03.12.2015
Why Pictures Are Worth a Thousand Words
printed from:
S+B BLOGS Published: November 24, 2015
INNOVATION
Why Pictures Are
Worth a
Thousand Words
Steven Heller
As s+b marks 20
Steven Heller is co-chair of the
MFA Design/Designer as
Author + Entrepreneur
program at the School of
Visual Arts NYC and author or
editor of more than 170 books
on design and culture,
including 100 Ideas that
Changed Graphic Design
(Laurence King, 2012).
EMAIL
years of publication,
we are looking back
(and forward) to
reflect on the themes,
people, and ideas that
have animated two
decades of original
thinking. This is
the fourth in a series
of blog posts.
There is a case to be made that good
illustration is good business magazine content.
And strategy+business is the case study.
Take, for example, the illustration, by Richard
http://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Talking-Pictures?gko=c299e
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Why Pictures Are Worth a Thousand Words
Mia, for “The Social Life of Brands” in the
Autumn 2012 issue. It contains a multilayered
commentary that suggests through symbolism
that brands are not simply packages and labels
but integrated communications between
public and industry. The art — a depiction of a
blossoming flower whose buildings blocks are
the text bubbles that populate a smart phone
screen — helps announce the story without
explicitly spelling out its thesis. There are no
icons of McDonald’s golden arches or pictures
of brains.
This approach
has been
evident from
the magazine’s
founding in
1995. But in
recent years,
such striking
full-page
illustrations
Illustration by Richard Mia
have become a
vital part of the reader’s experience. As such,
they tap into a trend toward conceptual
illustration that has been building for several
decades
Frontal nudity notwithstanding, I had only two
ironclad taboos when I began my job as art
director of the New York Times op-ed page in
1973: Illustrations could not under any
circumstances include either Uncle Sam or
dollar signs because they were the most
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Why Pictures Are Worth a Thousand Words
frequently and unimaginatively used of all the
cliches. Still, editorial illustrations, especially
for niche business magazine content, rely on
our familiarity of these and other common
tropes that comprise a shared visual language.
Illustrating an article on banks without
showing a representation of a bank building or
teller window, or a businessperson without a
suit and briefcase is nigh impossible. So,
removing Uncle Sam and dollar signs from the
artists’ toolkit demanded agile thinking and
novel symbols.
Illustration by John Hersey
Thankfully, in the mid-1960s a new editorial
art form, known as conceptual illustration, was
developed to illustrate difficult concepts and
trigger audience interaction through metaphor
and symbolism. Over time this conceptual
method dominated magazines and newspapers
whose readers eventually learned how to
decipher the coded messages. More than drawings, paintings, or collages
that mimic text, conceptual illustrations are
brainteasers that engage multiple senses.
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Why Pictures Are Worth a Thousand Words
Faced with various pictorial clues, the reader’s
discovery also serves as the enticement into an
article in the same way that a compelling pull
quote captures a reader’s attention. Yet a
smart conceptual illustration has the potential
to stimulate even more than a choice
quotation. Strategy+business prides itself on
developing high-impact thought leadership.
Through its art direction, which orchestrates
the use of images and graphic material in ways
that will surprise readers, it consistently
deploys illustrations — and not just text — that
help lead readers to thought.
In concert with a provocative headline,
subhead, and pull quotes, images and
illustration can effectively coax the reader into
the story. Conceptual illustrations do what
words cannot. They reject realism for
surrealism, literalism for metaphor, and invite
interpretation. Illustrations are veritable
Rorschach tests with multiple meanings. Some
contain optical illusions and witty ideas. Some
are strikingly designed yet simply rendered.
Some are perfectly apt for one story but
general enough to also be illustrative of others.
Often, you have to look at them two or three
times before really getting them.
Strategy+business’s images make the often
daunting task of reading complex data just a
tad more enjoyable — not just as diversions
but by enhancing the cognitive experience.
A good example is the psychedelic blotch on
the cover of the Winter 2013 issue devoted to
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“Reimagining
Innovation.”
The blotch —
or splatter — is
actually a
multicolored
brain-like
shape that
avoided any
reference to a
literal brain.
The art, by
Craig & Karl,
was in fact, the
perfect
evocation of
the theme, a
rethinking of
the place from
which
innovation comes. And it suggests the idea that
the brain figuratively lights up when creativity
is occurring. The cover image on the Winter
2014 issue, about paths to innovation and the
Internet of Things, is similarly engaging. The
artwork, by Harry Campbell, features an image
of a branching tree made from intersecting
colored schematic lines, which symbolically
suggesting the brain’s neural pathways. The
point is made without using brain tissue.
Conceptual illustration as practiced by s+b
cuts two ways. Too many illustrations of
neuron circuits can become redundant — a
new idea can easily become old with use.
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That’s why the orchestration of style is
essential, and s+b does it well. In the same
Winter 2014 issue neurons are offset by gears
in Lincoln Agnew’s illustration for “A
Strategist’s Guide to the Internet of Things.” It
is a collage in a midcentury modern style that
expresses the idea of interconnectivity and
business opportunity while avoiding any of the
literal mental pictures that those words
conjure. A startling illustration in the Summer
2015 issue, by Martin Leon Barreto, for “The
$112 Billion CEO Succession Problem,” about
the costly prospect of poor planning for
leadership transitions, shows construction
workers building a human facade out of red
brick. The style is lighthearted while the
message of an immovable obstruction is
poignant. A photograph of the ousted CEOs
would hardly be as engaging and memorable.
Illustration by Lincoln Agnew
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Illustration by Martin Leon Barreto
By applying the same rigor and imagination to
conceptual illustrations as it does to concrete
writing, strategy+business says to its readers
that it respects their intelligence and rewards
them with the gift of art. I wouldn’t be
surprised if those readers, in turn, look
forward as much to the artwork as the articles.
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