BE 592: What's the Difference Between Motif and Theme?

This is the Business English Podcast, episode 592. What's the difference between motif and theme? Welcome to the Business English Podcast from All Ears English. Get the English skills you need to achieve your dreams in global business.

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Hello, Michelle. How are you? Hi, Aubrey. I am good. How are you? Excellent. Question for you. Yes. What would you say is the overall theme of our podcast, All Ears English?

Ooh, yeah. Well, the overall theme I would say is Well, connection, not perfection, of course. And also business English here, right? It's business English.

We really have the same theme for both. The only difference is Allers English is like daily conversations, vocabulary you would use every day. And business English here, we focus more on vocabulary and strategies for work. So you really should be following both.

And the Allers English brand has the same theme for both of those. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, making English fun and approachable. I mean, that's really what we're about here, connecting people together, making you feel confident, building fluency.

But here's another question. What are some motifs that we use at All Ears English to convey this theme? Hmm. Yes. Good question. So I would say, well, we have our yellow backdrop, right?

Yellow is our color. Yes. And then using images with our faces, you know, different pictures to make it more personable on the websites, on the apps, things like that. We want to show you, you know, pictures.

So We're talking about this today because we are answering a listener question. And this listener question is from YouTube and it's from Ricardo. I don't know if that's an L or an I, but let's go with L3E3J.

And YouTube handles are always like letters and number combinations. Yes. I'm guessing his name is Ricardo. I'm guessing. I'm guessing. And he says, I want to ask what the difference is between motif and theme.

Great question. Thank you for listening, Ricardo. Yes, this is an amazing question. And these words do often come up in business, especially when designing things, everything from product packaging to social media marketing.

And there is an important difference. So I'm excited to get into this today. Yeah. Yeah, guys, but before we get into it, make sure that you hit the follow button wherever you're listening to the Business English Podcast and also consider leaving us a review so that we can hear what you think of the show.

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It really makes our day. Yeah. All right. Thank you so much. So let's start with theme. The theme is the central idea or message. So this could be related to brands or brand identity.

So for example, like Lululemon's theme is all about living an active, healthy lifestyle. Yeah. Exactly. This reminds me of AP English in high school. We were always looking for themes in books and film.

And so like lots of things have a theme, right? Or marketing campaigns. For example, for the soda company, the marketing campaigns theme is that it's refreshing on a hot day.

Or presentations. The theme of this presentation is innovation and future growth. Nice. Events. The conference theme is the future of work. Yes. Or fashion.

The theme of this season's collection is feeling fresh and young. Or architecture. The building's minimalistic theme is inspired by Scandinavian design. So you can see, you know, it's the central idea.

And as Aubrey mentioned, if you're looking, sometimes you might, if you're taking a English course, you know, like AP English, definitely. If I find the theme, it might be on an assessment or something. But here we're really kind of talking about this from the business lens.

But let's go over motif. So motif is spelled M-O-T-I-F. And this is elements you see repeatedly that reflect a theme. So this could be logos, symbols, shapes, styles, fonts, color schemes, what have you.

And this is more, I would say, wouldn't you say this is more about the look? Absolutely. Yeah, we use these in, for example, graphic design. You might say, we used a wave motif throughout the design to suggest movement.

So yes, it's the look. It's how specific symbols and images and colors convey your theme. Mm hmm. Or branding. So yeah, there's a consistent leaf motif across the brand to support the sustainability message.

So yeah, almost like could be like a like a like a look like a pattern, something like that. Leaf is a really good example, right? Whenever something is like environmentally friendly or sustainability, often you'll see something like a little tree, a little leaf, a little something that reflects nature.

And that is the motif that's reflecting that idea of sustainability. Yeah. Or for user interface UI or user experience UX. So there's a geometric motif across the slides.

Yeah. Yes. Or fashion and product design. The collection uses a floral motif, right? And then on the runway, you would see lots of different florals on all of the runway models.

Or architecture. The building features a repeating arch motif to give it a classical look. And guys, if you notice, we can use adjectives before the word motif. So a leaf motif, the motif, a geometric motif, a floral motif.

So those are some options. I remember a lot of those repeating arch motifs when I was in Greece. I did the whole Peloponnes as well as Athens. I did like a tour driving to see Delphi and Olympia because I had to for a course.

It was amazing. It was a classical civilizations course. Anyone out there who lives in Greece, your country is beautiful. There's so much beauty, but also a lot of repeating arch motifs, those columns, the Corinthian columns and the

So cool. But yes, a lot of when you travel, you see this in churches and museums, lots of places you're going to. And now you'll know that it's called a motif. All right, let's talk more about this when we get back from our break.

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go to allearsenglish.com slash vocabulary. Okay, Aubrey, so let's tie it all together. So the first thing that we want to mention is that a clothing company's theme might be sustainability, right? So here we have the theme.

So now it's kind of going to include motifs. So we're What might the motifs include, Aubrey? Right. This is kind of what I was mentioning. There might be forests or trees.

So first of all, on the website, you might have a green color palette with nature imagery. And then the products, recycled materials, leaf symbols. Yeah. Or you're advertising, right?

Forests, clean water visuals. All of these, you're going to have all of these different things represented throughout their products. Exactly. Now, what about a watch brand, right?

Like you might have a really fancy schmancy watch brand. So their theme might be luxury. And this could include motifs like for the website, it might be a minimalistic layout or black and gold or very elegant for the color palette or, you know, products, they might have sleek metal finishes and high use high end materials. What about advertising, Aubrey?

Yeah. Yeah, maybe like close-up shots, slow motion, elegant settings, and then the design, refined fonts, right? That look really nice. You're not going to see some of these jagged, almost like cartoonish fonts.

There's definitely certain fonts you would choose to reflect a certain theme or simple lettering, clean lines, a lot of things that would give maybe a more luxury look.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Or let's talk about a brand everyone knows, Coca-Cola. So I would say, you know, the theme that they kind of try and go for is happiness, people being together, sharing.

And, you know, for their advertising, you see for, you know, talking about motifs, you know, maybe people laughing and smiling. Their visuals, we all know, red and white color schemes, sometimes black, sometimes gray for Diet Coke. But there's that logo, that design, the curved Coca-Cola script logo. You can never forget that.

No, right? Unforgettable. And often brands will keep the same logo for a long time because they want you to remember, they want to be associated with that. And sometimes we will see a rebrand where a brand will change something for some reason.

And usually that, I mean, a lot goes into doing that because it's better for them to keep something that's recognizable. But if they're rebranding, then they feel like for some reason that's going to give them some kind of edge.

Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting. And also, yeah, they'll run campaigns for like celebrations, holidays, group moments, so many different things. So should we do a role play to talk about these?

Yeah, let's do it. You and I are colleagues here. We work for an advertising company and we're brainstorming a marketing campaign for a new kid's toy. I'll start us out.

Okay. So what's the theme for the new products marketing campaign? Okay. I think the theme should be learning through play. It's educational, but still fun.

I like that. What kind of motifs could we use? Oh, well, we're thinking letters, numbers, puzzle pieces, things that we immediately connect to learning.

Yeah, and bright colors as well. Since it's for kids, we want to keep it upbeat and engaging. Exactly. We're still coming up with the exact color scheme, but it will definitely reflect that.

Okay, let's come up with some concrete visuals and see how it all comes together. All right. Sounds good. I'll start working on that. Nice. This is perfect.

My daughter's actually going into graphic design. So she's going to have these kinds of conversations a lot. She's about to graduate high school. She's starting college in a graphic design program.

She's very excited about it. And she actually, her art was recently selected for two different competitions. Oh, right. that she won for at the high school level.

One of them was a district level art show. So we went and saw her work, graphic design work that she had created a company logo. The company was called Wine and Dine. And it was really clever the way she had had like the eye on Dine was a little knife and it was a bottle of,

pouring into a glass for the day. Anyway, so clever. And then another one is like the United States. It's our, what is it? Quinticentennial, the 250th anniversary.

What is that long word that means 250th? I can't remember. I can't remember. There's a national art contest for high school students that it has to be patriotic art.

And she did graphic design like an eagle with a flag behind it. It's very cool. She just created it. And that also was selected from her high school to be part of this national art competition.

I'm so proud of her. And I'm excited because graphic design is such a cool... field to be in. Very fun. Incredible. Yeah, I can see why you're very proud.

Congrats. That's like so exciting, Aubrey. So let's go through this role play. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that, Michelle. So fun. I'm excited for her.

So first, I said, what's the theme for the new products marketing campaign? So that's kind of what you need to know in the first place. What's the theme?

This just overall sort of broad theme, and that will help us decide all of this other stuff. And then I said, I think the theme should be learning through play. It's educational, but still fun.

And then I said, what kind of motifs could we use? So here I'm asking like, what are the symbols? What are the colors? What's all the stuff that we'll use to reflect that theme?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And then we went on to talk about puzzle pieces, the design, the colors, all those things. So yeah, very natural conversation that you might have at work.

So yeah, really useful here to talk about these two words. Guys, check out episode 579 of the Business English Podcast if you haven't yet. That was, do you think this episode is a fair amount of fun? That was a good one.

Yes, this is great vocab. You'll definitely use it at work or hear others using it. It's important to understand it. So the motifs are what you see. The theme is what you feel.

And great vocabulary today, Michelle. Thank you for joining me. yeah of course guys definitely try and use these at work if it applies to you and now you know what people are talking about when they use these words so thank you for listening and we'll see you in the next episode awesome see you next time bye

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