Over the past two decades, visual communication has become essential in science and health. Yet many still treat it as decoration rather than as a strategic tool.
In an age of information overload and fierce competition for attention, clarity and connection decide what is seen, understood, and remembered. Visual communication gives us a clear advantage—not because it looks better, but because humans process visual information faster and with greater emotional impact than text alone.
My Make People Care guiding principles are grounded in the belief that visual communication should create connection, trust, and impact.
Connection by Design is the method I use to put this belief into practice. It looks at three things: your message, your audience, and the context of your communication.
1. Force clarity
Translating something into visual communication that evokes a response from people forces you to organize your thoughts. What do you want? Why do you want it? Who do you want to address? What are your resources and constraints? What is your unique value proposition? Clear communication helps you achieve your goals. Unclear communication achieves the opposite.
2. Influence is achieved through connection and trust
The first and most important goal of Make People Care is to build connections and establish trust. If you don’t connect with your audience, your message won’t reach them. If you don’t manage to earn their trust, they won’t listen to you.
3. Impact or nothing
If you want your visual communications to be influential, you have to make them work. Do everything you can to ensure the outcome is impactful. Otherwise, your time and energy will be wasted. People care when they feel that you care. That being said, creating something imperfect is part of the learning and development process. Improve, refine, iterate. That’s the path.
4. Access enables impact
Impactful visual communication is easily accessible to the audience. If people can’t access it, it doesn’t matter.
5. Every detail communicates
Each detail communicates something. Consider the thickness of your outline, the hues you choose, and the line spacing of your headline. Choose all your details in a way that emphasizes your message.
6. Maximum impact, minimum waste
Create in the most sustainable way possible: maximum impact with minimum resources. With foresight, planning, and real-world testing, you reduce the waste of time, energy, and money. Sustainable visual communication is created and maintained in a way that efficiently uses resources.
7. Design for longevity
Impactful visual communication is long-lasting. Its foundation doesn’t need to be replaced yearly. When designing for longevity, consider possible future developments. The result is timeless and can be easily updated to influence audiences for years and decades.
8. Make it work everywhere
Impactful visual communication is flexible. It scales across media, platforms, contexts, and events without losing clarity or integrity.
9. Every case holds magic
Treat each piece of visual communication, no matter how big or small, as a case of its own, so it can reach its full potential. A logo-printed ballpoint pen is standard. A personalized pen with a message about writing? That creates magic.
10. Be the hero
Standing out takes courage. Make People Care often requires being a trailblazer and doing things differently.
11. Learn the language of visuals
Visual communication is a powerful language of its own. It takes practice and patience to learn and use it well. Honor that process.
