What’s the most interesting trend in communication these days?
This year's Mini-lit hit
Due to my roots in communications design, I’m often asked this question. It’s a question impossible to answer with conviction, as no other design discipline has such a wide cultural and personal variety as communication.
Blogging may be the fashionable answer right now, but in essence it’s just more of the same. There’s a more interesting answer. A new thing is going on, that if nothing else illustrates the challenge of the continuous information overload.
It’s called Mini-lit. The phenomenon owes a lot to synchronised messaging: SMS, Twitter.com, chat etc. It’s about saying a lot in very few words – demanding more from the reader – and sender. Mini-lit is limiting the number of words you have to convey a message: a five-word film review, 12-word novel, six-word prayer. Concentrate, think and communicate and challenge me – don’t just spam me with words. That’s the idea.
Hemmingway apparently started the whole thing when he was dared to write a six-word-novel. He came back with: “For sale: baby shoes, never used.” Now you know what I mean.
I think Mini-lit will find it’s way into mainstream communication – for a while. This year’s surprise hit in U.S. bookshops was ‘Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure’. And a second six-word collection, on love and heartbreak, will be out in January. The Mini-lit thing is spreading.
