Just recently I read a quote from Don Joyce (of Negativland) on Wired and it seemed suitable to libraries and marketing. Joyce says:

“Selectivity becomes of prime importance, whether it’s looking for content or trying to find what you’re looking for in a thousand pages of search results. As Duchamp and Warhol predicted before they ever saw a computer, there is an art and a message in the act of selection itself.”

Working in libraries over the years, I have noticed one thing come up over and over again: librarians do not understand the fine art of selection. Yes, they are well meaning. When an undergraduate comes to a class or to the reference desk librarians always try to tell the student everything.

Instead we need to retrain ourselves to only impart exactly the information that is needed.

In marketing this means that we have to choose our images with great care. This is one of the reasons that Jonathan and I want to rid the world of clip art.

Both Warhol and Duchamp were excellent at picking out something in everyday life and calling it art. Warhol’s most famous piece of art is the Campbell’s Soup Can and Duchamp’s is the Urinal—and before you can say “I can do better than that”–the truth is you didn’t!—And that is the thing about art and selection and I think that we should all embrace this idea: every image we use to promote our services and activities has weight, so choice carefully!

Every person should consider themselves an artist when choosing, because in our overly media saturated world the choice itself becomes a kind of art.