Pause the leader, 

Pass the ladder,

Add the reader,

Drop the ruler.

Because I’ve always been the person fascinated by the lyrics as much as the cover art, listening to the what people are singing about is always, always a fertile place for my imagination to dance around.

When ‘people’ enjoin you should read more, I guess the urge is perhaps to reach for The Literature (this is serious stuff, learning-needed-alert. Set your setting’s to High Minded.)

And (without sounding like the Old Bore), it used to be just as easy to grab the sleeve notes as it did a compendium of C.20th concrete poetry criticism. Actually, it was easier. The former was in the local shops, the latter, a library (probably in the next County, which needed ordering in and the bus fare.)

A net result was that wasting time listening to all those words actually primed your mind to see how stringing words together was the semblance of what I now recognise (but not at the time) writing could do for designing. 

That the sound collages weren’t simply sounds but condensed ideas. What could be more perfect as an analogous activity. 

Plus you had the perfect (and I have seen) justification for the giganormous record collections designers used to collect.

It also struck me as ironic that if we’ve all had our attentionSpans snapped up, a simple lyric or verse might just be the formula thing we need more of. 

That a mission or a vision or a proposition or a whatever the Brand ScaffoldPlatform is called, could be calling out for something oddly angular, rhythmic and ear-worm-shaped. 

Not that it’s going to make that job (of finding those few words that have to say it all) easier, but it might make it more useful (and fun.) 

Which brings me to the four lines at the start, which started this train of thought (which popped into my head as a started thinking about something to write.)

Sometimes the misplaced or initially meaningless can find a make-sense. 

That sounds enough like the shape of something that it helps you find a better direction. 

Now, let’s take it to the bridge shall we…?