"Why some ideas survive and others die"

That's the subtitle of a book I finished reading recently.

The full reference is:

Chip Heath and Dan Heath (2007) Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Other Die. New York: Random House.

Thinking back about it, I feel like I learned a lot from the book, and yet it is hard for me to recall specific details. I can see that I put dog-ears on many of the pages that were especially significant for me. I read this book with an eye to improving how I communicate the aims of the Research Cooperative to our members.

I have the impression, when people ask me what the Research Cooperative website is for, that we can easily look at any page, on screen or paper, and not actually see what is written there. I have tried hard to make our aims obvious, all over the top page, yet some people still don't see them.

Perhaps that is my problem - I have created a forest on the top page, and no-one can see the trees.

Now I remember.

One of the many key points made by Heath and Heath, in their scrubby ramble of a book, is that writers suffer from the "Curse of Knowledge".

We know what we mean, and when we say it, we expect others to know what we mean too. We tend to assume, subconsciously, that our readers already know many things that we take for granted. Our own knowledge makes us blind to how our writing appears to others.

I am sure that the book could be useful for many people wishing to communicate research results or scientific information in any medium, to any audience. The authors of course have used their own principles to construct their book.

The bright orange cover even has fake sticky packing tape stuck on the cover, with the word 'to' placed in an unexpected position above the tape. The word just floats there in space.

They are playing with the medium.. and the book as whole is fun to read.

I remember that too.

Here is a picture I drew recently, based on our logo. I also like playing with words: