It’s the little things

I spotted this the other day:

(It’s in Chinese because I nicked it from the Cathay Pacific lounge in Hong Kong.) It’s a little thing, but that Coca-Cola-bottle-shaped barcode made me smile.

I love it because it’s so unnecessary. It’s just there to be a nice touch. It’s one of those things that the designer could have left just the way everyone else does it, and no-one would’ve batted an eyelid. But instead I’ve sent that picture to a few geeky design pals. Now I’m sharing it with you.

It’s why at The Writer we obsess about getting our clients’ tones of voice into every nook and cranny of their brand. When clients say ‘but no-one reads the terms and conditions’, or the back of a visitor’s badge, we say: ‘well, someone will’. And if we give them a nice surprise, they might tell a few other people.