Or 'You forget. Your memory doesn’t.'

In news that will come as no surprise to Art Directors the world over, more memorable images stick in the mind.

But perhaps arguing why, for the umpteenth time, that might be the case versus the caution some show (‘It just feels a bit busy / off-brand / not us, etc.) has been tough. Because subjectivity. And not everything has time to be tested. And sometimes even testing can be, well, testing.

Doesn’t mean that the biggest ego should win the argument (the person paying the bill usually settles that.)

But ‘feeling’ like one thing will work better than another? Not very science is it?

Until now. Bless you, academia.

Alex C. Ma, Ayana D. Cameron and Martin Wiener just dropped ‘Memorability shapes perceived time (and vice versa)’. 

Let me cite:

“We find that more memorable images are processed faster, and that this increase in processing speed predicts both the lengthening and the increased precision of perceived durations.”

Er, ok. So why’s this useful for defending the creative versus some tramline generic sector-pastiche? 

Here’s the kicker:

“These findings provide evidence for a link between image features, time perception and memory…”

Memorable images play with our perception of time. They make us feel like we’ve been ‘with’ that image longer. That dilation makes us prone to remember the image better.

And not only that, more memorable images are processed faster. 

You’ve kidded yourself you’ve been looking at it for longer than you have, and that attention you paid must have been for a reason, right? 

So you’re more able and more quickly able to recall it. 

I wise I could share the images they used in the experiments - the thing about ‘memorable’ being ‘memorable because of what…?’ - but I can’t afford the Journal sub to get to the actual paper. 

But just knowing - that more memorable (which could be novel, shocking {in a good way}, maybe ’surprising’ instead lol the image the longer it’ll last in the minds eye? That’s got to be worth knowing.

For the next time someone suggests ‘let’s just run with something from stock’. 

Post Script. Of course, we should always treat any research that sounds as good as this with care. There’s always someone you can cite, with a study that appears to prove that you’re ‘right’. Especially when paying to submit a paper is often the only bar to intellectual ownership of a subject, rather than the rigour of peer-reviewed, evidence-based analysis. The old adage of drunks and lampposts, coined in 1903 by A. E. Housman, shows that scepticism is a still a skill well worth honing. A skill I think might be one of the ones beyond machines.