You need to create stunning visual stories but have no design experience. How can you make it happen?

Before you open any design programs, begin the design process by empathizing with your users and audience to understand their thoughts and feelings. Think through their needs to better understand their diverse perspectives. Are their goals all the same or are they different? Do they all learn the same way? Consider completing user personas, user stories, and user journey exercises. Use those insights to inform your content decisions to better engage with your audience as you build out your visual story.

To create visually stunning stories without design experience, consider using intuitive graphic design tools like Canva or Adobe Spark, which offer user-friendly interfaces and pre-designed templates. Additionally, exploring platforms like Dall-E or DeepArt for AI-generated artwork can provide unique and artistic visuals to enhance your storytelling.

Step away from Canva. Put midjourney on the floor and kick it towards me. Approach a design agency or professional. That's what they do.

I'd start by focusing on the core story you want to tell. If you're a visual person, split a page into 8 boxes and break it down to it's simplest form with a simple icon, visual or headline in each (think Pictionary style). If you're a word lover, just dot point it out until you've got it down to 6-8 simple sentences that explain the flow of the story. Test it on someone in your audience, refine, then go to town in an app/program to bring it to life in your brand style. (To be honest a hand-drawn simple visual story is often enough!) Or give your storyboard to a visual storyteller or designer and they will build and add to your narrative, to really make it sing. This format works really well for multi-tile social stories or presentations.

Creating a visual story is more than just a task for software or AI tools; it requires deep introspection and a lifelong commitment to learning that only a creative individual can bring. Observational skills play a crucial role in this process. Considering the importance of this, I would recommend reaching out to an experienced designer who can provide valuable insights and guidance.

Para criar histórias visuais impressionantes, é crucial dominar a estrutura do storytelling, especialmente os seus três atos: a introdu??o/contexto, o desenvolvimento/conflito e a conclus?o. Na introdu??o, estabelecemos o contexto e apresentamos os personagens ou elementos principais. O desenvolvimento é onde a trama se desenrola, com conflitos e desafios surgindo para os personagens. Por fim, a conclus?o traz o clímax e a resolu??o dos conflitos. Além disso, uma maneira eficaz de garantir consistência visual é utilizar ferramentas de inteligência artificial, como Leonardo ou Midjourney, através de prompts que sigam uma mesma estrutura estética. Isso ajuda a manter a coes?o visual ao longo da história.

Recently, I've explored Midjourney, Leonardo.ai, and SDXL, and the remarkable aspect of these AI tools is their ability to enable people without any design skills to express their ideas verbally, bypassing the need for traditional drawing and designing. For instance, you could request an image like "A woman from southern Egypt, standing on a bridge, overlooking the Nile at sunset, 80s cinematic style." Some of the results might be perfect as they are. Many others serve as an excellent foundation for professional designers to refine and develop, offering a clear starting point that might otherwise be difficult to articulate.Sometimes just experimenting with the prompts makes me better understand what I am looking for in the first place

The execution is useless if the idea is not relevant to your audience. First you need an attention grabbing idea, the kind that makes the audience stop and notice, but in the same time is relevant to the brand. In the coming up with a powerful idea is the effort. For the execution I always recommend to work with a talented designer. The brilliant ones tend to give you stunning executions.

In my experience the new innovative tools powered by AI like Midjourney and Stable diffusion has given us immense power in terms of deciding the visual language and creating moodboards, later google slides works best in our case as it connect the team over cloud.

- Interactive Elements: Incorporate interactive elements like quizzes or polls with tools like Apester or Typeform to increase engagement. - Custom Branding: Utilize tools that allow for custom branding to maintain consistency across your visual stories. - Analytics Integration: Choose tools that offer analytics to track viewer engagement and understand what resonates with your audience. - Mobile Optimization: Ensure the tool produces content that is optimized for mobile viewing, as a significant portion of users consume content on mobile devices.

With all due respect, I think the best practices here are perfunctory, obvious and not the place to start. I so agree with Barry McPhillips! I'll simply add...before you get into the "how" of execution...practice telling your story out loud, even if you're not presenting it live. A good story has an arc - beginning, middle, end. And most people can't absorb more than 3 messages anyway. Get those 3 points down and then flip the script and think about the most surprising, shocking, unusual way you can convey those messages visually. Whatever you do, do not do a boring PowerPoint! PowerPoint is great for thinking, for some things, but there's a reason the term #DeathByPowerPoint is a meme. Maybe sketch your story first. Surprise yourself!

I’ve been a creator for 30+ years and for me execution is secondary to the idea. If the idea is great you do not need a polished visual. Having a well crafted but bad idea never works. Some of the best stuff that gets traction/goes viral isn’t a blockbuster level produced piece. It’s more often than not something that’s raw, handmade using no slick tools at all. If the idea, the story and content are engaging, that’s what’s important.

Agreeing 100% with my brilliant colleague, Julie Anixter, with a caveat that the key word in that guidance is “boring.“ You can do wonderful things in PowerPoint and present them well if you know the tool thoroughly, and provide thoughtfully built deliverables. Many clients and their teams still feel comfortable using, or are required to use, PowerPoint. So it’s about taking that tool and using it creatively. Innovating in the tactical as well as the conceptual. To my mind, it’s vital to give clients things that will live on in new ways that they devise independently. Ensuring they have visuals they can leverage in the tool their organization or leadership (or staff) demands they use helps with that.

Creo que estamos atravesando una crisis de narrativa en nuestra actual historia. Estamos poniendo el éxito de las historias en manos de efectos especiales, recursos de impacto audiovisual e inteligencia artificial. Precisamente en lo que no podemos perder el norte es en la narración, en arrancarle un suspiro a nuestros espectadores porque con la historia encontraron algo que no tenían idea que sabían pero que estaba ahí dentro, en sus mentes, todo el tiempo. Para abrir la puerta de tal inspiración de nuestros espectadores, primero debemos MOVERNOS HACIA LA IMPECABILIDAD DE DEJAR NUESTRO INSIGHT CLARO. Esa claridad narrativa es la que define la identidad de los recursos visuales y no al revés.

They say, if you're attractive, you'll draw attention. An idea will definitely grab attention with a visual appeal. One does not have to be a master at this skill, thanks to the tools, such as, Canva. Using the idea of 'Less is more', and a little attention to details, visual storytelling won't be a task.

- A/B Testing: Implement A/B testing for different elements of your story (e.g., titles, images, calls to action) to see what performs best. - Accessibility Checks: Ensure your visual story is accessible to all audiences, including those with disabilities, by checking color contrast and adding alt text to images. - Multichannel Distribution: Consider how your visual story will be adapted across different platforms to maximize reach and engagement. - Iterative Process: View refinement as an ongoing process, continually seeking ways to enhance storytelling and audience connection.

Try not to re-invent the concepts that have been proven to work with particular visual stories. See what has worked in the past and then adopt elements to your project first before implementation. This way you will have the proper metrics to see how well your stories performed.

Test and modify your visual story to make it memorable. To measure response, ask colleugues, friends, or your target audience. Track views, likes, shares, and comments using analytics. This data and direct feedback enable incremental improvements that boost appeal and effectiveness. Create captivating visual storytelling with clarity of purpose, audience comprehension, the correct tools, and best practices—not design expertise. Use these tips to make your visual storytelling unique and impactful.

In our field, testing and refining your visual story mirrors the precision of a tactical debrief. View feedback as critical intel, each piece honing your narrative's clarity and impact. Consult colleagues and stakeholders, their insights sharpening your message. Employ analytics as strategic tools, not mere metrics, each data point guiding narrative adjustments. This process isn't just about refinement; it's about aligning your story with the precision and decisiveness that define our industry. Here, each visual narrative is a mission, meticulously crafted and executed to achieve its objective with unwavering accuracy.

Let the story that you want to tell become its own character and give it its own style. And then test and revise as much as you can, especially if you are starting out with no design experience. The most effective Insights for visual storytelling can often come from outside your own views and perspective. Once you've refined the initial phase then you can use analytical tools to measure the performance in metrics.

If you have the budget and are just starting a brand or service-based company, definitely hire a designer that speaks to your aesthetic. Make sure they build things for you in a program that you & your team can access later for ongoing content.

If budget permits, enlist a professional designer. Don't do it yourself if you have no design experience. You'll find it hard to cut your own hair if you've never done it before. You'll find it hard to mow your own lawn if you've never done it before. So how do you expect it to be any different when doing your own design if you've never done it before?

Why the hell would you be chosen to do something like this if the visuals are tantamount. Stop fooling around and get a visual designer!!

Stunning? That’s not happening. First thing is you need to seriously lower your expectations to something reasonable like “successful” or “effective”. Then do your best with steps provided here

Hire a designer! Being a successful visual storyteller takes years of education and work experience. It is not something that can be done simply or treated lightly. I have tools in my garage, but I would not attempt to rebuild my car's engine. I would hire a mechanic, who not only has the right tools, and space to work, but the experience to do it right the first time. No online tool or AI service can provide the human aspect that a designer can bring to a project. If you want professional results... Hire a designer!