Let’s face it – in 2023, most people have attention spans worse than a goldfish. Yes, you read that right!
8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… Eight seconds, that’s the amount of time you have to capture your audience’s attention.
In an ever-increasing digitalized world, online users simply don’t have the patience or time to consume lengthy content anymore. With this in mind, business owners, marketing professionals, designers, and the like, need to captivate in a matter of seconds.
But how can you tell a compelling story in less than eight seconds? That’s where design makes its grand entrance.
“A picture is worth a thousand words” as they say. While it is often quoted, this saying remains to be true. Our stories can be told effectively through visuals.
Visual content has proven to be more engaging than purely text-based content across nearly all internet platforms.
Types of visual content:
Photos
Videos
Illustrations
Infographics
Animations
GIFS
Memes
Designers use colors, shapes, photography, illustrations, and layouts to elevate stories and evoke emotions among their audiences.
As a creative designer, you need to pay close attention to what emotions you want to inspire. The design should match the emotional need of the story you are trying to tell.
For example, when I was designing a label for Schussboom Brewing Company, they were inspired by Après ski – a fun social activity after a day of skiing (e.g., having a drink, relaxing). With this in mind, we wanted to create a visual design that sparks joy and excitement. To generate these emotions, I chose to use bright, bold, and neon colors to portray upbeat and lively energy.
As for the story, I decided to depict a group of women posing for a fun, girl-bonding photo after a long day of skiing. After multiple revisions to get it just right, Schussboom decided on the final design for their IPAprès West Coast IPA (see below).
If you don’t have a clue where to start when creating an emotionally-appealing visual, do not stress!
I curated a short list of design resources that I have found very helpful. I will also talk about how to create visuals (e.g., illustrations) in future posts.
Design resources to help make captivating visual content:
Key Point: While we all may have attention spans worse than goldfish nowadays, just remember it only takes an intriguing visual that pulls at our heartstrings to grab and keep our interest.
Have you created visual content to tell your business’ story? If so, please share it with us in the comments so we can all learn how to make more captivating content.
Thank you for reading!
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