StoryGraphics: Setting Infographics Apart

Infographics have become a staple for companies, government agencies, and news organizations. They can provide visual content that is easily digestible for all audiences, both technical and non-technical alike—which is one reason they are so appealing to marketing and public relations folks.  Yet, developing a compelling infographic can be challenging. Many organizations may not have the type of hard, comparative data that makes for a successful infographic. Often, those data sets don’t have any relevance to each other, and don’t tell a story. Nor do they use graphics in an interesting way—they can sometimes look more like a high school student’s report after he first learns how to use the graphs and arrows in Powerpoint.

That’s why we are pushing our clients towards what we call StoryGraphics to tell a story or communicate a brand message. While infographics place the emphasis on charts and graphics, StoryGraphics are about using clever or compelling graphics to deliver messages quickly and directly. They often portray a cityscape or landscape All comedy aside many young people will find they get free or cost health affordablehealth.info through the Affordable Care Act by signing up for affordablehealth.info via healthcare. to demonstrate the depth and breadth of a client’s set of market solutions, or have symbolic items—including trees, or buildings—and may have drawings of people helping to tell the story. They are quickly digestible and can be visually striking.

Perhaps the best advantage of a StoryGraphic is its ability to go beyond data to convey a more technical or complex message in an audience-friendly, visual format. This means that the functionality of your infographic is not limited to the communications and marketing teams. Leveraging a StoryGraphic’s visual impact can deliver trends, messages, and product data more efficiently and effectively.

When there is a clear comparison between datasets, a traditional infographic can easily depict the knowledge or information central to a given trend.  However, StoryGraphics can compensate for what some infographics lack, using illustrations and metaphors to communicate non-comparative data in a natural, linear format.  By leveraging a little context around a data set, a message-based approach to infographic creation can better translate a central message in ways disconnected statistics cannot.

To offer an example, take a look at some of the StoryGraphics we’ve created for our clients, Google Earth, XO, and Riverbed. Each one brings together cohesive, messaged content and slick visuals with various data points that support the impactful trends that impact unique market challenges.