A picture is worth a thousand words

by Matthew Stibbe on February 11, 2006

I am the writer-in-chief of Articulate Marketing so I am the last person in the world to run down the value of a beautiful paragraph or a well-turned sentence, but sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. For example:

  • The graphs in The Economist manage to communicate number-based information much more intuitively than words. Compare: “Its equity index surged by more than 60% last year, after a 40% rise in 2004″ with the accompanying graph: Economist graph
  • Dilbert tells us more about the absurdities of corporate life than any written satire.Dilbert Cartoon
  • Then, of course, there’s Edward Tufte and his diagrams which are more like works of art than anything else.
    Edward Tufte Book Cover
  • In a similar vein, I decided that Articulate needed to be able to offer diagrams, photos, cartoons and illustrations to go with our written work. One of the first results was this computer-game style ‘before and after’ picture to explain the benefits of hosted Microsoft Exchange Server.Hosted Microsoft Exchange Cartoon
    (Click to see the full image)
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