Telling a good story
When you tell a story I always want there to be a bit of intrigue, some surprise, and even some tension before I resolve the tension and finish the story. If my story is being told for impact, or to have you take some action, I also want to be clear how the call to action relates to my story. In other words, my story has to engage you and make sense (in terms of why I'm telling it).
Good stories also take a bit of time to tell. I'm not talking about hours, but more than just a few sentence. And they're memorable. Good stories stick.
Infographics are visual stories
I've told you over and over, the brain is visual. Over 50% of it is wired for visuals. It's immediately engaged with visuals. So, if your goal is to engage, few mechanisms work better than a story that is visual. And that's exactly what an infographic is. A visual story.
Imagine you worked at a private college-prep school in southern California and you wanted to highlight why it was worth $30,000 a year for students to attend. Would you write a long letter to prospective parents? Not if you knew what was good for you. You'd create a visual artifact that would distinguish you from everyone else. It would highlight how special you truly were.
That's exactly what Sage Hill did. Check out this infographic that gives you compelling reasons to enroll your child at their school.
But what if you're not an artist?
Thankfully, you don't have to be an artist to be a storyteller. You can use free infographics generators, like the one Easel.ly offers. It does a lot of the work for you – including starting you off with some great templates that have pre-rendered graphics for you. That makes creating maps like the one above a lot easier. Check out some of the options.
What story are you waiting to tell?
The rise of infographic generators have made it possible for you and me to create compelling graphics that make our case without us having to go get a graphic design degree. That's the good news. The more challenging news? You have to be willing to craft your story, back it up with data, and get it out there?
What's stopping you? Let's get going!