The iconic t-shirt turns 100 years old this year, and it has come a long way since the original white undergarment peeked out from beneath shirts and became a fashion statement on its own. Now there are literally millions of them, many sporting wild designs or visual art. Some of my favorites, though, are the ones that can convey a message using just a few words. “You had me at woof” is the one in my collection that I smile at most.
I admire those who can capture the essence of the meaning in just a few short words. Because of my donation to our new science building, I am able to have an engraved brick of 5 lines, 14 characters each. Just putting my name on it seemed too boring, but I am still hard pressed to come up with something appropriate (“If you build it, they will come” didn’t seem quite right!) A friend searched Google for science quotes and found several that were appropriate (“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge” Carl Sagan), but alas, not pithy enough.
If your organization wanted to communicate its mission, what could represent it on a t-shirt or a brick? Would your personal mantra be appropriate and pithy enough for these venues? Challenge your brain to think about how you could capture the meaning of your big picture in a small size.
— beth triplett
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