One Word Away
A lot of websites are confusing to navigate. A lot of restaurant menus are all over the place. A lot of promising books and films turn into jumbled messes.
Clarity is hard to achieve. When it’s missing, you can almost feel the complexity of making the thing.
And if you’ve been a part of a creative endeavor, you’ll understand how this happens. Everything is usually disarmingly clear in the early stages of a project — but then there are rounds of feedback, logistical challenges, or last-minute notes from one department or another. It can feel increasingly difficult to maintain.
But it can be done. Legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola has the simplest solution imaginable.
“When you make a movie,” he said, “always try to discover the theme of the movie in one or two words.”
In Coppola's canon, each film had a central theme serving as its guiding light.
“In The Godfather, it was succession. In The Conversation, it was privacy. In Apocalypse, it was morality.”
The advantage of having a theme lies in its ability to guide decision-making. Directors are constantly bombarded with choices, from aesthetics to costumes to characterizations. The theme can act as a compass, a tie-breaker, helping navigate the sea of uncertainties.
In The Conversation, where the theme was privacy, Coppola faced decisions about what the protagonist would wear. He ultimately chose a transparent plastic raincoat, a subtle choice that embodied the theme. The simplicity of that theme — privacy — allowed for a clear decision in a situation where an answer wasn't immediately apparent.
In a world flush with little distractions and minutiae, a single word can communicate a complex idea more effectively than a lengthy exposition or brief. As Coppola said, "An exhaustive written treatment of the point of view would be read by few, internalized by even fewer. But a single word?"
At Clique, we often lean on intentionally short, punchy creative briefs for direction. When preparing multiple options, we get even simpler: each design is described in a word or two. That phrase can serve as a guidepost for every creative decision from there, and we’ve found that sense of purpose shines through.
We can all be guilty of overcomplicating things, but often, clarity is just a word away. What’s yours?