines. While great tomes of diatribe and diktats are produced on the size of fonts, position of logos, preferred colour-ways and size of margins, there is nearly always scant reference to copy style and grammar.

Perhaps it’s time to repackage copy as a subject and see that it gets the attention it deserves.

Neil Francis, Creative Director
Stephens Francis Whitson
London SW1