It’s about Mixed Messages

In preparation for SOBCon09, I’ve been researching the importance of visuals as social media connection points. Visuals are power in helping us recognize where we’re safe, where we want to eat, what we want to buy, who we trust, who’s like us and who’s not.

Unfortunately, one thing is true about visual communication.

When we don’t know what we’re about, our visuals often contradict what we’re saying.

In that research, I came across this page in a report —

The page below is a screenshot from a pdf., called the Power of Visual Communication.

The document leads with a quote in a blue box that says . . .

“We are becoming a visually mediated society. For many, understanding of the world is being accomplished, not through words, but by reading images.”
–Paul Martin Lester

I’m not a designer, but I’ve played a VP of Design and Editorial in a Publishing Company. My experience is that most people respond to a type heavy page like this by looking at the quote, the gray box, and the chart, and then skipping over the rest.

This page wasn’t communicating nearly as well as it might. The text and visuals say different things. The blue box quote says visuals are important. The page layout says they’re not. The visuals on the page — the picture up on the right and the chart below — are overwhelmed yards of tiny type.

• I can’t “read” the photo in the upper right or understand how it relates.
• This page walls me in with words.
• Unnecessary words and long sentences make the reader dig to find what’s important. The whole first section is really unnecessary information with no real impact.
• The most important sentence on the page is hidden in the tiny type. The blue box quote is not the most important they want you to carry forward to the next page.

How might it have worked with more power and more consistency? Few things are more fun than editing other people’s stuff. I looked at what I might do highlight key information on this page and how they might underscored the point about visual information by using the text in more visual ways.

I reproduced the page cutting and moving text — please use your imagination for precise alignment. (I repeat. I’m not a designer. These are thoughts, not a professional design.)

This is the new version.

Some of the changes I made include these.

• I enlarged the type in the blue box and the photo in the upper right corner.
• I kept only the two most important sentences in the gray box and reset one far larger with visual emphasis. They work now a question and answer.
• I deleted the entire first section and added white space above the type block.
• I made pull quotes of two key thoughts, giving emphasis with a gray box to the most important idea.
• I enlarged the chart to give it more importance, to the reflect the position of the blue box quote, and because the information relates to both columns of text.

Because they’re hard to compare full size, here they are side by side:

My aim was to get the visuals and the text delivering that same message — the richer story that was hidden in the text.

We all make this mistake when don’t stop to access what we’re saying with our visual presentation.

Have you thought about the visuals that represent you — your avatars, your blog, your social media profile photos, your clothes, your videos, your words in text?

And can anyone tell me what that picture in the upper corner has to do with all of this?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!