Whatever it is, make it a story so I understand.

Whatever it is, make it a story so I understand.

Joe Smith | 20/10/2011

The Wiliam team are working on an exciting new website project. It’s a website for a business looking to attract investors. Said business has a unique product and delivers a necessary service. There is a mountain of data, figures, facts, stats that identifies this business as a great investment opportunity.

And that’s the problem … and where Wiliam comes in: that mountain of data is cold and inanimate and needs to be brought to life if investors are going to take the opportunity to heart.

That’s because people like narrative: in the form of stories, images and songs. For tens of thousands of years we’ve used fables, legends, epic poetry, cave paintings, etc to record and convey our common history, thoughts and feelings. We’ve used those devices to issue education and provide moral and safety guidelines, to distract ourselves from our mortal plight, to form relationships and rally troops, and much more besides.

Here’s an example: there’s truckloads of data that explains why human skin should not be exposed at length to the sun but it took a simple narrative jingle and a cartoon bloke called Norm to get us to take the message to heart -  “slip, slop, slap”.

So Wiliam will attack that mountain of data and turn it into a narrative: through story elements, info graphics, sound bites, pull quotes, (and maybe even a jingle if it fits the brief) we’ll turn the numbers into a story that people can, and want to, understand. A story that is alive, that renders those compelling stats understandable and drives a return on our client’s online investment. 

tags: Web Design ,  Web Strategy