The Importance of Visual Communication in Social Design
Visual Communication is an essential tool for social designers. It allows us to create powerful and engaging messages that can build community and inspire change. Art speaks where words fail, and visual communication shares complex information in a way that is emotionally engaging and understood. Let’s discuss further how you can use visual communication design to generate civic engagement around social issues.
Social Designers Communicate Complex Social Issues
Social design is an emerging field sitting at the intersection of art, design, and social policymaking. Social designers are responsible for utilizing a variety of skills including technical design, political understanding, and visual communication to generate civic engagement and create positive social change. They work with cause-based organizations and nonprofits to do so.
One of the most important skills a social designer utilizes is visual communication design. Social designers must have a deep understanding of complex social issues. They must be able to use visual communication design to simplify and explain these issues in a way that is understood. A well designed social design campaign will communicate a social issue in an emotionally engaging yet easily understood way. Let’s break this down.
Visual Communication Captures Attention
In the creator’s economy of the 21st century, attention is a limited resource. Organizations, marketers, businesses, and individuals compete for attention everyday. Social designers must learn how to capture and retain the attention of the communities they work within. They must use visual communication to cut through the noise and cause people to focus. This is the first step to engagement.
The next step is to craft your messaging. Visual communication tells stories. In fact, all art tells a story. Visual communication designs the way these stories are framed for communication. This is where the collaborative aspect of social design is most important.
Social Designers Collaborate to Craft Messaging
Visual Communication can reframe stories of social injustice from the perspective of those affected and searching for solutions. It has the potential to disarm the negative politicization of these issues by keeping the focus and core messaging on the fundamental roots of the problem. The designer does not have all the answers. Social designers speak directly with community members and allow them to tell their story. The designer’s job is to keep the conversation focused on the fundamental issues.
Visual Communication Evokes Emotions
Public apathy is an issue common to any cause-based organizations. Communicating a complex message is one job, but making the message stick is another. Good visual communication design understands the power to evoke emotions.
Ultimately, people don’t care about social issues unless they have a good reason. Visual communication can make emotional connections between the audience and the social issue. It gives people a reason to care and take action. Once people understand the emotional “why,” they are more inclined to listen to a call-to-action driving civic engagement.
Photo by Kylan Stephon Hayes at Powered by Verity
A collection of visual appealing images with emotionally engaging content can galvanize civic engagement.
Visual Communication Galvanizes Social Change
Designers have been confined to the role of profit-generating communicators for too long. The same visual communication skills that can sell products are the same skills that can galvanize social change. Visual communication design proves that designers can serve a different purpose. We can use our skills to educate others, raise awareness of social causes, and inspire social change.
Visual communication design is a powerful tool for social designers to communicate ideas efficiently and creatively. Here at the Powered by Verity School of Social Design, we look forward to leading education on this emering field. We are excited to turn creators into changemakers. Let’s let the art do the talking.
