Why are infographics important?
Infographics and visual information in general are an incredibly powerful way to condense complex information and compact numbers into a simple, quick and easy bite sized packets of visual information.
Infographics have gained a lot of popularity, seemingly out of nowhere, but they do have a true lasting power. This power comes from certain facts about the brain. Let’s explore those.
If all humans can grab visual information this quickly[1], then imagine what a textbook would look like if it was only made up of infographics? Would that even be possible? Well probably not, you would need some text descriptions, but you get the point.
An entire Text book full of infographics might condense the information in a significant way and engage with the reader in a way that text heavy school books were never able to in the past.
Seeing that the majority of the information that comes to us is visual [2], right here there is some incredible power. So utilizing the visual aspects of learning and communicating only make sense. Kinesthetic and Auditory are the other two styles that resonate the most in humans.
Weather you are a teacher or a marketer, using Visuals as a dominant form of communication makes sense. Most of your audience or students are visual learners. 65% of the population are Visual Learners [2], with Auditory Learners making up 30 percent of the population and then Kinesthetic Learners making up about 5 percent of the population[3].
So over half or 6 in 10 people are visual learners. That’s pretty compelling evidence on why visuals resonate so well with humans.
I keep going back to the textbook, I know. But I was a visual learner as a kid…wait I still am!
But thinking back to being a kid, huge, boring text books really were a drag for me. I’d often ask people for help for that level of additional engagement. I think this was because I was often unable to fully get invested in the learning material.
Imagine if a dry 8th grade, 300 page social studies book was converted into an infographic. If the brain processes visual information 60,000 faster than text [2], then imagine the sheer time it would save when trying to learn.
Key takeaways
So, as you can see, there is a lot of power in infographics. They tend to be a leveling agent with marketing companies and agencies. 37% of marketers said visual marketing was the most important form of content for their business, second only to blogging (38%) [4]. The ability to absorb visual information as opposed to text is immensely faster. And in a world where everyone is endlessly scrolling through social media, a piece of visual information might just be the thing that grabs their attentions and brings them through your door.
EF Creative has shifted all of our focus onto Infographics. Visual information is our passion and that’s what is in our bones. So we are striving to help others by teaching them visually, especially visual learners. Please get in touch if you would like to talk about infographics.
Sources
1) https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/the-sage-handbook-of-political-communication/book232880
2) http://visualteachingalliance.com/
3) https://www.lssu.edu/parents/articles/may2006/learningstyle.php
Originally published at efcreate.net on January 9, 2017.
