How to improve your visual communication
A couple days ago, I was talking with a friend about three resources that I normally use in my daily life as a designer and then decided to write this article.
Nowadays, our eyes receive continuous information such as: posters, outdoors, brands, mupis, TV advertisements, news, blog posts, newsletters, and so on…
However, why don’t you pay attention to all of that?
Either because you aren’t their audience or their communication didn’t reach you — It’s all about visual design!
The majority of the effective communication from your daily life reaches one or both of these aspects:
1. Direct message
Understandable message. Sometimes we want to give every detail to our audience when they only have 10 or 30 seconds to understand the message. It’s not about cutting information but giving the mandatory message.
2. Visual Hierarchy
Besides having a good message, showing it successfully is the priority, and for that, you’ve to consider:
Colours
Colours have meaning, and this meaning can change your message drastically.
Imagine that you are in a wedding where the bride is dressed in black? It doesn’t make sense.
A teacher of mine used to say that girls, even unconscious, use colours to call attention to certain parts of their outfit, such painting their lips with red lipstick. Here, you notice that you can either use colours by their meaning or by creating awareness to something you want to be featured.
Orientation
Majority of the world reads from left to right, up to down, etc.
If you create a poster with a title extra small and placed at the bottom, your audience will auto judge as not important.
Try always to place the most important info where people see first, this will help you prioritize and highlight the most valuable information for your audience.
Sizes
When you think about something big, you’re thinking in impact! Something that needs more space than the rest, bring attention and distinguish from usual.
Think you’re at a shopping centre looking for a jacket when you see a clothing store with big lettering offering 80% off discount!
You immediately pay attention! Why? Size matters.
Shapes
Shapes are similar to colours, they both have meanings. The most common use of shapes are icons (icons are built with shapes).
Imagine that you travelled, left the plane and started walking to get out of the airport. Suddenly, you’re stopped due to a no pass sign while hundreds of people are passing by it. You start looking for the description to understand why the hell that crowd is ignoring the sign — that’s a bad use of shapes.
Shapes and icons have their own meaning built by us over time, so, it’s important to make a good use of it on our visual communication.
Those are the tips, hope you make good use of it to communicate better with your audience!
