Once upon a time, it was mainly graphic designers and visual artists who spent their days dabbling with filters, fonts, logos and image-editing tools. Today, many of us have become pretty adept at producing and editing our own visual content – from intuitively cropping and filtering photos on the go to wheeling out cinema-worthy Instagram reels, slick TikTok transitions, or eye-catching flyers and posters. And all in a matter of minutes with just a few clicks or swipes.
We might not even notice just how sophisticated we’re being because we’ve become so accustomed to communicating visually – instinctively dropping images, emojis, gifs and memes into our digital conversations and stepping up how we present our lives and work online.
AI-assisted design tools – from background removers, image expanders and text-to-image generators – take things even further. Used in combination with other tools, they effectively allow us to “imagine” an image on to a screen, and have become an invaluable part of intuitive content software and apps such as Adobe Express, which allows you to create designs easily and for free. They’re an easy way to embrace the new world of generative AI, helping you navigate commercial and copyright issues while seamlessly incorporating these new visual super skills into your existing work and images.
To fully appreciate how we’ve become so au fait with all these skills now at our fingertips, it’s worth considering how the technology also taps into something deeper. Design and visual communication have become second nature to most of us partly thanks to the way our minds work. “Generally, our brains are built to process images faster than words,” says clinical psychotherapist Dipti Tait. “This is why visuals, from advertising billboards to the emojis and memes we send loved ones, have become a universal language of their very own,” she says. “We process visuals incredibly quickly – our brains can easily make sense of an image or video that the eye sees for as little as 13 milliseconds.”
Not only do we process images faster than words, but they stick around longer, too. “Visuals usually make a bigger impact than words and leave a lasting impression thanks to something called the ‘picture superiority effect’,” explains Tait. “This is the phenomenon where people remember pictures better than the corresponding word. In this way, images work as a visual anchor, helping our brains quickly file away and retrieve information.” It’s why a random meme you saw six months ago stays lodged in your memory above a recent conversation with a friend or colleague.
It also helps explain our collective love for communicating via emojis and visual prompts. More than 90% (pdf) of us use emojis regularly when communicating online, with more than 70bn sent daily. “The brain craves simplicity and visuals like emojis cut through complication easily and quickly,” says Tait.
“As a therapist, I often incorporate visual aids, such as drawings or flowcharts, in the therapy room – it gets to the bottom of challenging issues faster and really helps us understand one another better. Why try to explain something for 10 minutes when you can show them instead?”
Indeed, efficiency is a key factor, according to communications expert James Bore, who specialises in information theory – AKA the mathematical theory of communication. “Pictographs – which is really what emojis are – are an incredibly efficient way to transmit information and the informational content is huge compared to physically typing out words,” he says. Forget dictating a lengthy reply to someone’s question – just ping back an emoji as acknowledgement instead. “Receiving a ‘thumbs up’ visual instead of a written message saying: ‘I am pleased about this,’ is not only more efficient, but it also carries useful additional information about the context in terms of tone or clarity,” says Bore.
And let’s not forget that speaking “visually” – whether via emojis, photographs or videos – enables us to communicate without actually having to say anything. Instead of making ourselves vulnerable by sharing how we feel in verbal form (“I’m sort of feeling low today …”) we can share a meme of a cat crying and our audience instinctively “gets” it – and us. “Because we all live in the same physical world, pictograms are automatically understandable without any additional layers of abstraction needed,” says Bore. “Whether they’re warning signs or smileys, a well-designed pictogram really is worth a thousand words.”
Communicating via visuals also feels good. “Typically, when greeted with a real-life smile, the amygdala in our brain – our emotional processing hub – lights up,” says Tait. “The same is true for receiving a smiley emoji – it helps create a sense of warmth and trust, tapping into our brain’s natural chemistry. Pictures, in general, elicit strong responses from us, compared to words.”
This psychology extends to other visual forms, agrees clinical psychotherapist Geraldine Joaquim. “Much of human communication is emotive – one researcher found that less than 7% is down to actual words. Even something as simple as colour plays on our innate desire to ‘belong’ – stemming back to tribal times when we’d identify through common colours, customs or symbols. It’s why visuals help us connect without even realising.”
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