Contrast.
Don’t judge a book by its cover — a saying goes. That’s easier said than done. We, as humans, make snap judgments just by looking. And we make them insanely fast. According to social psychological research, it only takes 1/10th of a second to form a first impression about a person. Studies from Google indicate that visual design is no different. In less than 50 milliseconds (that’s 0.05 seconds), users form an opinion about your website. That defines whether they’ll stay or leave the site. It also outlines their future attitudes towards the site — and you. First impressions prevail and persist regardless of how often new and positive experiences contradict the initial encounter. And there’s no chance to make a second first impression.
During the pandemic, we‘ve seen an immense rise in digital marketing. Digital ad spending is expected to increase by 20.4% this year. That raises the bar for meaningful first impressions ever higher. Brands need to draw attention and stand out from the feed. According to Professor Karen Nelson-Field et al., brands have 2–3 seconds to get noticed in the Facebook advertisement. After three seconds, the attention drops. Unless people can link the ad to your brand, marketing investments and efforts are a waste of money.
And there are many brands out there. People won’t go to any great effort to recognize your brand. The reverse is true. Many of the brand stimuli are disregarded by our brain’s filtering system. People want to avoid distraction and their attention is constantly fleeting.
Considering the amount choices people are offered, one would think that brand builders would, in respect, put special effort to look, feel and behave differently. Some of them do. But surprisingly, particularly in the startups, brands are noticeably similar. Ben Schott writes in Bloomberg: “Why do disruptive startups slavishly follow an identikit formula of business model, look and feel, and tone of voice? Because it works, sort of.” Brand new has turned into bland new. You could swift the company logos, and no one would notice.
First impressions, attention, distinctiveness — they are related to mechanisms of seeing and perception and therefore also to comparisons and difference. It inspired me to explore what is ‘contrast.’
Finding the opposites
By definition, contrast is about being strikingly different from something else. In his book, ‘Whatever you think, think the opposite,’ Paul Arden explains the benefits of making bad decisions. Arden (1940–2008), a well-recognized British creative director, encourages to take a little risk and turn the point-of-view 180 degrees — away from the obvious. And even it might seem the wrong way to think; he states it’s the right way to win.
From a design point of view, the contrast has many nuances. Hierarchy, variety, ratio, relation. They all compare one substance to another from a slightly different point of view. Contrast is about Paul Arden’s opposites, for sure, but where’s the line? What is the slightest contrast we are capable of detecting?
What can we see?
There are physiological limits for seeing. Seeing colors, for example, is limited to certain wavelengths of light, which is called a visible spectrum. According to Kimberly Jameson, an associate project scientist at the University of California, “A healthy human eye has three types of cone cells, each of which can register about 100 different colour shades, therefore most researchers ballpark the number of colours we can distinguish at around a million.”
Some people can do even better. Jameson is working with ‘tetrachromats’ with a genetic mutation that grants them an extra, fourth, cone cell. That allows these people recognize 100 million colors. Given the contrast, the dichromat (color-blind) persons have only two cones and therefore can see an estimated 10 000 different colors.
Human perception has astonishing abilities. According to Adam Hadhazy, there’s basically “no intrinsic limit to the smallest or farthest thing we can see. So long as an object of whatever size, distance, or brevity transfers a photon to a retinal cell, we can spy it.” Psychology theories persistently insist that a candle flame can be spotted from as far as 48 kilometers away, on a clear dark night. Perhaps it’s possible. After all, we can see stars and galactic in the night sky that are quintillions of kilometers away! Yet, I seriously struggle to read the small texts in the food packages as close as 20 centimeters from my face. Perhaps adding more contrast would help (or new glasses)!
Seeing can be deceiving
The human brain is a sturdy processor. It processes images 60,000 times faster than text. Therefore also majority (90%) of the information processed by the brain is visual. But seeing can be deceiving.
Joseph Albers (1888–1976) dedicated his life to studying the interaction of colors. He stated that a thing is never seen as it is. Through experiments, Albers demonstrated that the same color appears completely different on different backgrounds. Similarly, he showed how two different colors can look the same when placed on different backgrounds. When two different things seem the same, where’s the contrast?
Similar happens in life as well. While first impressions are involuntary and uncontrolled reactions, seeing is a cognitive function and is related to knowing. We can look but ignore what we see. We can turn our heads away and look elsewhere. Sometimes things are not how they seem. The realities contradict: what we want to see versus how things are, represent the opposites.
The deceiving nature of seeing is often related to the gradual changes. A person getting old or sick can happen unnoticed right in front of our eyes. Seeing is adaptive. We quickly get used to dark rooms or stop paying attention while driving a familiar road. Every seeing-related feature comes with the benefits and pitfalls. What a contrast!
Visual content overload
Our culture is visual-intensive. People see 6000–10 000 ads every day. And that’s ads only! Seeing hardly ever stops, not by closing eyes nor while sleeping. It’s justified to raise a question if the image has lost its meaning. Would thousand words be more effective sometimes?
Yet, some images breach the threshold and redeem a place in the memory. When was the last time you saw a picture that left a mark on your retina? Was it a piece of art, a child’s drawing? Or video clip of approaching airplanes and the Towers 20 years ago? Our past experiences affect the interpretation of the image. So does the cultural background. We learn the conventions. The same image can have completely different meanings depending on the region and the viewer. Same image — different meaning. A contrast.
Distinctive brand identity is a start
Understanding the mechanics of human perception (and liking) is fundamental for marketers. According to neurological science, our senses can be stimulated to boost brand and product impressions. If you understand the power of spontaneous reactions, you can develop robust innovations.
But here comes a disclaimer; Making good first impressions and obtaining attention does not automatically translate into sales. It’s just a license to say ‘hello’ to your prospect. My dear colleague incisively points out that brand building is not ‘a broadcasting exercise’. Looking or saying different is a one-way road that won’t earn the customer’s trust and the place on top of mind. Interaction is missing.
Another disclaimer; Attention and memory is not the same thing, as Karen Nelson-Field states. It’s really important to understand that the ad does not need to get remembered — it’s the brand that must get noticed. Creating mental networks is the most effective way to influence people’s choices. Buyers choose brands that are “easy to mind” and “easy to find”.
“We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast.” (Sigmund Freud)
