Chapter 5 -DeVecchis

Chapter 5: The Big Idea

This chapter discussed the development of the underlying concept of any effect advertisement: the big idea. It started of by explaining the the 6  essential questions (that I was all too familiar with) = Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? I completely agree with a number of the things brought up during the chapter. For one, the concept of “insight” and the idea of trying to figure out exactly what it is that your consumers desire. This is key to the development of a  product. If people want a new phone for example, but the majority want something small and sleek, it wouldn’t make sense to produce a big chunky phone.

Secondly, I enjoyed how the chapter broke down the different ways of thinking creatively. It is true that many times (for me at least) my best ideas come to me when I am least expecting it, and really not trying to come up with an idea at all. However there are also times where I NEED to come up with a concept or direction, and nothing comes to me. Thus I find the suggestions outlined in the chapter to be very helpful. A few interesting ones included synthesis, no copy, and visual analogy. Synthesis is the combining of two different ideas into one (as with the image of the fish given in the reading). No copy is a method that uses only images. I like this concept a lot, because I feel like I am a very visual learner, and that an image will always stick in my mind way longer than anything else. Lastly, I thought the idea of visual analogy was interesting. This is when an advertisement does not directly state it’s message, but instead alludes to it and contains a connotative interpretation. Not only are these approaches more clever, I think they also give the viewer a sense of accomplishment upon figuring out the meaning of the design.


I think this is a really clever design utilizing the concept of synthesis