Audiences are overwhelmed. As info and messaging proliferate, folks can’t sustain and so they disengage. However visible storytelling can break by way of that psychological fog and assist folks digest and make sense of data, whatever the medium or message.
There are various methods to speak info: Infographics, movies, animated slide decks, occasion designs, wall prints, and interactive museum installations are all types of presentation design. Toptal designer Lucía Merlo has labored on presentation design tasks for famend cultural establishments just like the Nationwide Aquarium in Denmark and the Museum of the Future in Dubai, in addition to company purchasers like Lego and Ikea. On this Q&A, Merlo explains her strategy to storytelling and shares real-world examples that can assist you make an even bigger impression in your viewers.
This dialog has been edited for readability and size.
How do you incorporate storytelling in design? What position does it play in your course of?
Storytelling is essential in my work as visible designer. In essence, my job is to take all the data and content material I obtain from a shopper and switch it right into a compelling narrative that folks need to cease and take note of. As for my strategy, it depends upon the format.
Storytelling in infographics
For an infographic that might be distributed in quite a lot of contexts, together with as a social media graphic, I begin by creating a world form that broadly conceptualizes the data and piques the viewer’s curiosity. As an illustration, when you’re creating an infographic about ocean life, the container for the graphic might be a seabed or a wave. From there, you need to use scaled layers of textual content to supply info and inform a narrative. The visible type of the storytelling graphic must be a metaphor for what you need to convey at a extra granular stage. As inspiration, I typically suppose again to an set up by Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh known as The Comfortable Present, which makes use of gumball dispensers to mirror the viewers’s happiness. It’s an ideal instance of a visible metaphor.
Storytelling in movies
For movies, I pay shut consideration to the narrative arc, which frequently means presenting info in a linear method. I ask myself: How is the issue launched? How does stress construct? What are the plot twists? What’s the climax? What’s the decision? Whether or not it’s a 10-second video or a 60-minute documentary, the viewers’s understanding of the content material is a main focus when making a story. Viewers notion ought to information narrative choices like a lighthouse. I typically work with purchasers to declutter video content material as a result of viewers’ consideration capability retains shrinking and we shouldn’t assume they may discover the time and psychological power to soak up lengthy or complicated messages. I additionally warning in opposition to investing in video types or graphic strategies that aren’t essential to convey the message however require vital sources to supply.
Storytelling in 3D
When designing exhibitions and bodily areas, I think about I’m strolling by way of a house. Very like a house implies a sure route—you enter by way of the entrance door and discover room by room and flooring by flooring—there’s a commonplace path to the visible sequence that unfolds in an exhibition. As an illustration, I introduce the theme originally of the immersive expertise, current a number of subthreads, after which progress to a decision. However the path just isn’t strictly decided. The customer ought to be happy to find it in their very own method, leaping from room to room. I additionally like opening small home windows into the totally different subthemes.
As an illustration, in Shadows, an interactive exhibition I helped design for the Edvard Munch museum in Oslo, a number of the info is discovered inside drawers. Hurried guests will skip that half, and that’s high quality, however the nerdy ones will spend time discovering these sublayers of data, making it a extra memorable expertise.
What are key parts of visible storytelling that make presentation design participating and efficient?
Simplicity is essential. For visible tales, it’s a must to have a transparent hierarchy so folks know what to take a look at first and the place to go subsequent. We will study quite a bit about this strategy from the Swiss Model, also referred to as the Worldwide Typographic Model. The ideas of this fashion spotlight key parts of an organized, hierarchical structure, akin to establishing a restricted variety of font sizes for headings, subheadings, and physique textual content, embracing whitespace to offer parts room to breathe and to focus consideration on an important parts, and avoiding pointless gildings that don’t improve that means.
Visible parts ought to play a job within the story and serve a particular goal. For instance, I typically work with content material that’s written in enterprise language with numerous acronyms and sophisticated terminology. Purchasers recognize once I could make that language extra accessible by way of imagery—akin to together with cartoon characters who categorical complicated concepts plainly in thought bubbles. Visuals like these can help understanding and create an emotional response that’s essential for sparking engagement.
Minimalism is a helpful idea in visible storytelling: What’s the most economical method I can clarify a sense or idea with out superfluous language? I might need a personality sitting down or slumped over in a chair to convey the frustration of ready. When you choose and organize photos, you’ll be able to typically use fewer phrases and nonetheless obtain readability.
After all, phrases are instrumental in visible tales as effectively. In most of my tasks, I write the copy along with creating the drawings (although generally I collaborate with a author). Normally, I discover that writing the copy permits me to be quicker and extra fluid in my course of—I perceive the story, and I understand how to inform it in a structured method.
In presentation design, what’s your strategy to understanding the model’s voice and viewers?
To get to know the model, I ask the shopper numerous questions. I discover it’s greatest to get inventive, as a result of if I ask merely, “What’s your model’s character? or “Who is that this challenge for?” they might give a flat reply. It’s way more attention-grabbing and fruitful to ask out-of-the-box questions, akin to, “If this viewers was an animal, what would it not be?” or “When you had to decide on three attributes to explain your viewer or reader, what would they be?” You’ll want to ask sufficient questions to make sure you perceive the tone of voice, target market, and person persona the shopper has in thoughts—they know their content material higher than anybody else, however they might want some probing to articulate it.
After I labored with a waste administration firm to create an infographic that might make clear the environmental advantages of its new sustainability mannequin to policymakers and public officers, I prompted the shopper to offer the viewers a face. The important thing decision-maker thought-about this and selected a outstanding political chief. With that clear reference in thoughts, the design technique got here into focus—we might then start to examine what sort of language would resonate and what would maintain this viewers all through the person journey. I like these sorts of questions as a result of they assist crystallize a imaginative and prescient for the design course of.
Are you able to describe your course of for choosing colour schemes, typography, and visible parts for a challenge?
Generally these parts are preestablished by the shopper’s visible identification. At different occasions, creating them is an exploratory course of that entails session with the shopper.
A superb instance of the latter is a collection of slides I created for a meals weblog about how tempeh is made. I drew inspiration from varied examples of Asian vernacular graphic design, notably specializing in the Indonesian fashion, as tempeh originated in Indonesia. By vernacular graphic design, I imply the native design types that emerge from conventional and on a regular basis life. To visualise the fashion for the slide photos, I created a temper board that integrated outdated food and drinks labels.
The labels characteristic symmetry, decorative parts, vivid colours, and a mixture of iconography and textual content, which impressed the carousel of illustrations that complement the article about tempeh.
When choosing visible parts, it’s necessary to be systematic. If I resolve round containers are going to look flat on the person interface, I’m going to offer each single circle within the presentation the identical format. Consistency is a essential visible storytelling precept that saves numerous time. It additionally makes it simpler for the viewers to grasp the relationships among the many varied parts and their relative significance.
How have you ever used storytelling to make complicated or technical info extra accessible?
I not too long ago designed an infographic for a web based automotive rental and leasing firm. The objective was to win a service contract from an electrical automobile firm by displaying executives and decision-makers the boundaries that folks encounter when shopping for electrical vehicles, and the way the automotive rental and leasing platform is uniquely positioned to dismantle these boundaries.
I divided the boundaries into 4 principal classes: excessive buy worth, charging prices and availability, depreciation, and vary nervousness. The visible design illustrates an individual climbing a hill and confronting these points, with the particular person’s emotional state—from confusion to frustration—revealed of their physique language.
On this case, the slope of the hill communicates the challenges customers face and the reward that awaits them: the power financial savings and environmental impression of an electrical automobile with out the hassles of buying, sustaining, and reselling it.
One other instance is an infographic I created for the waste administration firm I discussed. The objective was for instance how the corporate was shifting from a waste administration mannequin that relied largely on outdated, ecologically harmful landfills to a sustainable course of pushed by synthetic intelligence (AI). Put merely, the corporate’s management wished to distill a posh course of right into a coherent and aesthetically pleasing presentation. The crew had compiled a set of nice insights on the environmental benefits of the corporate’s answer. Nonetheless, the insights wanted to be organized and stylized in a method that might resonate with key stakeholders and alleviate any lingering issues.
Design hierarchy, visible alignment, and colour selection have been essential. Every graphic element is linked to a quick clarification with a line, making it simpler to digest the data in small chunks, and a three-tone colour scheme—grey, turquoise, and inexperienced—highlights the sustainability of the brand new answer. I grouped and separated parts as a type of hierarchy: black textual content above, and inexperienced drawings of the mannequin under. I additionally included a drawing of a standard landfill in grey because the decrease layer to focus on how soiled and primitive these are in comparison with what the shopper was proposing. Battle is necessary in storytelling as a result of it establishes an issue to be overcome that piques the viewers’s curiosity. On this case, the distinction between the outdated mannequin and new mannequin was designed to take away any doubt about which is one of the simplest ways ahead.
Do you’ve gotten recommendation for enhancing visible storytelling with information or information visualizations?
My recommendation: Don’t overlook that persons are folks, not machines. They’ve restricted consideration spans and it’s a must to join with their emotional facet.
A graph isn’t only a graph. Even the form of a graph can talk info. Relying on the content material you’re sharing, it might be structured like a meals label or like a constructing. When storytelling with information, the precise container can assist you categorical the idea behind the data and provides it that means. In any other case, you’re simply sharing numbers. Individuals are extra prone to keep in mind the story than a particular statistic or end result.
I like to recommend making information as interactive as potential since interactive parts enable customers to discover information at their very own tempo. Separating it into chunks can also be a method of simplifying info. Folks are usually extra engaged when they’re following their very own curiosity and studying in an energetic method. On a web site, this strategy would possibly imply creating clickable parts or filters. In an exhibition, it might be an information show that’s triggered when somebody enters a room or opens a wall-mounted field that comprises textual content.
Animating information visualizations is one other efficient tactic that may deepen the reference to the information. The way in which a graphic aspect unfolds brings one other layer of expression: Is it quick? Is it sluggish? Is it humorous as a result of it bounces like a ball? Animation infuses content material with that means and permits designers for instance adjustments in information over time.
I additionally suggest simplifying and distilling info as a lot as potential. There’s a temptation to overcomplicate presentation design. These days you’ll be able to produce content material so simply, cheaply, and shortly that folks attempt to clarify the world because the starting of time. However that’s a mistake; it’s a must to choose and synthesize.
What traits or rising applied sciences do you discover notably thrilling or impactful on this area?
One thrilling functionality is personalization. For instance, you may make an infographic particular to the reader of a newspaper. Generally I get an e-mail e-newsletter with a really detailed report on what’s occurring in a sure political space. The truth that it has my title on it and is directed on the target market I belong to makes it actually cool—I’m studying one thing that’s made for me. Expertise has made it extremely quick and simple to personalize content material, which has opened up every kind of prospects for visible storytelling in design.
As well as, I discover generative AI to be an amazing studying device as a result of I can analysis and perceive a subject in a short time. Say I begin a brand new design challenge by which I must create a visible about regenerative agriculture, and I don’t know something about that matter—I can ask ChatGPT to elucidate it to me. After all, I’ll cross-check every part in opposition to authoritative references, however AI is a useful studying device that has made me a lot much less depending on purchasers at early challenge levels.
What steering do you’ve gotten for designers trying to enhance their storytelling expertise and stand out within the trade?
I like to recommend studying quite a bit and discovering inspiration outdoors the digital design world. I very a lot admire comedian writers and cartoonists, folks like Moebius (Jean Giraud), Hergé (Georges Prosper Remi), and Chris Ware. They perceive methods to construction a narrative from starting to finish, from chapters to vignettes. Chris Ware, specifically, modified my pondering. He helped me understand that every part needs to be actually systematic and made into modular blocks that may be configured into bigger tales.
Step away from Pinterest and go to exhibitions and museums, locations the place you get visible enter that may spark new concepts or instructions in your work. That is particularly necessary when designing bodily areas. artwork from numerous locations and throughout mediums is an efficient approach to train your mind methods to use visible language in numerous codecs.