Visuals in storytelling — get unstuck
Find inspiration to get past the blank screen problem. Consider Pinterest for its visual search capability. It’s fast, easy and effective inspiration.
Inspiration and Productivity — My Board
I know Pinterest is a go-to for those searching for food, craft and travel ideas. For me it’s a productivity hack.
As an effective and compelling leader, I regularly need to communicate ideas and concepts to a variety of audiences. I want an easy way to find smart visuals that can inspire my creation process. The goal is to save time building my presentation. The ultimate outcome is to show up with the right data, the right words and the right visual content to complement my message. To that end, my Pinterest board↗ is an incredible resource.
I’ve collected more than 600 pins over the years. It’s been simple, easy and fast. I know where to go when I need to get unstuck. If interested, browse it, here↗.
The journey to get here
I’ve learned that creating a presentation can produce a special kind of ‘stuck’. Whether it’s pride in craftsmanship, just another job to be done, or an abject worry about just getting it right — the effort to create the right diagram or visual to convey meaning can be daunting work.
“I have the right data. I’ve done the work. It’s just a lot of words; it risks losing folks. Feels like it just needs the right image…”
This desire is well founded. Research shows that you have only 50 milliseconds↗ to make a good first impression with your content. Other research shows that the right image can actually change the behavior↗ of the person that views it. Even more telling, others have found↗ that articles with images get 94% more total views. All of this makes a compelling case for that polished, intentional diagram you want to support your insights and well-thought-out messaging.
On the flipside, the wrong look can hurt. An unkempt or cluttered layout can invalidate the message. A confusing visual can devalue hard work and keen insights. Every presentation carries the full range of risks, from simple miscommunication, to missed opportunity, to outright insult and failure.
What to do? It’s a balancing act. Move forward in the process. Find the right visual. For years, my creation path started in variations of:
- The corporate standard deck for this type of output
- Visuals I saw in reference architecture
- A Google image search
- …or the last smart thing I saw someone else produce
Learning to move beyond the standard resources
A few years back, I went looking for better. I was searching for something fast that could also give me an at-a-glance view of ideas and visuals. I also wanted the ability to curate and grow a reference collection. The bookmarks and saved examples I had accumulated had become unwieldy.
From Stuck to Unstuck
It seems a simple thing, but Pinterest literally changed the way I worked. That first time, I needed to communicate a fairly complex set of concerns through a single architecture diagram. I needed just a little inspiration; a glimpse of good to get me going.
Previously, I could have easily poured weeks into the effort, iterating, restarting and iterating again.
A quick Pinterest search and I had more than a few decent examples of what others had done to convey something similar. Previously, I could have easily poured weeks into the effort. Instead, using Pinterest, I was able to search, eyeball some returned examples, and then search for similar.
Recall that 50 millisecond first impression reference↗, made earlier? It’s part of the advantage here. At a glance, I know, when my eyes meet the right inspiration. Humans process visuals↗ 60,000 times faster than text. That means we can all make fast work of scrolling on Pinterest to find a diagram that pops.
Through that search and save experience, I’ve organized a board of more than 600 pins. Start browsing and build your own. If interested, start by browsing mine.
Closing
It’s simple. If you’re like me, and you need occasional inspiration and also want to curate your own collection — don’t overthink it. Pinterest is free, easy and better than any other option I’ve researched.
I doubt the consultant crowd will catch up to the home decorators’ 682 million↗ boards, but maybe we can start a trend. Time will tell.
Thank you
Thank you for reading. As always, much gratitude to those along the way that influenced me and helped nurture my craft.
