September 13, 2024
September 12, 2024
Visual communication is an increasingly important part of how we share information. We use it at work, with friends and family, and even to share breaking news. For professional marketers and communicators, visual communication is now a crucial strategy to cut through the noise and reach both consumer and enterprise audiences. In fact, Canva found that 93% of global business leaders say visual communication helps them articulate ideas better, while 92% expect employees in non-design roles to have design skills and knowledge.
But what makes for great visual storytelling?
I recently sat down with author, illustrator and storyteller Liz Fosslien to get her take. I first came across Liz’s brilliant illustrations on LinkedIn—this one about “what you can do today” hit me hard as an overachiever—and I’m not the only one. Liz’s recent illustration about what we see on social media has gained more than 4,000 reactions and 250-plus reposts. If there’s a secret recipe for creating engaging visual content, Liz has cracked it.
Below is an edited version of our conversation.
To start, can you give us a brief overview of your experience as a communicator, author and illustrator?
I’ve been in communications leadership roles for the last seven years, encompassing marketing, external comms, internal comms and storytelling. I’ve also written two books on emotions at work, “Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay” and “No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions At Work.” I illustrated both books and I also publish illustrations that bring other complex concepts to life. My books and illustrations touch a lot on communication, specifically interpersonal communication, which can be very emotional.
When did you start illustrating, and what motivated you to take the leap of publishing a book?
I’ve been illustrating in some form my whole life—I always loved doodling as a kid. I never took it seriously until I started working on the books.
My co-author, Mollie West Duffy, and I wrote an article on misconceptions about introverts using seven illustrations. It was published on Susan Cain’s website at the time, who authored “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking.” It was viewed over 6 million times, which clued us in that there might be something worth pursuing here. Molly and I started talking about being introverted in very extraverted careers, which led to our focus on navigating emotions at work. With the success of that article, we began to realize the power of combining words and illustrations to bring these concepts to life.
Where does your inspiration come from?
It’s a mix of intuition—the topics I think are on people’s minds right now—and being chronically online. I love TikTok, Reddit and Twitter. They all give you a sense of what people are thinking and feeling. I pair that with my own experiences and conversations.
With illustrations, I try to think through the most universally recognized images—The Mona Lisa, a venn diagram, the stop sign—and how I can incorporate them. The goal is to make something easily understandable for as broad an audience as possible.
How do you nurture your creativity? Are there any creative routines you practice?
I started out with the misconception that inspiration will strike out of nowhere, but I don’t think it works like that. Instead, I put a literal creative block on my calendar: two hours where I don’t check my phone or email. I let myself sit quietly and think about recent conversations I’ve had, articles I’ve read, and how I can turn those into visuals. The key is to have fun with it and not put too much pressure on yourself. Usually, there’s an initial 30 minutes of painful ‘nothingness’ before the ideas emerge. That’s what inspiration is. It’s not a lightning strike, it’s sitting down and getting through the painful nothingness until you get into a groove.
<split-lines>"That’s what inspiration is. It’s not a lightning strike, it’s sitting down and getting through the painful nothingness until you get into a groove."<split-lines>
What advice can you share about effective communication, either written or visual?
The most effective communication is simple and clear. The trick is, you have to be comfortable losing some of the nuance for the sake of simplicity. That’s true of visual communication and communications in general. To get someone interested you have to start where they’re at—which often means starting with the simplest version of what you want to say. The challenge in comms is, how do you find the most important thing for your audience and then articulate it in a single sentence? They may not understand it completely right away, but if you get them interested or excited with that one sentence they’ll want to learn more.
<split-lines>"The most effective communication is simple and clear. The trick is, you have to be comfortable losing some of the nuance for the sake of simplicity."<split-lines>
What does your Head of Storytelling position entail at Atlassian? How do you use visuals in that role?
Atlassian has 11 offices around the world, and people can work from anywhere, meaning they can go into an office, work from home, or do whatever mix of the two suits them best. We’ve gotten really good at working online and across time zones. I’m on the team that’s figuring out how to do distributed work well, which we call Team Anywhere. My job is to communicate to the world what we’ve learned and help other organizations learn from us.
The role combines marketing, internal and external communications, and traditional content marketing. For example, we published a guide called “Lessons Learned: 1,000 Days of Distributed at Atlassian,” in which visual communication played a big role. We ask ourselves questions like: ‘How can we highlight the most important message using just icons, color or font?’ or ‘Which information would be best presented as an infographic instead of a paragraph?’ It’s a lot of fun. I work with our team of designers to tell these stories, and we focus a lot on the emotional impact of each piece of content.
What elements make a visual impactful or even “viral”?
There’s no secret recipe for going viral—I wish I had it—but emotions are foundational to all storytelling. I think it comes down to simplicity and relatability. If you can capture something that resonates with your audience and simplify it, that goes a long way. Impactful visuals are easy to reshare or tell someone about.
What should every communications professional know about collaborating with visual and design teams?
The most effective thing is to get everyone aligned on the goal and what you want your audience to feel. If you can get really specific about those two things, it will make for a successful partnership.
This also helps with the feedback process. We’ve all gotten frustrating, vague feedback like ‘make it more fun.’ If you’re aligned on the message and the emotion, all feedback should tie directly to those goals. And if everyone knows why you are requesting a change, they’ll be able to more easily figure out how to implement your feedback.
So instead of, ‘make it more fun,’ try saying something like, ‘how can we leave the reader more inspired and equipped to make a change in their own life?’ Then, let your team use their expertise to come up with a solution.
What excites you about your job every day?
For one, the flexibility I have in terms of where and sometimes when I can work. With two small children, that flexibility has been truly life-changing. I don’t feel burnt out at work anymore. I feel so supported. At Atlassian, you get to choose your own adventure. We want to help people figure out what’s best for them and fit work into their lives, not the other way around. It feels really special to be on the team that gets to tell that story.
More broadly, I find storytelling and communications so fun because it involves vaguely defined challenges. At the end of the day you have to figure out what the interesting story is. What will make people pause and take notice?
<split-lines>"I find storytelling and communications so fun because it involves vaguely defined challenges. At the end of the day you have to figure out what the interesting story is."<split-lines>
Learn more about Liz Fosslien's background and published works, here.
