Visual storytelling tells your viewpoint narrative with pictures, typefaces, and other interactive and interesting graphic design elements.
It is a means of conveying your brand’s message that transcends words and emotionally engages the audience. Anything from a brand’s past to a product’s advantages can be the subject of the story.
The purpose of visual storytelling is to engage the audience emotionally and provide a message that they can directly relate to and remember. Visuals are one of your most effective communication tools for design.
As a designer, you are expected to creatively and compellingly express a brand’s story while strategically and frequently using visual content to promote certain messages.
It seems like a simple task, but it is not. Effective use of graphics necessitates significant thought and planning. Use just the right amount without mind-boggling your visitors or losing their interest.
How do you make sure that the intended message is effectively communicated given how crucial visual storytelling is to the design process? And how might this appear differently if one considers the many design disciplines?
When it comes to visual storytelling, an illustrator, for instance, can face different obstacles in comparison to a web designer.
In this blog, we have discussed how images can convey ideas, concepts, and storytelling after seeking expert advice from designers from various design disciplines.
These designers’ distinctive methods and techniques can spark your imagination if you are currently weak in that domain. Let’s get started!
Brand or Business Designer – Audrey Elise
Freelance brand designer Audrey Elise works with businesses to develop their visual identities through carefully thought-out strategies and branding designs. As a brand designer, Elise must consider how various visual components will influence how a brand is seen and what types of graphics would best convey its story.
She implements colors, typography, hierarchy, images, and logos as a brand designer to express a brand’s story. Color psychology is a subject almost all graphic designers are aware of. All colors are regarded to have different moods and personalities; pink, for instance, is frequently seen as feminine and delicate, whilst navy blue is regarded as more formal and conventional.
Typefaces can be psychologically analyzed in the same way. More industrial, blocky type might give off a vintage or retro vibe. They may be used at coffee shops or by those adventurous photographers who also run other ventures of their own, like a beard oil business.
The use of hierarchy and auxiliary visuals is also important. Make the font large to give the impression that the brand is bold. Have it fill the page and veer off to the side. Make the type small with lots of white space if you want the brand to appear more delicate, as there are several advantages of using negative space in your web design.
The brand’s of a logo design significantly impacts how audiences view a brand. Perhaps the logo for the photographer’s beard oil firm is inscribed to convey further that it is a high-end, handcrafted product.
Real beauty combines these components in creative and distinct ways to convey a brand’s narrative. None of them are unbreakable laws.
Everything depends on perspective and what feels appropriate for a brand. At its essence, brand design is narrative storytelling. When utilizing all these components, go with what feels appropriate for the brand’s narrative.
UX/UI Web Designer – Janu Flores
Samsara is an IoT platform for linked operations, and Janu Flores is the team leader of the Communications and Marketing Design division. Since turning visitors into customers or users is the ultimate goal, designing a website presents a unique set of obstacles.
According to Flores, a website’s aesthetics and layout should work together to create a narrative and keep visitors interested:
Flores considers what a visitor will learn from a website by having them read as little as feasible. According to her, the appropriate mix of images combined with a few key phrases or figures will, more often than not, be more effective than long passages of content.
This keeps a viewer interested, creating a visual rhythm and then purposefully disrupting it. A viewer’s attention can be captured using small visuals, even something as straightforward as a line that unexpectedly crosses itself.
Making text more skimmable can be achieved by using font variants to highlight a particular word or phrase. Countless tiny visual tricks can be applied; the key is to do so carefully. Ask yourself whether it adds clarity or noise as you consider each aspect.
Being a great editor is crucial, just like any other type of visual storytelling. Never hesitate to experiment or try new design trends, but more importantly, never be scared to eliminate components.
You may need to eliminate some aspects of your design to complement your overarching narrative like movies have deleted scenes.
Motion Graphics – Bee Grandinetti
Brazilian motion designer Bee Grandinetti works as an independent contract designer in London. A glance at Bee’s portfolio will reveal that her pieces frequently pop with color and vigor.
According to her, every movement in animation has a function.
Animation relies heavily on its visuals—or lack thereof—to establish a rhythm, convey meaning, and guide the viewer’s eye to the appropriate locations.
It’s a whole different story when those pictures are moving; the art of motion graphics calls for intense focus and sensibility to establish the proper hierarchy and flow in a moving composition.
Bee always makes an effort to put the story and the message first. What emotion do you want to express and evoke through a particular animation?
This determines whether to make very simple scenes, personal close-ups of characters or even really slow scenes. Grandinetti experiments with visually stunning quick cuts that feature many visual elements and hues to achieve the total opposite impression.
Animation or Illustration Designers
Ka Lee is an illustrator who finds inspiration for his works in his own life’s tales and experiences. Lee describes how his background influences how he depicts and why having diverse characters helps him convey his standards.
He must express his varied background and experiences as a minority in his work as a Hmong illustrator. Being able to express his Hmong identity and appreciation of the cultural diversity in his community serves as a major source of inspiration for most of his work produced.
He purposefully diversifies his character illustrations by presenting them in various sizes, forms, and personalities to draw attention to these cultural differences and connect with a wider audience.
As told by him, he has come across many other brilliant artists that have contributed to pushing the transformation into the digital space, which helps him identify with specific businesses that tell a story with their illustrations. His work is undoubtedly a modest rendition of everything he hopes to see more of.
As an illustrator, he constantly learns and develops while pushing himself daily to produce new work that deviates from standard values.
His work demonstrates how diversity benefits our community rather than being political or about how he feels about particular social concerns, especially in the case of art.
Wrap Up
Graphic design’s essential component of visual storytelling can completely change a company’s marketing initiatives. You may establish an emotional connection with your audience and develop an enduring brand experience by implementing it into your designs.
The visual narrative should always be at the forefront of your mind while designing anything, including logos, brochures, and websites. There are various methods to combine and use pictures to convey a message; remember that there is no one ideal approach to telling a story. Go with what seems right to you and seek advice from your design community.
After learning about a few different visual communication strategies, consider experimenting with images in your work to see what kind of meaning they convey and how they affect your audience.
Graphic designers may use the potent instrument of visual storytelling to help organizations establish a deeper connection with their customers.
In order to reinforce the message and generate the intended emotions while utilizing visual storytelling, it is crucial to outline the tale and employ images, typography, color, and visual hierarchy. These elements allow firms to differentiate themselves from competitors and develop a distinctive brand identity.
You may improve engagement, forge emotional connections, and deliver complicated information compellingly and memorably by including visual storytelling in your custom website design.