Infographics are fairly new on the scene when it comes to business communication, but it’s clear that they are here to stay based on their enormous popularity in recent years. Nobody is certain where this trend came from exactly, but what we do know is that they are effective and people like them.
So…why do they work? We’re glad you asked 🙂
1. It’s all about visuals. As humans, being visual is our nature. Our brains are naturally tuned to process and understand images far quicker than we do words. To put it simply, we just like pictures.
Infographics are pretty much this concept personified – they use color, images, graphs, charts etc. to explain facts and data and make it more appealing and palatable to our brains.
2. They un-complicate the complicated. Let’s face it…there are very few among us who enjoy pouring over lists of facts and figures. It just isn’t interesting, and it can make the data overwhelming and hard to understand. Not to mention that this format makes it difficult to do things like comparisons or measure patterns.
A good infographic solves this problem by breaking up the information into sections or containers – using things like color bars and icons to separate it. This makes it easy to digest and even compare or study trends.
3. They are more memorable. Because we have established that our brains like pictures, it stands to reason that we are likely to remember images that we have seen more readily than we do words. In fact, psychology has a term for this called “the picture superiority effect” where studies have proven that when people are given some information to retain, they do so over 60% more readily when there is an image included than when there is not.
Really gives some weight to the expression: “A picture is worth a thousand words”, eh?
4. They are good at capturing attention. If someone were to ask you what the first thing you see on a web page is – if you answered “pictures”, you would be in the majority. In today’s day and age where there is a multitude of information literally at your fingertips 24/7, it can be challenging to make your reader pay attention to the things you want them to notice. Since infographics draw the eye naturally as we discussed in point #1, creating an infographic out of information you want emphasized increases your chances of it being seen by the reader.
Let’s make one thing clear, though. There can certainly be times when infographics don’t work too. It’s not enough to just throw some information in with some images and call it a day. You have to make sure that the data on that infographic is relevant to the images you are using. You also have to make sure that it’s organized well – so you don’t end up confusing the reader instead.
Having a well designed infographic is the best way to leverage this fantastic method of communication – it will help you grab the readers attention, tell your story, and get a clear message across – a winning combination when it comes to sharing your content with the world.
If you have been thinking about creating infographics for your business, we can help. Contact us today at hello@artinmotiononline for a quote or for some samples of our work…and let’s get started!
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