Aaron M's Writing with Visuals

Creating and using visuals in your writing is not only really fun to do, but also is a very effective way of getting your message across. There are a number of reasons that people use visuals to assist them in their writing. Visuals can highlight important sections in a report. They can also explain things in our writing. It could also provide further detail about a particular engine design or maybe it could be on a list of directions on how to put together a shelf. They can be anywhere at anytime. They are used all the time in our word. Visuals are also a great way to connect to your audience. When you are addressing a younger crowd, you will want to use more visuals to keep their attention as opposed to older and more mature audiences. These are just a few examples of why visuals are used in our day to day writing.

Designing a visual for your particular writing project can sometimes be a challenge. You have to know quite a number of things about your project before you can begin.
Who am I writing to?
What is the purpose of my project? To illustrate, sell, direct?
Can visuals help me explain a process or illustration in my writing project?
Do I need to make my visuals PowerPoint ready?
These are just a handful of questions that you can ask yourself about visuals and your writing projects. Visuals can be any number of things. It can be a simple icon, an image of something, or a very complex flowchart that lists the organizational structure in any given organization. So when preparing to create a project with visuals, make sure you start out by getting an understanding of the purpose behind your work and if visuals can help you achieve that.

When using visuals, you have to be careful who’s visuals you are using. A majority of people today, will just simply go on the internet and grab a great looking visual off of the world wide web and stick it right in their project. In order to do something like this, you need to ask the owner of the visual’s permission first, and then you have to properly cite it in your project. Copying a visual without citing the source can be the same as plagiarism on many schools and businesses.

So the next time you are writing a project and want to use visuals. Remember to ask yourself, what will be the purpose of my project, what visuals will help my purpose, and am I using the visuals correctly? These simple questions will help you in finding the best way to make your project look great.


Picture Source: http://askabiologist.asu.edu/research/ecosystems/images/ecosystem_types.jpg