Every professional language has its own vocabulary of evasion — words and phrases that sound like they mean something while successfully avoiding any actual meaning. Legal has “notwithstanding the foregoing.” Finance has “subject to market conditions.” Marketing has “make it more pop.”
“More pop” is perhaps the most efficient communication failure in the creative industry. Three words that could mean anything: brighter colors, louder typography, faster editing, more contrast, more energy, more excitement, more of something unspecified that the current version doesn’t have. It’s the aesthetic equivalent of “I’ll know it when I see it” — which is to say, it places the entire burden of interpretation on the person who just spent three weeks trying to interpret the previous set of instructions correctly.
The Lexicon of Creative Vagueness
“More pop” is just the beginning. The full lexicon of creative vagueness is vast and richly populated. Here’s a partial translation guide for the most common entries:
“More premium” usually means: I’m not sure this looks expensive enough, but I can’t specify what would make it look more expensive. Translation: try a different font. Or gold. People think gold is premium.
“Cleaner” usually means one of two opposing things. Either: there’s too much going on and it’s overwhelming — a legitimate and actionable note. Or: I’m uncomfortable with negative space and want more elements. These require opposite responses, which is why “cleaner” requires a follow-up question before you do anything with it.
“More human” means: the current version feels corporate and cold. Which might mean using real photography instead of illustrations, or warmer color temperature, or different vocabulary in the copy. Or it might mean the client saw a campaign by a direct-to-consumer brand and wants that energy without any of the strategic positioning that made that energy appropriate for that brand and not necessarily for theirs.
“Younger” means: our current audience is aging and we’re worried about it, but we haven’t done any research on what a younger audience actually responds to, so we’re guessing based on what we personally associate with youth, which is probably about fifteen years out of date. As we explored in our piece on the “Make It Like Apple” phenomenon, clients reach for cultural shorthand when they haven’t done the work of defining what they actually want.
“More authentic” is a special category of vague because it’s the word most frequently used to describe the opposite of authenticity: highly produced content that’s been carefully constructed to feel unproduced. When a client asks for “more authentic,” they usually want less obvious polish and more apparent spontaneity — both of which, when executed professionally, require enormous amounts of work and craft to appear effortless.
Why Clients Speak in Vague Adjectives
Understanding why clients use this vocabulary is more useful than being frustrated by it. In most cases, the vague adjective is a symptom of one of three situations:
First: the client has a gut reaction to the work but hasn’t identified its source. Something isn’t working for them but they can’t articulate what. “More pop” is the best approximation they can manage for a feeling they can’t yet name. Your job is to help them name it, not to translate “pop” into a design decision without further investigation.
Second: the client has seen something they liked and is trying to reference it without directly citing it. “More pop” might be a description of the competitor campaign they were impressed by last week. Ask them to show you examples of work that has the quality they’re describing. Most of the time, seeing the actual reference clarifies everything that the adjective obscures.
Third: the client is uncomfortable with the current direction but doesn’t know how to say so without seeming difficult. “More pop” is a face-saving way to request a more fundamental reconsideration. Read the room. If the feedback energy feels disproportionate to the specific note, the note might not be the real message.
The Translation Protocol
When you receive a vague adjective, resist the temptation to interpret it immediately and start working. That’s how you end up doing three rounds of revisions in response to three different interpretations of the same word. Instead, invest ten minutes in translation.
Ask: “Can you show me an example of something that has that quality?” Ask: “Is this about the color, the typography, the energy of the imagery, the copy, or all of the above?” Ask: “On a scale of how much change we’re talking about — are we adjusting one element or reconsidering the whole direction?”
These questions aren’t interrogation; they’re collaboration. The client who learns they can have a specific, productive conversation about their work with you — instead of exchanging vague adjectives in an endless loop — becomes a better client. That’s not an accident; it’s the result of someone in the room being willing to slow down and create the conditions for actual communication.
And if the vague feedback is arriving alongside a mood board that says everything and nothing, you have all the ingredients for the most expensive kind of creative misalignment: everyone working hard in entirely different directions.
Still trying to decode what “more pop” means in your specific client’s specific context? Our shop won’t give you a decoder ring — but it might help you laugh about it, which is almost as useful.
