I have the unique pleasure of working as a novelist in the literary world and a branding and communications strategist in the business world, the former for ten years and the latter for over 30. The upshot is I have an abiding affection for well-crafted sentences—and lots of ‘em! This has made my recent transition to a graphical-based aesthetic in both worlds challenging. But it’s also taught me how to help clients begin to break their own addiction to words.
Five months ago, I did two things I’ve always wanted to do. First, I began collaborating with a renowned illustrator on a graphic novel. Second, I joined ThoughtForm, a world-class communications design consultancy that I’ve been a fan of for a long time. Both have necessitated some hard changes.
The literary world is filled with people who love words. The business world is no different. Whole departments are dedicated to pumping out analyses and executive summaries. Aspiring managers slave over PowerPoint, hoping to wow upper management with strategies, objectives, and results. I once worked for a man who kept his entire team working into the night for a week preparing 100+ slides for a 30-minute presentation about a failing product. Each slide was a concoction of tables, bullet points, timelines, and enough different fonts to supply ransom note writers for years to come.
“Do we need this many slides?” I asked, looking at the unappetizing smorgasbord before me. “We won’t have enough time to present them all. “Yes,” my manager said. “Everything in there is critical.”
No surprise, the presentation had to be cut short when time ran out, about 14 slides in. Better communications design wouldn’t have saved the product, but it would have kept me and half a dozen other people from spending more than 30 man-days creating a presentation that told so many conflicting stories, nothing about where the business was headed was particularly clear. A single graph would have told our leadership team what they needed to know in under a minute.
ThoughtForm reveres design and helps organizations develop concise and beautifully executed graphical communication—the kind of output that makes a client gasp with pleasure. But as I provided draft copy on one of my first projects, a colleague’s comment as he scanned it brought me up short. “It’s too word dependent,” he said helpfully. “The best communication uses as few words as possible.”
Say what?
I’m not sure what look I had on my face, but it definitely wasn’t gratitude.
I’m facing the same issue with my latest writing project. The creation of a graphic novel, I discovered, requires the writer to deliver a manuscript to the illustrator, who creates the visuals that carry the story. But the process works better when the writer can at least describe the scene the illustrator should be aiming for. Charged with thinking visually, I began to see how letting images drive my storytelling would improve the story. A picture could serve as the punch line to a joke, or do the heavy lifting in setting a scene’s tone. I found myself writing fewer words and getting better results. The same holds true of my work at ThoughtForm.
Companies can make this transition, too—and they should.
After a lifetime of working in communications and five months at ThoughtForm, the advice I would give managers who are looking for ways to move their organizations toward clearer, more concise communication is this:
Honor storytelling. Encourage the people on your team to learn to tell stories, not produce slides. These stories should be spoken, not written down. All the usual rules of storytelling apply: don’t bury the lede, cut out the boring bits, be compelling, and deliver a satisfying ending. Competency in storytelling is the first step in reducing one’s dependence on words because implicit in storytelling competence is the ability to use only the words that are absolutely necessary.
Develop a visual vocabulary. And by that, I don’t mean the egregious mix of images in PowerPoint that seem to have come from a Going Out of Business sale at some down-on-its-luck 70s stock image store. Just as companies invest in developing brand logos and styles, they need to invest in developing a graphic vocabulary that works for internal and external communications and is easily accessed and implemented. On one project at ThoughtForm, we developed five icons to represent the five phases of product development. On another project, four illustrated figures became metaphors for the consumer, the salesperson, the customer care representative, and the dealer. Suddenly, our clients’ complex stories became easy to understand and beautiful to look at. When that happens, audience engagement soars.
Befriend a communications design firm. Keep them on speed-dial. Five beautiful slides will do more to sell your vision for an entirely new manufacturing process than 125 tables and 50 bulleted lists. Have your team think about the story the presentation should tell, but have your graphic design firm turn that story into a compelling visual communication. A good communications design firm will become an archive for your company’s stories as well, and a fierce guardian of visual and messaging consistency.
Most important, model good behavior. My former manager created all those slides because that’s what his manager did. A good communications culture starts at the top. Tell stories. Use good graphics. Limit your slides.
Breaking an addiction to words is hard, but letting graphic communications do the heavy work really does deliver clearer, more engaging brand stories. To paraphrase food writer Michael Pollan: Use words. Not too many. Mostly to support compelling visuals. As my colleague said after seeing the look on my face, “Don’t worry. You’ll learn to love it.” I have.
Gwyn Cready is a writer and researcher who brings 25 years of blue chip brand management to tell stories that build brands.