Everyone loves plants! Heck, everyone needs plants, and they enjoy thinking about them all the time, dreaming about their next garden project – just like you do. Consumers are tired of digital this and wireless that – they long to toss their smartphones and get their hands dirty.
Shopping for plants on a beautiful spring Saturday is relaxing and soothing. What could be more calming than muscling a cart through gravel paths up to a cinderblock and plywood table to squint at tiny care tags as you debate which perennial to plant next?
Your customers come to you demanding new and exotic plants they’ve never seen or heard of before.
The Outdoor Room is the new living room!
And hey, don’t statistics tell us that Gardening is America’s #1 pastime? Demand should be going up-up-up with all this new environmental awareness, staycations, the baby boomers remodeling their yards because they can’t sell their homes.
Everyone knows that plants are the only thing that can save the planet … and YOU grow plants!
You’re a hero! They love you!
Creator’s commentary:
Back in November 2010 I was asked to create a “conversation station” at the ANLA New Clinic. My task: “thought-provoke the attendees around the bigger, marketplace-changing ideas you have been percolating on…The idea is to catch people’s attention…” I agreed to do this because it interested me creatively and because I love the ANLA Clinic.
I made 12 poster designs. 10 were displayed at the Clinic. One was taken down because it offended a passer-by. I’m not sure they were successful in sparking many conversations, or that attendees found them interesting or beautiful. At risk of beating dead horses, I plan to share them here and offer my thoughts on them. Feel free to comment!
I am sharing this Mirror poster first because I think it encapsulates my approach to the series.
The design: I wanted to start with a strong idea that was insulting, jarring, strange or somehow out of the ordinary. Then, I wanted an arresting image that would act as a metaphor. We knew we needed text as well, so I decided to adopt an age-old ad format called the Ogilvy that was popular in magazines like Life in the 50’s and 60’s. I felt there was a bit of sublime irony here in that theses posters would look like advertisements but were the furthest thing from a commercial message. The ANLA Clinic has increasingly allowed sponsoring companies to promote their products, which I view with a little distaste…however I must admit that I was on the Clinic committee when we first decided to court sponsors’ money. In any case, I thought it fun to have the most brazenly ad-like display. The font was picked to fit the theme for the Clinic this year: an urban, re-construction, edgy, in-your-face kind of look. Each poster had a “headline” around the photo that would explain the metaphor/argument but not too much, and often with a double meaning.
The message: At first I had the headline as: “you think you’re…NOT A WITCH…because your…MIRROR IS A LIAR.” The change to “beautiful” was both less insulting and more to my point. The body text was, of course, sarcastic, poking fun at how we fail to rightly see ourselves as others see us. Many of us live at our businesses. We spend all of our time there. We talk to each other. We plan vacations around trade shows. We don’t allow a lot of outside influences. As I have written regarding “Plants vs Zombies,” I feel that we are losing relevance (and therefore value) and we don’t even know it. And those moments when we do get a glimpse of what we look like to others outside the “plant world” we dislike it so much that we quickly dismiss it. “Like a man who looks in the mirror and then turning away immediately forgets what he looks like.” This lack of self-awareness is, no doubt, an ageless part of the human condition. And those of us inclined to introspection may worry about it more than the blissfully ignorant braggart, but that does not mean that we are any better equipped to actually do anything about it.
The short of it: We have an image problem. We should work on that.
Thanks for reading. Please let me know if you wish to hear about the other 11!
~Art
Um, yes, I want to hear about the other 11!
I want to hear about the other 11, too!