Infographics – Help Your Brand Spread Awareness…
“A picture is worth a 1000 words” is a well-known saying, and was coined to describe the idea that complex stories can be described with just a single still image. Images are crucial in today’s world, and more so in the presentation of ideas.
Images capture the essence of life, and without question, appeal to the emotions inside all of us. They make information more engaging and influential. An image can capture human emotions, uncensored reflections and a collection of beliefs that allows information to vocalize what message you are trying to convey.
Like videos, images can spread quickly and infect a population to the point where the message is no longer just an image with text, but more so an image with meaning. In turn, passing well beyond the ideals of human emotion and spreading the information virally into a person’s mind.
Visual representations, also known as infographics, are images that are created to attract attention and spread ideas. Similar to videos, images have the ability to be spread virally, and can capture an individual’s attention when they are presented cleanly and paired with text to present information.
The graphics are created to inform an audience, and construct a focused identity that supplements textual content. These infographics can stand alone on their own – acting as a presentation piece that explains a particular topic and acts as a citable reference.
Infographics have the ability to live on their own and can be spread virally to attract attention for almost any brand. When thinking about spreading information, consider an image weaved with information to create something ‘social’. Many B2B and B2C brands have trouble realizing how they can take advantage of the social space outside of the blogosphere and creating active social media profiles pages sometimes.
To take a look at some great examples of infographics here (courtesy of Princeton University)
Overdrive Interactive recently released an infographic in the form of a social media map that outlines the variances of the social web. The map is clean, concise, and acts as a clickable PDF – as it should because I helped make it…ha-ha. More importantly, it sits on a landing page designed with clickable chiclets that allows you to share the infographic directly on Twitter, Facebook, Digg and Delicious. This, in turn, gives the ability for a person to ‘share’ the graphic with their community of friends, making your simple graphic, more than just a pretty picture to review. It makes it ALIVE and more importantly – VIRAL!
Now that you’ve seen some examples – think how your brand might be able to incorporate an infographic. Think of it two parts. First, consider the content you want to incorporate. And then, secondly, in what display method will this content work? Could your information sit within a rich display like the first examples above, or live within a less involved design, such as the second example?
Either way, think about your branding possibilities with something like this…are you in need of an inforgraphic?
Fin.
