Those who tell stories rule the world. But those who tell VISUAL stories rule the universe.

Why?

Visuals unlock our brain’s processing superpower, making stories MORE compelling and actionable than words alone.

Neuroscientists from MIT have found:

• We process the detail of an image in 13 milliseconds vs 6 secs to read a sentence of text

• Present those visuals as a story, and we are 22x more likely to remember it 3 days later

I founded an award winning visual storytelling company that visualises ideas for organisations internationally.

Here’s the 3 step process we use to visualise anything.

Clarify your concept.

All ideas start with words. Challenge yourself to explain the message clearly in less than 280 characters (tweet length).

The story structure we use is: what’s the problem your idea solves? What’s the solution your idea offers? What’s the ideal future if this solution is implemented?

Find the visual.

Look at your words and circle key phrases that you could turn into images. There are 3 kinds of visuals you could find:

• Literal - icons, objects or pictures that directly represent a word or concept

• Visual metaphor - like scales for a decision, an iceberg for a problem, or a journey for a process

• Abstract - turning the whole idea into a story with characters & a plot as an abstract representation. We love using Star Wars or Harry Potter!

Draw it!

The final step is to make the visual itself. Quickest way? Draw it yourself - learn how in 5 mins here: bit.ly/H_2draw. Drawing scare you? Steal like an artist using free resources - use the database of free tools I’ve created here: bit.ly/nfc-free-viz