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.

Visual communication, branding tips, how to strengthen your brand

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.

Visual communication, branding tips, how to strengthen your brand

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.

Visual communication, branding tips, how to strengthen your brand, visual marketing, infographic, marketing inforgraphic, visual communication infographic

About the Author

Nicte Cuevas, Principal of Nicte Creative Design, empowers mission-driven businesses through strategic design & branding. Nicte has applied this when working with Adobe Spark and Twitter Business, LinkedIn Learning, Dogs on Deployment and Purina, Girl Scouts, The Houston Zoo and The Contemporary Arts Museum. Her excellence in communication design & marketing has been recognized by multiple national / international awards, including a coveted feature in Graphic Design USA's People to Watch.

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