Use Visuals to Communicate your Message beyond the Text Learners
July 17, 2008 by Eric Eggertson
Filed under Marketing
Not all of us absorb information from text equally.
Some of us can read a passage, but without a visual cue, the information slips away quickly.
And others retain text just fine, but get bored staring at big blocks of text.
Unless you’ve decided you only want to appeal to a cross-section of your potential audience, you should use some design tricks to attract and retain readers, and to give your ideas more impact.
I touched on this topic in the fifth post on Common Sense PR: Tip – Don’t Always Rely on Text, and it bears repeating.
Don’t take my word for it. Lani Anglin-Rosales (aka laniAR on Twitter) takes Darren Rowse’s (problogger on Twitter) 9 Signs of an Effective Blog Post, and treats them visually: The Makeup of a Super Effective Blog Post
Graphic designer Charlie Pabst offers some suggestions for breaking up text with subheads and visuals: How to Make your Writing More Visually Appealing (link via Kelly Phillips Erb, aka taxgirl).
There are good examples of info-graphics and visual representations of complex ideas all around us. Just watch five minutes of CNN’s The Situation Room, and you get the idea.
Image by Eric Eggertson. Available for use under a Creative Commons license.
Eric — for other examples of the power of visuals in communication, I suggest taking a few minutes to stroll through David Armano’s Logic+Emotion.
Eric:
Great point. I’ve started doing a lot more graphic headers for my posts or series of posts. Check out the Mary Kay: Hot or NOT! at http://www.franchisepick.com which I slapped together from two stock photos using a cheapo picture editor and no graphics skill.
I think providing good photos is the #1 overlooked way to get press. I once got a client a cover story by promising to do the photo shoot without cost to the magazine. Even national publications have tight photo budgets.
Unrelated: Here’s an interesting story you may want to share with your readers both as a warning about vending or other scams that use well-known names to add credibility, and the damage a company’s reputation can suffer by associating with the wrong people. While Red Bull spends millions in advertising and sports sponsorships to create a positive image, a bad vending franchise program has ignited a controversy involving a very angry & vocal group of investors. Feel free to link to and or quote from the dozens of comments they are leaving on franchise watchdog site Unhappy Franchisee and Franchise Pick.
Why do big cos. like Red Bull spend a fortune creating a good PR image, then undue so much of it with misguided business decisions and dubious ethics? Seems like they could use some Common sense PR training.