Humans are wired to see images. More than half of humans are visual learners. Our brains process visuals incredibly fast: in just 13 milliseconds.
We’ve long been visual beasts (think of the most early form of communication, hieroglyphics). But we’ve embraced that with vigor in recent years. Consider the popularity of visual media like Instagram, emojis, and YouTube. People simply aren’t reading much – they’re skimming. An eye-tracking study indicated emails were read in less than a minute. As well, visuals have gotten more advanced – considering images like infographics, which are part graphic, part text; or interactive images used on websites.
That’s what makes the visual portion of your creative process so important. You can’t just slap some fonts and colors and logos on a banner and call it good. You need to think it through, and have the visuals (picture, graphic, infographic, video, slide deck, and so forth) be an integral part of the planning process.
