Little Book Blog

Stuck on you

Getting someone to endorse your product can be a hard won battle at times, so when a company approaches you off their own back to do just that it’s definitely a cause for celebration.

When hot melt adhesive manufacturer, Beardow Adams, wanted to help customers get the best from their products, Little Book was the obvious choice. Obvious because Beardow Adams’ hot melt adhesive is an essential component in the production of every single Little Book - it’s what bonds the inner text sheet to the outer cover.

The guide will go out to all customers using the hot melt adhesives in woodworking applications and provides information on trouble-free bonding, the ideal conditions for working with the adhesives and health and safety essentials, setting up and housekeeping tips, as well as a very useful section on solutions to common problems.

It’s a brilliant use of the Little Book format - a ‘how to guide’ that’s full of really useful information for customers, a great showcase for Beardow Adams’ products and a superbly glued Little Book to boot. Everyone’s a winner!

Crammed full of adventure

Am sitting here at my desk looking at the Little Book we’ve just despatched to the Greater London Middlesex West scouts and my mind’s made up - I want to join. For sure they’ll reject my application but they won’t blame me for trying.

You should see this Little Book (really you should – click here to request your free sample). It’s going to be handed out to the 600+ scouts who are attending next week’s Kandersteg 2010 in Switzerland – an international alpine adventure expedition – and the programme is so amazing it’d make anyone want to join.

The expedition is crammed full of all the events and activities that’ll be taking place this summer at what is the world’s only international scout centre (something scouting’s founder Baden-Powell always dreamed of). Scouts, Guides and Explorer Scouts from all over the world will be converging there to camp, hike (across a huge glacier!), rock climb, white water raft, abseil and take part in numerous games and challenges.

Like the expedition itself, the Mini Guides, which each scout will carry with them at all times, are chock full of information, detailing the timetable for each day of the expedition, the site’s facilities, camp locations, maps, emergency contacts and loads of other useful information.

Just how much fun and adventure can you cram into an expedition? And, please, can I come?

Creativity needs limits

Have you ever played that game - the one where you write names of film/book characters and famous people on small pieces of paper and then take it in turns to pick them out of a hat? The challenge is to help your team guess who you picked out without using their name.

The first round is a bit like charades - as long as you don’t mention the name, you can describe them any which way you like. But it’s in the next two rounds that things get really fun and interesting. In Round 2, you must describe the person or character using just one word - hard - but harder still is Round 3 when no words are allowed and you can only mime your one clue. The truly amazing, and therefore enjoyable, often hilarious, aspect of this parlour game is the single word and mime that become associated with each character or celebrity. It reveals, often hidden, often comic, genius to creatively communicate a message to other people.

With limits placed upon us, we become extraordinarily creative at communicating with others. With constraints around what we can or cannot say and do, we have to distil the message in its purest form - the one word, or action, that tells another person exactly who or what it is you are talking about.

Given no word count by an editor, a journalist could, and would, ramble on infinitely. With a word limit, they must sift all the information they have gathered and include in their article only what is really necessary or relevant to the story they are telling.

A designer may dream of the client who announces, “Do whatever you like.” But having no limits placed on us is not the dream come true we might think, as it provides no clear starting point, no clear end.

By being forced to work within certain parameters, we are forced to pare everything back to the bare bones - to get to the nub of the matter. And this is where our creativity can really start to flourish - this is the creative communication challenge we have all waiting for.

PS. My favourite guess ever was of a famous female politician, who became associated with the word ‘mad’ - the mime was truly brilliant!