What Liberal Democrats should do less of
That was my question at the official London hustings for the Liberal Democrat leadership contest last week: both candidate have talked plenty about what they think the party should do more of, so what should it do less of?
Both gave decent answers, with Norman Lamb wanting to streamline the party’s internal structures (though for a former Federal Policy Committee chair to say he didn’t know how they worked wasn’t very wise) whilst Tim Farron was wanting to challenge the premise of the question by growing the party’s capacity (a good point albeit another example of his habit of sticking only to saying things everyone in the room will agree with).
What would have constituted a good answer? I’m sure there’s more than one (and do share your ideas in the comments) but the one I would have given is this: we spend far too much time designing leaflets in the party.
Every month, hundreds of hours of volunteer and staff time going into designing and laying out leaflets around the country. Leaflets are good, but it’s a huge investment of time – time that could go on other things but instead is spent adjusting designs and layout in PagePlus (the party’s standard DTP package).
There are two problems with that – and one fundamental change in mindset the party should make.
The first problem is simply one of quality. Yes, there are hundreds of different designs floating around for Focus leaflets, knock-up leaflets, calling leaflets and the like. But there aren’t hundreds of really good designs. They vary from the brilliant to the embarrassing. Some variation is always sensible, to make way for the occasional really special requirement. But look at newspapers, magazines or other publications. They manage quite fine with a limited number of standard layouts with just the occasional special variation.
Which leads to the second problem. Designing your own different leaflets just because, well, that’s the way it has always been done, takes time away from concentrating more on the content – the messaging, the photos and even the wordsmithing. There’s nothing quite so soul destroying as being asked to go out to deliver a pile of leaflets which have their own custom design that took time to do – and yet the words and photos betray the lack of time given to them. (And all the more so when it has been done by someone employed to do so – because it’s not only their time being wasted, it’s the efforts that raised the money to pay for their time to needless reinvent a wonky wheel that is being wasted too.)
This is, however, about far more than just saying ‘polish up some templates, add a few more in and send them around’ because there’s already a wide range of templates, sometimes used but often not, available.
It’s a mindset change that is required: for people to start thinking that each time they design a leaflet it’s time being taken up that probably shouldn’t be, just as in a newspaper it’s only the very rare occasion when the front page needs a whole new look and the rest of the time everyone is better of concentrating on the content.
It is no coincidence that one of the best local campaigners I know always used to boast about how long it was since he last designed a leaflet. His campaigns were full of leaflets, but they were better leaflets because he spent time on campaigning and organising rather than designing.
So that’s what would have been a really good, imaginative answer from Norman or Tim: we should do less designing of leaflets, and abandon the idea that ‘organiser’ equals ‘designer of unique local artwork’, freeing up through the year thousands of hours of activist time to spend on capacity building and real campaigning.
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Good morning Mark. I totally disagree. Effective leaflets are ones in which the leaflet is largely a work of art. To be effective, a work of art needs to hold and entertain the attention of the viewer for as long as possible. Original artwork by artists can indeed to that. Standard artwork is a trap. A trap because it instantly tells the viewer that the leaflet has the value of little more than an empty pizza box, to be glanced at for a microsecond and zinged in the bin.
To hold the attention of the viewer, the viewer has to be sure it is a genuine work of art. Proof of this is if the leaflet consists of multiple signals including mostly local issues. To hold attention, a hand done cartoon such as Urks is much more effective than classy artwork. Rather than the best professional photos, photos that are a bit hammy on local issues work best. Attention span is longest for a hand done accurate sketch in B&W done quickly: first take a snapshot; then open it in your laptop or whatever, then project the pic on a piece of A4 white paper with no wobbling. Then take a BLACK pen or even Rotring to produce a line drawing that delineates some of image. Open the line drawing in MS Paint to rub out all those annoying bits (e.g. warning sign over candidates head). Print your half finished line drawing on an A4 white paper. Now tweak bits to finalise it. Last of all, open in MS Paint to add labels using appropriate fonts.
Now float the final B&W image to exactly where you want it on the leaflet not as a boring IKEA box but as a slightly quirky shape that holds the viewer’s attention. The viewer will appreciate looking at an artistic line B&W sketch of a local scene much more than looking at an glossy IKEA pizza box. Mark, what would you hang on your wall? A leaflet with a sketch of a local scene, or a leaflet of perfect mass-produced literature? Robin
In turn, I disagree too 🙂 Most of our leaflets are like a new edition of a newspaper or a magazine. There’s certainly important scope for good design each time, but newspapers and magazines managed to be popular and well-read while also repeatedly using the same basic template and without creating each edition as a new piece of art.