A submariner’s tale …

How many of us haven’t railed against lockdown recently?

For a very lucky few it may have been a blessed relief but for many, it has been pure mental torture.

For the most part, at least we’ve been able to venture outdoors for a little exercise and freedom from our temporary imprisonment.

But for some … it is not so easy.

Cocooned in a steel tube hundreds of feet below the waves for months on end is about as claustrophobic as it gets.

If you are a submariner there is no outside. No fresh air, no birdsong, no sunrise, or sunset. Nor any twinkling starlight to marvel at … for month after interminable month.

A life detailed so vividly by Richard Humphreys in his book, Under Pressure (*).

Juxtaposed against our feeble complaints about lockdown, the privations these men and women endure in their work on our nuclear submarines is truly heroic.

But they do have one little escape.

The submarine’s cinema.

Humphreys recounts hours of blissful vicarious travels which felt like they were on another planet rather than only a few hundred feet away on the surface.

If carefully chosen words and pictures can conjure up such powerful images and take us on journeys of unimaginable delight, why do we see so much leaden prose and sub-par imagery when we land on a website or pick up that flyer that’s just popped through the door?

Why indeed.

As we tiptoe tentatively into a new post-lockdown world how fit for purpose is our marketing collateral?

(The stuff that gets customers knocking on our door and those tills ringing)

The world has changed and the way we interact with it has got to change too.

Otherwise, we’re toast.

Food for thought, perhaps, this week?

But for now, …

If you want a sounding board or just want to bend my ear, I’m on hand for a chat about anything to do with Print or Web Design.

Stay safe.

Alec

 

(*) Under Pressure: Living Life and Avoiding Death on a Nuclear Submarine

by Richard Humphreys