Have you ever heard the saying a picture is worth a 1,000 words? Of course you have! But what if I told you they’re actually worth a lot more? I recently stumbled across the interesting fact that our brain processes images 60,000 times faster than it processes text. Now I know this isn’t a ground-breaking revelation… I mean I was painfully aware that I can easily lose focus when reading text as opposed to looking at visuals, but I didn’t know just how huge the difference between the two was.

After reading that fact, I was reminded of our semi-recent blog Learning from Goldfish, where the venerable Paul Dixon discussed the frightening statistic that the average human attention span has dropped from 12 to 8 seconds in recent years. These two insights have really reaffirmed my views that visual design is a growing solution for increasingly complicated communication; they act as an aid to drive your message home quickly and easily, with the assurance that you’re getting readers’ full attention.

So today, as BrandHook’s head of design, I thought I’d share a few tips to encourage the use of visual design as I strongly believe it plays an important part in communication nowadays, especially when it’s data related (which can be really dry if not handled properly).

1. Rules to Colour: Simple stuff first: to maintain a strong brand, keep to your brand’s colours. However, if there is a need to venture away from your branding then use a general rule of 1-5 colours. Include a variety of dark and light colours which are of the same tone as this will give you the most flexibility to work with; picking a limited colour theme ensures the message won’t get lost in a rainbow. You want the colours to complement each other but not dominate the design; as shown below colour group 1 has a nice tonal balance of light and dark colours whereas colour group 2 shows how bright and dull colours can fight against each other, thus becoming the focus of the design instead of the message itself.

          Group 1.                             Group 2.

2. Simple is best: Don’t go overboard with your designs, at the end of the day it’s the key message that’s important, not how fancy your visuals look. Too many elements within a visual can distract the human eye from the key message you are trying to get across.

3. Consistency is a must: When putting a presentation together it can easily end up being 50 pages or more. Consistency across the visuals and the layout of the presentation is vital to keep your audience captivated. This means sticking to the colour theme; keeping the same level of ‘simplicity’ to every design and, most of all, not changing your mind halfway through the design process. If you’ve chosen a certain element (let’s say an icon of a ‘light bulb’ to represent ‘new ideas or innovation’) then that icon needs to be carried through to the very end. What would happen if you were to change your mind on a separate page and use another icon, such as a ‘brain’ for the same message? Your audience may become confused and feel as if they’ve missed something or lost their place, it could result in loss of attention to the rest of the presentation.

These are just a few tips to get you started on your road to visual design greatness. Obviously there’s a lot more to learn but these are the kinds of basic rules rules that I refer back to whenever I’m faced with designer’s block or a tight deadline.

There’s plenty of information out there on visual design, so if you’re curious, just do a quick Google search to get you on your way. Or you could always email me or one of my colleagues here at BrandHook, we’re always happy to help.

Written by Lucy