At the time of the hegemonic dominance of screens as main portals to an interconnected world; images and short videos as primary methods of information exchange; and social media as the quintessential broadcast platform, it is more important than ever for communicators to evolve with the times and develop a solid visual communication strategy employing important design principles.
The Change of Visual Communication
Just 15 years ago, before the age of smartphones, visual communication and the dissemination of information were the responsibility of experts in communication, journalism, marketing or advertising.
YouTube was just born, Facebook was still an abstract concept, and most people were not really sure how much their lives would change in the information age.
Virtually no one anticipated the arrival and dominance of social networks as the main means of social interaction for humanity, and therefore, no one had the need to learn to communicate on a large scale, to have a social, professional profile or a web page. .
At that time, the individual was not the protagonist of the digital world and very few people had access to contribute content to the Internet and spread it massively.
But in just five years, the world took an unexpected turn; overnight, content consumers became content producers, broadcasters, and creators.
Suddenly, a vlogger could upload a video from his bedroom talking in front of his webcam that surpassed the audience of primetime television shows.
This computer phenomenon changed the paradigm of communication; from that moment, anyone had an open field to create free content and media to reach the most remote places.
Challenges for Marketing and Communication in the Age of Social Networks
With the individual as the central axis of social networks, and with the data generated by the interactions of those users in their cyber space, it has become a more precise, focused and specific science.
Now, marketers can learn more about our consumers before developing our strategy.
However, along with that knowledge and those tools that allow us to do more, the field has become more competitive than ever.
We no longer just compete for consumers, we compete for their attention.
Connecting with your audience means that you have to captivate their attention, but today, that is more difficult than ever.
The attention of an average person at a single moment of the day can be distributed between Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, Twitter and WhatsApp, to name the most popular.
In addition, these networks are saturated with information and content that becomes more complete, dynamic and captivating every day.
With people’s attention scattered and networks saturated, your content must stand out, be unique, authentic and visual.
This excess of content and difficulty of concentration have caused the demand for information to change radically, on the one hand, demanding more attractive and compressed presentation models, such as memes, infographics, short videos and GIFs, and on the other, demanding that the content Long text is broken down into more digestible chunks using short paragraphs and lists, plus images to keep the reader engaged.
It is no longer enough to saturate the networks with content, it is more important that this content is of quality so that it connects with your audience.
As the way we consume information changes, the way we . Being at the forefront of these rapid and constant changes, which are more common today than ever, is essential for the content we create to successfully reach our audience, instead of getting lost in the digital stratosphere.
Today it is more important to connect deeply with the most loyal niche of your audience than to be seen by millions who will forget about you in seconds.
Creative Talent in the Digital Age
For a social communicator, a marketer or an advertiser, it is vital to develop creative talent, multimedia knowledge and a clear understanding of how to spread it on the Internet to create visibility for a brand.
That is where Content Creation comes in as the basic strategy to generate visibility and do Marketing today.
Although still around, traditional advertising is becoming less effective at connecting with consumers.
Brands today must have a clear mission, vision and purpose, and know how to express them by telling stories, entertaining their audiences, or generating a conversation through topics of interest.
The objective is that through these mechanisms a more real and deep connection with consumers is created.
To be at the forefront of content creation, it is necessary, first, to understand how people consume information in the digital age and, second, to develop creative talent to generate content that stands out above the rest and connects with audiences.
Creative talent is not only having good ideas, it is knowing how to express and sell them, knowing how to conceptualize and develop them, and knowing how to execute them effectively. Creative talent must generate utility for a brand and, in the age of mobile phones, that translates to being able to create good visual content.
Understanding Design is essential to know how to tell visual stories that attract attention.
Design advice from three experts in Visual Communication
To get a more diverse perspective and understand how other designers understand visual communication, I sat down with three graphic designers here at about their vision of design and their primary approach to creating.
Joanna Lu (Design Manager | Venngage)
Joanna’s primary focus is managing the Venngage design team and designing the user experience (UX) that visits the website. Leading the design team means being on top of the website design, the user experience, the page interface, and the design of the templates that are generated every day for the Venngage tool. Here are some of the biggest tips and topics from our conversation:
Functionality and design go hand in hand
A page can look pretty, but if it’s hard to use or understand, or if it doesn’t load fast, then no matter how pretty it looks, the design isn’t good.
The designer must take into account each step of the digital product before conceptualizing it, it is not enough just to look at branding, images and colors.
Some of his specific tips to improve functionality are:
- Optimize your images! If an image takes more than five seconds to load, you have a problem.
- Use consistent and clear CTAs. , or CTA for its acronym in English, are the buttons or actionable elements linked to a link that leads you to do a specific action; for example, buy a ticket.
- It is important that these elements are consistent and easy to identify. The user must understand that these elements are actionable and the text inside these elements must explain well what will happen when they click on it.
- The most important information and CTAs should go above the “fold”. The “fold” is called in English the bottom edge of a web page that is visible in the browser, without having to scroll the screen down.
- Do not put information that you want your readers to see quickly, or buttons that indicate important actions below this bottom border. This should be visible as soon as you open a web page.
The AirBnB page is an excellent example of a very well designed User Interface. There is contrast, the images are very well positioned, the CTA is clear and stands out, and the product presentation is also persuasive.
The Typographic Hierarchy of the content is important to facilitate reading and understanding
When you create content for the web, when you write documents for distribution such as brochures, flyers and posters, or when you work on presentations, it is vital to understand about the Typographic Hierarchy.
Basically, the Typographic Hierarchy is the system for organizing the text in a document with the aim of structuring the content in order of importance and highlighting the main ideas of the publication.
Nowadays, it’s especially important because people are more easily distracted by their mobile phone or browsing to another web page, so using these techniques to make the text easier to digest and understand becomes critical for your ideas. don’t get lost in the stratosphere of the web.
This article is a good example of the use of Typographic Hierarchy: information is organized to be easy to understand, with lots of pauses, changing the font size for titles and subtitles, and the use of lists to classify related information.
Here are some Typographic Hierarchy techniques you can employ:
- Use bold to highlight important information.
- If your content is very long, include an index with the chapters or subtitles of your article.
- Make sure the text on your website is .
- Use wide margins to make your text flow easier
- Use short paragraphs.
- If it applies to your text, separate an important quote from one of your sources and put it between paragraphs to highlight its importance.
Luiza Bibire (Graphic Designer | Venngage)
Luiza focuses on creating new templates and researching the type of resources Venngage users need for their designs. Her job is to make it easy for users to create documents by creating templates of various styles and to fit the needs of users. Some of her advice for content creators are as follows:
Respect the original aspect ratio of the images you use
It is exasperating to see how many images that are used in web content and print content are adjusted to fit within a document.
That is, if an image has a 1:2 rectangular aspect ratio, you should not change those aspect ratios to make the image fit.
It is very common to find publications with elongated or enlarged images, this practice denotes a lack of professionalism and gives a bad impression to the reader.
Incredible as it may seem, there are people who still do this!
Make sure you have enough contrast
For your content to be readable and for your images to stand out, it is very important that you choose one that contrasts well with these elements.
That is, if you choose to use dark text, make sure the background is light.
If you use graphics or images, make sure their color contrasts with the background of your page.
If the image happens to have similar colors, then consider using a border around the image to create that visual distinction.
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