Our Philosophy: Style Is the New Content
Information or Attention?
People have been talking about the “information economy” for decades now, but is that the right label?
Economics is the study of scarce resources, things people want but have a hard time getting. As The Economics of Attention points out, information is not scarce (we're drowning in it). What's scarce is the attention to organize and make sense of all this information.
To succeed in the new economy, you need to catch and to hold people’s attention. You need to help them find and use what you have to offer.
Style or Content?
Traditionally we catch people’s attention with style, the snappy ad campaign, and we hold it with content, what is “under the hood.”
This distinction is increasingly hard to make. With many cars, what’s under the hood is identical: only the body and other styling changes from model to model.
With the Apple ipod, you can argue that the style is the content. We do not buy an ipod for its content, the individual songs we chose to put on it. Instead, we buy it for the ways its design helps us style and make sense of content, for the click wheel system which organizes our songs so intuitively.
Well-Styled Content: A Winning Strategy
Over time, style without content loses out, but not to content without style. Instead, it loses out to well-styled content. My task is to help you style your content so you can find people who want your product or service. To help you tell your story—with images and words—so that you can attract and hold people’s attention. So that you are the source they turn to.
To catch and hold your audience’s attention, you need content, often lots of it, but it needs to be organized so that it is easy to use and fun to take in. That’s what Crazy Eye Designs is all about it. Let us help you tell your story.
The Economics
of Attention
- Argues that style and design are central to the new economy.
- Author R. Lanham ran an innovative program at the University of California.
- Lanham's students worked across several platforms: writing, video, and multimedia.
- Warren has been applying Lanham's ideas since 1983.