Most people are visual learners, which is why visual communication usually determines the success of brands. This type of communication has many aspects. It includes visuals you post on social media, the style of your ads, and even the design of the product itself. And if your visuals resonate with your target audience and are built keeping market and consumer insights in mind, your brand is set up for commercial success or at least has more potential for becoming viral nowadays.
With this article, Depositphotos, an international platform for stock images, videos, music, and design templates, aims to arm you with ideas on trends that your brand can leverage when creating ads and posts in 2021. The tips and tricks below are based on the insightful 2021 Visual Trends Report, which was released late last year.
7 Practical Tips on Visual Communication for Entrepreneurs in 2021
Promote optimism and wellness: 2020 has brought a lot of disappointments to both customers and businesses, making good news a precious rarity. Your visual content can feature colorful elements and other symbols of optimism (a sunny day, a child’s smile, a tasty breakfast) that promote positivity along with your messages. Keep in mind that health has become a priority for many in recent months, so images featuring healthy meals and sports activities will resonate with many.
Use nature patterns: Evolutionarily, it just so happened that nature (even at the level of digital visuals) for us is a powerful source of inspiration and comfort. Months of lockdowns have robbed many people of their ability to connect with nature, so they have become more sensitive to visual stories that help them recreate such experiences. You can reinforce calmness even by simply making references to nature with colors, patterns, and elements.
Integrate more immersive content: Over the past year, many businesses have made a huge technological leap forward by adopting remote customer service tools as well as improving the virtual representation of their products. Now, to beat the competition, you need to generate visuals that make online experiences similar to the offline experience for customers (360° images, virtual tours, more photos, and videos).
Edit visuals less: The number of social networks based on visuals is growing, as is the number of users on YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok. In addition, we are witnessing the rising popularity of video and audio messages, as well as live streams. You can step away from deep retouching and post-production: the audience appreciates more authentic photos and videos.
References to pop culture and movies: What we really had time for last year was watching movies and TV series, as evidenced by the dynamics of growth with profits for streaming platforms. Popular films have set a high bar for better aesthetics with branded content. However, if you manage to link your visual communication with your audience’s favorite movies or shows, you will stay on their radar.
Animate your content: Let’s face it, there is a lot of content on the internet and the attention span of an average online user has reduced almost twice in the recent decade. Dynamic content is currently the best way to keep users paying attention at all. You can animate your photos by adding simple dynamic elements to them, or you can experiment with video instead of pictures for your posts and website pages.
Keep it fun and game-like for your users: Gamification significantly improves user experience. Areas in which this approach has excelled are education, social media, health and beauty digital products, dating apps, and retail. Gamification allows you to turn routine processes into a fun game, motivating the user to devote more time to them.
We covered just a couple of the trends from the 2021 Visual Trend Report that will be most valuable for entrepreneurs and marketers. The full list of trends by Depositphotos also includes insights from international creative agencies and numerous new ideas concerning the future of communication. You can find their quotes and trending image examples on the project page.
