The Unseen.

Years ago I heard about the arrow in the Fed Ex logo which served as a subliminal message about moving forward. It was placed in the negative space in the word Ex and served as a powerful marketing tool.

Recently, I stopped at Starbucks and got a cup of coffee in this cup. Believe it or not, this is a rare sight for a Starbucks cup, there are no marks on it. It’s a blank slate. Almost immediately the white space registered as the negative space for me, space with tons of potential that reminded me of that Fed Ex arrow.
How much information is regularly running through our visual range that we don’t even notice.

In this cup I see the unseen. The possibilities in the circle of white in this plain cup are endless to me, like a porthole to another world. I don’t know what all the possibilities are necessarily but, I know they are there.
That’s what working with recycled materials does for me in general and I think it’s what happens for the creators who make things at the studio too, even if they arent aware of it. Go ahead, Look for the arrow…it’s out there somewhere.

For more on the power of negative spaces check out this article excerpt from The Laws of Subtraction by Matthew May and start to notice the unseen.