An engaging and eye-opening study of the ways in which the arrangements of colors shape buying decisions.
A debut book offers a point-by-point breakdown of the art of visual marketing.
In her work, Lee relates a simple and telling story: she’s strolling by a grocery store and sees fresh fruits and vegetables stacked and arranged on a cardboard box. She continues walking and notices that quite a few customers keep moving as well. But when she tries the experiment of wrapping each fresh apple in a sprig of leaves, setting the vivid red against the bright green, the fruits sell out quickly. That kind of simple, straightforward approach to looking at visual marketing is the guiding principle of this book, in which Lee asserts that “of all visual elements including form, texture, color, and size, color influences at least 80% of your impression of something.” The volume is full of nuggets of interest—yellow works best for kids; too much red on a label connotes high calories; brown remains “especially effective in Asian countries where fermented condiments are widely enjoyed.” Readers learn that white walks a fine line between cheap and expensive, depending on the mix of pigments, however slight. “When expensive products like smartphones or cars are white, they look simple and clean,” she writes, “when cheap products like paper cups, disposable cutlery, umbrellas, and ribbons are white, they look low-quality.” The guide includes many highly detailed photos to illustrate Lee’s points about how colors work. She elaborates from these on all the complicated and often misunderstood ways in which vision affects the other senses—even taste, which, according to the author, is primed far more often by sight than people tend to realize. And throughout the book there are interesting tidbits from Lee’s experiences, such as the reflective qualities of various shades: “Next time you need an umbrella to block out the sun on a hot day, be sure to take a white one for a cooler shade.” All of this should appeal not only to marketers, but to anybody who’s ever noticed efficient and vibrant displays as well.
An engaging and eye-opening study of the ways in which the arrangements of colors shape buying decisions.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Influencial Inc.
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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