Power of Images

Larry Gonick, creator of the Cartoon History / Cartoon Guide explanatory comic books, discussed the value of image in narrative this morning.

“Image is not about making a page pretty,” he said. “The images should serve narrative ends.” He disparaged the idea that a cartoon figure pointing to the most important equation on a page served any useful purpose.

This message could—should—have strong consequences for the presentation of science online. Gonick pointed out that the most visually salient thing on one of the web pages in a previous presentation was one of the ads. Which should not be the case.

“We’re in the business of capturing readers’ eyeballs,” he said.

Gonick uses human figures in his comic book illustrations to drive points home. He also shamelessly anthropomorphizes. It’s intuitively obvious that putting people into images makes them easier to relate to. But there’s probably a deeper neurological reason for this.

Visual cortex dwarfs other sensory processing regions; we’re visual creatures. And significant parts of that processing structure are devoted to understanding human / biological motion and human facial expressions. Adding lifelike figures to a graphic serves two purposes: It makes the image “pop” and it gives a reader’s brain another handle on a difficult concept.