ComHacker.org

by Patricia Mayo

In the first installment in this series on communicating a message with pictures, I introduced this concept and talked about the purpose of a picture, how to use images to draw attention, and putting the reader in the picture’s shoes.

This time I get to dig into one of my all time favorites - directing attention. The nuances of this use are just so much fun to me - not that I take great joy in fiddling with people’s heads. I just like figuring out each case and exactly how your eyes will be influenced by a picture.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed so you never miss the next great communication tip. Thanks for stopping by, I hope to see you often!

Trisha, @mayobrains on Twitter

by Patricia Mayo

The “experts” say you should include pictures in anything you publish online - but they never say what to look for in a picture.

Photo via Fail Blog

They say a picture is worth a thousand words - but very few realize exactly what they are saying with their pictures.

Normally, we aren’t aware of the messages these images are communicating - but that just makes the message even more powerful. Just ask any pro selling through a catalog or direct mail.

The difference between a good image and a bad image is very cut and dry - success, or failure. Period.

by Patricia Mayo

Of course you’re not. What, you - afraid to read a blog post? Pshaw. No way. Couldn’t happen.

Photo by Sophie

Yet if I had titled this “Ambiguity Aversion” and just left it at that, I bet you wouldn’t be reading this right now. That’s because of a hard-wired fact of humanity - we’re fully-trained trained skeptics of anything unfamiliar.

And I’m willing to bet that if I didn’t tell you I’m about to detail how to overcome ambiguity aversion to increase any metric, you probably wouldn’t read beyond this point. But since I just did - well, let’s move on, shall we?

by Patricia Mayo

A couple days ago a good buddy, Mike Davis, said to me, “Trisha, my blog sucks. My blogging sucks. I look at yours and it’s all so cool. How can I be more like you?”

Photo by Dave Dyet

What you see now on GlobalCitizenExperiment.com is the product of about 6 hours of lighthearted work. I didn’t bother taking a “before” screenshot - trust me, it was a real eyesore. There’s still more to do, but we’re already pretty close to that “pretty ‘n pro” look.