Imagine if your smartphone had no images for your apps. Imagine how long it would take you to find a specific app when you went to look for it.
Insert face-palm here.
That’s because our brains interpret images 600,000 times faster than text (Power of visual storytelling; Ekaterina Walter and Jessica Gioglio).
Which is one of the reasons infographics are so popular and so fun.
Infographics are those graphics that pack a lot of rich, colourful information into a page or two with pictures. They tell a short story and pack a punch. Infographics can make you shift your perspective in the snap of your fingers.
Last summer, when I was home in Vancouver (I’m a Canadian living in Kenya, so the concept of home is a wee bit complicated for me) I nabbed the opportunity to get out into the forests. I giddily inhaled the cedar and pine scents and feasted my eyes on the froths of water kicked up by the fast-flowing clear rivers.
Like in Lynn Canyon. I took this picture of one of the waterfalls from a small, swaying bridge far above the canyon splayed out below.
Which brings me back to infographics. Imagine, if you will, needing to convince adrenaline-junky-oriented folks not to jump into this river. For real, cliff jumping is a thing, believe it or not, as evidenced by exhibit A – the first of several infographics posted around the park. The infographics show some pretty sobering stats.
So what’s a park ranger to do?
Grab people’s attention by posting simple, powerful infographics.
See some more examples below, which speak to people’s fear, adrenaline, and nerves.
And what about you, rockstar? Can you think of some ways to incorporate infographics into your work? Here are some places to ponder:
- in a PowerPoint deck
- in a report
- for an office poster
- to print on staff t-shirts, mugs, etc.
- in a blog post
Once you have some ideas for where you could use them, next up is to think of the actual content for your infographic. I usually sketch out my ideas using a good old piece of paper and pen. Then it’s off to my VA (virtual assistant) to get it designed. A few rounds of revisions later and I have a new learning tool to use.
No VA or graphic designer on board? No problem. You can use a tool like Canva to play around and design your own infographic.
You can see some learning-related infographics here:
- Two infographics I use about roadblocks to learning and the three key parts of Learning and Development
- And two more; my S.A.K.E.© tool and a digital checklist
From cliff jumping, to learning, to learning not to cliff jump, infographics can play a lovely role in your training programs. So take a leap (it’s safer than cliff jumping, I promise) and try your hand at an infographic or two.
Now go on and learn, laugh and lead
Learn
- Plan out how you can use an infographic and what you’d include in it.
Laugh
- I grew up driving an automatic and only learned how to drive a stick shift when my honey and I honeymooned in South Africa and Zimbabwe some 27 years ago. I cannot tell you how much In the realm of shifting your perspective, I relate to this bumper sticker.
Lead
- Go forth and put your infographic plan into action and make one using Canva or some other tool (or have someone else make it for you).
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