Telling Your Story With Visual Power

Here’s a heresy. People don’t like to read. They don’t read signs, they don’t read fliers and they don’t read all that web copy. As a writer, I love me some words. But I’ve learned that to communicate a message less is more.

So I wanted to share with you this trend,  Infographics: using visual power to tell your story. This website shows a number of great, nonprofit examples that I think will inspire and challenge you to think differently about how to communicate the value of your library.

Most places I look, I find that libraries are still talking too much — long treatises describing all the detail for programs, book titles and even library advocacy. In today’s society the copy has to be sharp, to the point and action oriented. And visual. That’s why these Infographics have so much power.

A good example from the library world, which I’ve written about before,  is the OCLC Report, “How Libraries Stack Up.” I challenged my team to take our standard one-sheet and add visual punch. Here’s the before and after:

BEFORE (now I say: “ugh!”)

 AFTER: (and I say “ahhh”)

 Do you have an example to share?