Dave Buhler, I know you’re a regular blog reader here, and I know that you’re very proud you picked a local agency, Love Communications, to do your campaign ads. But Dave, I was at the I-15 on ramp yesterday and saw one of your many (so very many) billboards–and again I just have to say something.

I’m not going to say anything about the mean-spiritedness creeping into the latest of your innumerable billboards because my pointing out your meanness would lower both of us. No, Dave, I’m going to talk about line breaks and their importance in a visual medium such as a billboard. (You have many, many billboards, you know, so this might be a helpful conversation.)

The billboard in question by the freeway shows your face (nice tie, by the way) and the words:
The Doer not
the Dreamer

I will ignore the fact that someone at Love Communications should have put a comma after “Doer,” because people play pretty fast and loose with punctuation these days. But I can’t get over feeling that your message would have had been clearer and easier for people streaming by it on the freeway to catch if it had been broken into two lines like this:
The Doer
not the Dreamer

See? You get one concept per line, nice and clear; you don’t have your favorite word “Doer” subconsciously associated with a negative; and you can even say that the end of the line negates the need for the comma.

Line breaks matter Dave, just like font choice does, and random capitalization of nouns such as “Police” in another of your abundant billboards…but that’s another story for another day. Remember, Dave, I respect your choices, from silly fonts to made-up words. (Blueprintman? Really?) I ‘m only trying to help.