Is Your Visual Communication Falling Short?

We all know that visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion plays an impor­tant role in your brand. How­ev­er, there are also times when you prob­a­bly felt visu­al dis­il­lu­sion towards a prod­uct, brand or ser­vice. You were like­ly mes­mer­ized by a pret­ty graph­ic only to find out the con­tent behind it doesn’t make sense to you. Or, you get the total oppo­site… that graph­ic you see, leaves you so confused.

There is no power in just making things pretty

You see, some­times visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion can fall short when we focus too much on mak­ing things pret­ty. Pret­ty flow­ers. Crisp graph­ics. Clean type. And you are set, right? You see, while the human brain con­nects to visu­als first, we sim­ply can’t just make things “look pret­ty” with­out sub­stance. Think of it as beau­ty but no brains. In today’s mar­ket, the no brains part is a deal break­er. Imag­ine a brand, prod­uct or ser­vice with­out brains? When visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion is done strate­gi­cal­ly, you don’t end up con­fus­ing your audience.

Take the image above. It’s got clean graph­ics, leg­i­ble type, bold col­ors… and a ran­dom fish. While we can say the graph­ic had strong ele­ments, the fish com­plete­ly takes the cake and took your focus away from the con­tent. A sim­ple ran­dom lit­tle image or graph­ic ele­ment can cause big con­fu­sion. So when it comes to your visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, we just can’t focus on the pret­ty and call it a day!

You may be won­der­ing, “how do I know if my visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion is falling short? To help you out, we’ve com­piled a list of ten things you should ask your­self before your hit pub­lish, share or send.

BEFORE you share any content ask yourself:

• Do my visu­als sup­port my copy?
• If this graph­ic or adver­tise­ment had no text, would my con­tent still make sense?
• Do the visu­als sup­port my brands personality?
• In 2 sec­onds or less, will these graph­ics cap­ture the atten­tion of my audience?
• Are my fonts easy to read?
• Are my social media graph­ics using heaps of text, or do they have less (but effec­tive) copy?
• Have I con­sid­ered the mean­ing behind the graph­ics I used?
• Is the place­ment of my con­tent struc­tured? Or does it feel random?
• Am I using visu­als that are con­sis­tent with my WHOLE brand?
• Will my visu­als res­onate with my audience?

To fur­ther inspire you, we’ve includ­ed an info­graph­ic with some insight to think about. If you still weren’t sure about how ben­e­fi­cial visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion can be, we hope this helps you change your mind.