Classics Gallery

"Impressive! I think it shows your extensive experience and drives home the point of how much impact articles can make without being sales pitches. I think it will also help people be creative when thinking of messaging."

--Raychel Marcotte Moore, BroadPR

It's not something you're likely to see on many writers' websites. But if you look toward the middle in the left column of my homepage, you'll see the link to a Classics Gallery. It's new and I'd like to explain some of the thinking behind it. (This blog is about connecting the dots, after all.)


The Gallery is a single web page with an introduction at the top (text and audio) and six client cases. Each case consists of a brief text intro, an audio commentary, and links to the relevant writing samples as originally published. Except for a Wall Street Journal article, all were written by me although most were published under client bylines. Typically they started out as white papers.

To qualify for the Gallery, cases had to be from 1990 or before. The first five focus on key technology milestones -- like the introduction of EMC's storage architecture -- and show how these milestones were initially positioned "back in the day." The sixth case shows my first two technology articles, written in 1983.

Okay, so why do this? Won't I be afraid of looking dated? Obviously, that's a risk. But I have the rest of my website plus some great client references to prove otherwise. (By the way, the photo at the very top is me now, not then.)

First, I think it's fascinating to see the origins of so many themes with which our industry is still very much preoccupied today. Second, the actual technology issues discussed are largely settled. That makes it easier to focus more on the presentation itself -- to examine whatever devices were used, for example, to convey authority or sustain reader interest. Third, a Classics Gallery demonstrates staying power -- which is rare in both the technology business and the freelance writing business.

A couple of notes about the audio: I think audio helps humanize a website -- which can often be a very abstract experience, especially in high tech. It also cuts down on the number of words an audience is asked to read. In fact, that point seems like an appropriate place at which to stop writing here and let the Classics Gallery speak for itself.

Marking a Client Milestone

"We enable text that connects."

--Monotype Imaging

Today is the one-year anniversary of my working with the marketing group at Monotype Imaging (after previously writing tech manuals for the software engineers). With a history that dates back 20 years (and a heritage going back almost 100) Monotype Imaging is a global company whose text rendering solutions virtually define modern digital typography. You'll find their stuff in most cell phones, office printers and operating systems like Windows and Mac OS. (They also own fonts.com.)


This year the company went public and earlier this month was listed on the Russell 2000.

I wrote the brochures that positioned them both corporately and within their hottest market -- embedded text on mobile devices. You can download the corporate brochure here and see the product brochures here on my website. Barrett Communications did the design on all these brochures. I think they did an amazing job.

The corporate brochure opens with the tagline, "We enable text that connects." I think it illustrates how market positioning works best when it projects corporate strategy. The next sentence does too:

"No matter what the language, no matter what the device, no matter what the purpose -- embedded text solutions help people make connections for enhanced experiences, collaboration, clarity and style."

Anyone who thinks text (or writing) isn't strategic should read this brochure from cover to cover.

Denuded E-mail

"... typed words are denuded of the rich emotional context we convey in person or over the phone."

--Daniel Goleman, New York Times, October 7, 2007

One of the things that strike me in our increasingly text rich (as opposed to rich text) environment is the unintended impact writing has on people. One place you see that is in e-mail, says Dan Goleman in his recent New York Times "Preoccupations" column: "E-Mail Is Easy to Write (And to Misread)." The problem, Goleman says, is that writing doesn't employ the "multiple signals the brain uses to calibrate emotions" -- signals that, presumably, the brain also uses to convey and even stimulate emotions. Those signals are the things all animals use to send and receive emotions, as well as stimulate emotion in others -- such as vocal intonation, eye contact, and body language.

Goleman's advice: to more frequently mix in-person contact with e-mail -- giving everyone involved I suppose the opportunity to re-calibrate. At those meetings, I can imagine everyone thinking: "Okay, I see you're really not that cold obnoxious person I thought you were." (Of course, it's also possible that occasionally some of those e-mail impressions are proven dead-on accurate.)

A couple of thoughts: First, why limit this to e-mail -- which is just one kind of text? Aren't all forms of written communication necessarily denuded of emotional context -- such as ad copy, editorials, and blogs? Not to mention novels, essays, Shakespeare sonnets, personal letters and all the other ways people have been writing to get other people excited for thousands of years?

Second thought: Just because it's hard (which admittedly it is, especially when you're in a hurry) that's not to say it can't be done -- or done to great effect. Trust me, a couple of lines in a well-written e-mail can really make someone's day, or ruin it. And that's true for any textual form. And while it's also true that humans can no longer bare their fangs or engage in physical stroking rituals -- we've evolved other tools to get our point across when we really feel the need. And these tools can be amazingly efficient when they have to be.