Everyone loves a good laugh. But, humor is even more important when you want readers to remember what you are telling them. Emotion is tied to the brains capacity to remember things. Usually you want people to remember your ideas or concepts positively, thus humor tackles two birds with one stone. A good bit of humor will make the brain receptors sense emotion and increase memory and the fact that it was a positive emotion, will increase the likelihood the reader will have transfer the positive emotion to you or your idea / product. To make sure humor works for you in your next printed piece keep the following three rules of thumb in mind.
1. Make sure your joke or story is one all readers should understand
Take cultural, age and experience variations in your target audience into account. Jokes in particular often rely on references to pop culture to make sense. Your joke about the rabbi, the priest and the imam who walked into a bar will probably bomb with the Religious Tolerance League.
Make sure your reader would understand the references.
2. Keep it clean.
I will admit some of the funniest jokes told around the water cooler have sexual innuendo or use a few bad words here or there. However, you want your humor to impart positive emotions on the reader, so you have to make sure you do not offend them. Off color jokes are a no-no. The one with the punch line about the “barbiturate” eating bear is definitely out.
Make sure jokes and humorous antidotes are free of sexual innuendo or inappropriate references.
3. Keep it simple.
The idea with humor in printed collateral is to have it support your main point or serve as a background to impart a style. Humor is rarely the main course of any document, so to make sure it plays its supporting role effectively, it needs to be simple, uncomplicated humor. An excellent example of humor that works is the Dilbert cartoons, short, funny and universally relatable to anyone who’s ever worked in the corporate world.
Avoid the three part jokes or long winded antidotes. Keep the humor short and sweet.
4. Try these things:
Here are three types of humor you can try including in your next printed document.
Cartoons - http://www.cartoonstock.com/
Silly Sayings / Quotes - http://www.saidwhat.co.uk/quotes/silly/
The Joke - http://www.lotsofjokes.com/
Four Quick Things to Do to Make Humor Work in Your Next Document
1. Make sure your reader would understand the references.
2.Make sure jokes and humorous antidotes are free of sexual innuendo or inappropriate references.
3.Avoid the three part jokes or long winded antidotes. Keep the humor shot and sweet.
4.Check out these sites:
http://www.lotsofjokes.com/
http://www.saidwhat.co.uk/quotes/silly/
http://www.cartoonstock.com/