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Topic : Slogan design: choice of words (Long introduction, feel free to skip to the end) This might not be the right place to post this, but a fellow organizer of a convention and I are having a - selfpublishingguru.com

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(Long introduction, feel free to skip to the end)

This might not be the right place to post this, but a fellow organizer of a convention and I are having a slight disagreement, and I need some sort of qualified, quantifiable feedback. I suppose you can say I'm asking opinions, but when talking design it is often subjective and the 'correct answer' might be defined by the opinion of the masses. So here I go.

Our organization has recently started attracting enough international attention (it's a cosplay/comic-convention in Norway) for people to travel abroad to come attend our events - which is cool. We've begun adapting to this by having a multilingual website and by serving customers information in both Norwegian and English.

Our (kind of unofficial) slogan is, in Norwegian, for folk med fantastiske fritidssysler which I roughly translated while trying to maintain the same style of phrasing to for folks with fantastical hobbies - later to realize that switching 'hobbies' with 'fascinations' might be more fitting.

Anyway, my fellow organizer disagrees with the use of the word 'folks', saying that it's 'so archaic that people will think it's some sort of typo or lingual error, or simply that it's a bad joke'. I suggested asking another of our organizers who has a Masters degree in English literature, but apparently she's not good enough as this is 'more of a design/concept thing'.

tl;dr:

So I ask of you - does the slogan 'for folks with fantastical hobbies' (or 'for folks with fantastical fascinations') strike you as bad slogans because of the use of the word 'folks' specifically? Would you recommend finding a different alternative?

Thanks for your advice, and sorry for the long introduction - I felt like some background was needed to justify my question. :)

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You're fine with "folks" because the context removes any antiquated notions it might create in other contexts.

eg. "Food Fair: for folks that love munchies" makes the reader think it's a old-time style fair, with a slight weed overtone.

But you're a cosplay convention, so the use of "folks" in the slogan becomes a wonderfully warm, enticing, comforting, familiar gathering of like minded people. And for something like Cosplay, that's a good thing.

Words like "folks" are entirely determined by their context. They don't become the focal point unless the context makes them so. This doesn't, your situation makes the word's use very inviting and... well, just right!

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I'm not sure this question works here either, but dang, it's a cool question, so here goes...

I'm guessing that probably a better English translation for the Norwegian word "folk" would be "people" instead of the direct translation to the English "folk."

The English word has a sort of home grown, simple, farmer, hillbilly, country mouse not city mouse sort of feel to it. Folk music, folk art, folk tales - these are all things that something science fiction doesn't fit well with.

I think it's often a mistake to translate a phrase directly word for word because you just aren't going to get the same feel that you would from the original language - so the answer is don't even try. Just come up with something either similar, or completely different in English...

How about, "For Geeks with Crazy Ideas," or, "Cosplay in Norway." (That last one even rhymes grin.)

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