Fix 2 · from the book, word for word
Take Off the Extras
The flyer that tried too hard
Yusuf runs a tailoring and alterations shop. A customer picking up a pair of pants he’d hemmed saw a suit on the rack and said she’d thought he only did alterations. Made-to-measure suits were on his flyer, in a starburst, in the bottom corner.
He looked at the flyer properly for the first time in years. His name was in yellow with a black outline and a shadow. There were clip-art scissors, a needle and a smiling shirt, a stitched border, and words in five colors. His first reflex was to ask his nephew, who had made it, for a bigger starburst.
Instead, they sat down together and took the extras off one at a time, asking each time whether anything had gotten harder to read. Nothing had. They kept his name in black and added one plain line under it: “Alterations, repairs and made-to-measure suits.” The clip art became one photo of a jacket on his cutting table. The flyer went down to two colors.
He printed 200 for $30. The next month, two customers asked about suits because of it.
- Pick one piece and list every extra on it: shadows, outlines, glows, starbursts, borders, clip art, curved words, extra colors, extra fonts.
- Take them off one at a time.
- After each one, ask: did anything get harder to read or understand? If yes, put it back.
- Keep the words in one color, and use one other color for the thing that matters most.
- Keep no more than two fonts on the piece.
- Save the plain version as your template for next time.
“Can you make it pop?”
“Please keep it plain: no shadows, outlines, clip art or borders. Just the name, the one thing we want people to know, and the phone number.”
“Add a starburst so people see the offer.”
“Make the offer the biggest words on the page, and leave space around it.”
“Can you make it look more professional?”
“Can you take off everything that isn’t words or a photo of our work, and show me that version first?”
