Wouldn't you have loved to be in the meeting when the ad people pitched the idea to Apple for their current line of commercials? Maybe it went a little something like this:
-"So all we're gonna do is pick a cool new song and lay it overtop of close up images of the product."
-"That sounds great. And then a list of all the features will come up or what?"
-"No. No product features, just images and music... maybe the Apple logo at the end, but I guess that's an image... so just images and music."
-"Whoa, whoa... we've been slaving away for years to create products with the perfect, user friendly features and you're just going to play music?!?"
-"Yep."
-"But Apple's about the usability of its products and how intuitively the product and its features are put together."
-"Right. But our target demographic isn't a robot, it's a 20 or 30-something who feels and is moved. That's why it's got to be just images and music. We're not selling a product, we're selling image and identity. That's what music and images create."
I hate to say it, but they're right. I can't tell you have many times I've seen an Apple commercial (see below) and immediately went and downloaded the song from that commercial. As humans we experience the world through images and sounds. Our emotions are formed by our senses, not our brains. Ever hear a song that brought you back to an experience, or seen a picture that put you in a place. We might think with logic and explanation, but we experience image and music.
Recently I've been teaching a poetry unit in my creative writing class. I've been trying to get students to create images in their poetry and to let the images do the work, to let the images create the experience they are trying to create for the reader. This isn't always easy, as when we sit down to think about something (as they do when my students sit down to write a poem), we think about it in a series of abstractions. But when we experience something it comes to us through our sense, via images and sounds and etc.
Somehow my identity is wrapped up in the images I am drawn to. Or maybe it is better said that I am drawn to those images because of who I am... but now we're just getting into a chicken or the egg sort of discussion.
I've recently found that I'm drawn to images that tend to be sleek and fairly minimal. I think this might be because of my upbringing in Iowa, with its immense expanses of land. But I think this also might be because my life tends to be a bit hectic, with very few repeated patterns. Because of this I am able to escape into images and sounds (aka music) that is fairly minimal. What sorts of sounds and images are you drawn to? What does that say about who you are? Are their images that all of us are drawn to? Does that say something about humanity?
Images and sounds that create experience aren't just fun ways to pass the time, or a personality test, they are important to how who we are and how we experience the world. Ever read the Gospels? Even Jesus understood this, as he went about explaining himself and his kingdom, not in theological discourse, but in parables (aka images). So the next time you go about trying to get someone to understand something maybe the best way to do this is not through a logical explanation, but through a series of images and sounds. And maybe the next time you want to understand someone or something else, try experience the images and sounds of their lives.
