One superlative too many

In the course of my work I get to write *a lot* about kitchens, bathrooms and interior spaces. I love it – I love the challenge of finding a way to convey the essence of the project to the reader, I love discovering the background to the project, I love listening to the original client brief and seeing how that translates to the finished product. It’s creative, it’s exciting and it’s certainly challenging!

What I don’t love is the over sell.

I get that everyone’s kitchen or bathroom is special. When you’ve put your passion and knowledge into a design, when you’ve connected with your client, when you see how happy they are, when you realise how proud you are of the end result – I get that you want everyone else to love your project as much as you do.

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But…

There’s a real risk we run in this industry when it comes to the over use of superlatives – “amazing”, “incredible”, “fabulous”, “super”, “brilliant”, “breathtaking” etc… These days I’m seeing over-the-top descriptors everywhere I look and I fear the mass saturation of these bigger-than-Ben-Hur claims only manages to diminish everyone’s work in the eyes of the consumer.

It’s the same in advertising when companies try to claim they are the “best” or “biggest” – these sort of nonsense terms are actually only relevant if they are quantifiable and, let’s face it, most of the time they are not.

I’ll go out on a limb and venture to add that I find the over use of superlatives quite lazy writing and I feel it’s far more relevant – and meaningful – to find genuine, reasonable reasons why your customers should interact with your company. Tell them what it is about your service, product or business that’s unique, let them know about your background, give them real reasons to believe in your vision and I can almost guarantee you’ll have longer-lasting, more meaningful relationships with your customers rather than “selling” them on the idea of you being “the best” – whatever that means!

I’m not suggesting we do away with descriptors altogether but if we stick to using them when we genuinely have something amazing or incredible to communicate our message has more chance of being heard rather than being lost in the crowd.

No doubt many will feel I’m being overly picky and that’s okay. I work with words so words mean something to me (possibly as much as design means to all of you) and I know I might overthink this stuff a bit too much so let me know how you feel. I’d love to hear your feedback…