Boldness be my friend!
—William Shakespeare, Cymbeline
Imagine you are in a museum of ancient art filled with thousands upon thousands of old and beautiful paintings and you stop to look at one. Many of us think the reason we stop at one particular painting is random, but it is not.
The same is true for music. Say one evening you decide to walk down the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles and pass by every venue on the club-packed entertainment street in the heart of the city, between Crescent Heights and Doheny—the gateway between West Hollywood and Beverly Hills. If one band’s sound made you stop, stay, and listen, there would actually be a reason—and it would have nothing to do with your musical taste.
You would almost certainly be unaware of the reason other than you “liked it” or it was “your kind of music,” but the real reason is much more primal. And once you understand the laws of attention and attraction, you will not only see these laws working everywhere and all around you but can use them to get attention for anything you choose.
Despite the intense distractions of the modern world, certain ideas, art, advertising, scientific theory, and messages do stand out, while others are ignored. The reason we pay attention to certain people and ignore others isn’t necessarily because their work is fresher, more beautiful, or more innovative than someone else’s (though it may be).
The real reason is rooted in primal laws of human perception—how people take in and filter information. An “Iconist” is someone who has mastered these laws, and gets others to pay attention. He or she knows how people prefer to take in information . . . and what makes them filter it out.
Iconists use massively oversized, bold images or phrases that can be instantly understood. They do this by counterintuitively using repetition to grab attention. While we’re often taught that repeating ourselves is not effective, it actually allows Iconists to generate increased interest and support for their message. It sounds simple. But few of us know how to use these iconic techniques, even though they can help us earn more of the things we want in nearly every area of our lives.
The Iconist centers around the concept of Icons and Blocks, which are similar ideas, but with a key distinction. A Block is a succinct, clear, bold, monolithic image, statement, melody, physical structure, or piece of design. Throughout the book we’ll explore examples, but what makes a Block a Block is that it can be immediately understood by any onlooker. By definition, a Block has not yet taken hold in the mind of the viewer or audience. It is an Icon in the making or an Icon about to happen. With consistent, deliberate, and up-front repetition, the Block grabs attention, stands out, and imprints itself in the minds of those you are trying to reach. In fact, if done correctly, it gives your intended audience no choice. That is when your Block becomes an Icon—once it has been accepted and imprinted in the minds of others.
When I use the capitalized word Icon in this book, I am referring to an Icon that has been made with a Block. Since these two terms are so closely related, it is not uncommon for my clients to refer to using Blocks as “Iconing” something, or to say, “I Icon’d it!”
Blocks, as tools to create Icons, work in all mediums and can be used with anything from art, music, design, or architecture to business and product design. In other words you can make anything stand out in any medium once you understand these timeless rules of human perception.
We often have no idea how simple a concept needs to be to stand out and how much repetition it takes for a message to demand attention, sink in, and then endure with our desired audience. People tend to think that once we have said it once, the message has been received and there’s no need to draw more attention to it. This is because most people are, for reasons we will explore, uncomfortable truly standing out and being consistently obvious. It can be a catch-22—we want to stand out and get others to champion our work, but it can also be awkward to have all eyes upon us. A true Iconist pushes past this discomfort.
Distilling a message down to its most simplistic, elementary ideal can be difficult because people are complicated. Our thoughts and emotions combine in ways that make it hard to break down what we want to say into a few obvious points. Yet human beings can best digest information when it’s presented in a few simple points that they can latch on to in an instant, no matter how complex the idea or product may be.
When we lead with radical simplicity everything changes. We make connection happen purposefully through deliberately crafted approaches that gain immediate attention, rather than by chance. By following the examples in this book, you’ll learn to transform yourself into an iconic thinker, and you’ll likely become more fulfilled personally as a result.
There may be moments you are using the laws laid out in The Iconist when you will be tempted to make your message more complicated than it needs to be. Don’t give in. We often feel uncomfortable being bold, but we’re also much happier people when we embrace fierce simplicity. It is instant understandability and instant comprehension that facilitate connection.
As an Iconist you can communicate in such a way that your recipients will not be able to get your message out of their heads, regardless of how you currently see yourself as a communicator. Any art, political message, film, advertising, music, writing, innovation, or profession can rise above the competing environment and demand attention if you use the natural laws of Blocks and Icons.
Don’t forget: the ability to express yourself and the ability to be heard are two very different things. We can express and fall on deaf ears. To get what we want, others must be listening. And as we will see, breaking through all the noise so that others can hear, without using Blocks, has become nearly impossible.