Eleven777

DAY 7:
The work is nearly there. Everyone in the team can feel it.

And then, instead of leaving it alone, someone suggests adding something, and someone else agrees, and by the end of the session the thing that was nearly there has become something heavier and slightly harder to read and the original instinct that made it good is now buried under three rounds of additions that each felt, individually, completely reasonable.

This happens more than we’d like to admit.

The impulse to add comes from a good place, genuinely. It comes from caring about the work and wanting it to do more, say more, cover more ground.

But past a certain point, adding to something isn’t improving it, it’s insuring against the discomfort of trusting what’s already there. Every unnecessary element is a small vote of no confidence in the thing the work was already doing.

Removing something takes a completely different kind of nerve.

Because when you take something away, what remains has to stand entirely on its own, and that’s a vulnerable position to put work in, especially where more has always felt like safer.

But the campaigns that actually stay with people are almost always the ones where someone made the harder call and took something out. Where the headline lost two words and got sharper for it. Where the visual lost a layer and suddenly had room to breathe.

We stopped adding as a default response to doubt.

When something feels like it needs more, we ask first whether it actually needs less.

[Minimalism in advertising]