A Picture Is Worth A Thousand…and One, Words

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By Yvonne DiVita - Dec 14 , 2007

Today’s interactive, digital world we live and do business in is founded on the concept of words and pictures together. When pictures are paragraphs or pages away from the text they refer to, it creates a disconnect in the reader’s mind and spoils the flow of the reading. Who likes to flip back pages and pages to get the right content to go with the picture, graph, or chart they discover in the sidebar of their reading? It makes me shake my head and wonder, “Where was the designer?” Words and pictures just belong together. Ask Edward Tufte, an expert in the field of visual design. And a self-publishing author.

The web is a great example of pictures and words together. It wouldn’t work with either/or. Text is great for left-brained thinkers who need the supporting words to help them visualize and learn, whereas pictures are a necessity for right-brained thinkers who process content based on creative thinking. In reality, since we are all a little bit left-brained and a little bit right-brained, your best bet in conveying information is to make sure you do both: Put words and pictures together.

The word together is key, here. We won’t explore the importance of this idea in picture books – surely that’s self-explanatory. But graduating from picture books to novels or non-fiction changes the landscape of our reading, considerably. The thought, as I’ve always understood it, is that once we give up our childish needs for colorful graphics (Is this true? Do we ever actually give that up? Tufte would argue against that, and so would most designers) , we are supposed to learn via the text, and if an image is necessary, it can be placed anywhere within the document or book, as long as it is tagged with appropriate text.

Patently untrue!

Pictures, regardless of their color (variations on black and white such as grayscale or full color encompassing all manner of combinations) are always a positive addition to your book. Reality tells us that readers of all ages enjoy images that partner with words.

Explanations written to an audience of your peers are the basics of your book, of course. But, never forget that each reader has his or her own way of digesting your content, and supporting different learning styles with a combination of words and pictures is always a welcome format.

With today’s superior technology, designers can create wonderful grayscale images that pop off the page to accompany your text. A recent commercial on TV shows viewers how they can use a particular store’s imagery tools to turn color pictures into grayscale or create faded looks that mimic days gone by. The goal is to have pictures that will impress the viewer, and sometimes that means leaving color out. In the world of print-on-demand (POD), grayscale or black and white are most cost-effective, which is one reason most POD companies do not do children’s books.

New writers who aspire to self-publish can overlook this truly vital area of publication. Image placement is a primary part of what your page-layout designer should be doing for you. Many POD firms charge extra for image placement, precisely because it requires not only expertise and a good eye, but it’s very time consuming. One does not merely click a button and set an image in a body of text.

Just as the actual task of laying out the page is a careful, thoughtful and sometimes intense job, the task of adding pictures to that text more than doubles the concentration and time involved. Sometimes the designer needs to vary the page borders – on the outside of the page, as the inside borders fold into the binding. Not remembering this can create a disconnected flow of text and could cause the pictures to end up on a page opposite the text that describes them.

Luke Wroblewski, who spoke recently in Rochester, NY, uses this concept in his web design work and cited Edward Tufte in his presentation. Today, as Senior Principal, Product Ideation & Design professional at Yahoo!, he is a good example of someone who values the intention of design, as opposed to the object of design.

The intention, let us all agree, is to make the page, regardless of whether it’s online or in print, more understandable to the reader. The content must convey the message – and pictures that accompany it must be placed close to the text – else confuse the reader. Luke showed the attendees at the seminar in Rochester the importance of getting your reader’s attention in the first few seconds and of maintaining that attention by using well-designed and well-thought out “words and pictures” together.

We’re all on the web. Our books are on the web. “Search Inside” is expected today. Readers want to browse books online in much the same way they browse books in a physical bookstore. This gives authors a great opportunity to utilize the “words and pictures” together idea – to engage readers and draw them into the story.

As technology continues to improve the writing and publishing process, we will likely see more e-books – and the opportunity to use image placement, B/W or Color, as more than objects added to support text or break up the monotonous flow of paragraph after paragraph. We will see image placement become the norm – books will have full-color pictures, and I predict we will see books with mini-movies embedded in them.

But that’s a story for another day. It’s enough to say that today’s technology allows designers to utilize pictures so effectively, for authors and publishers, that pictures are worth at least a thousand and one words.