Images offer meaningful support to a text. However, be aware that text and image elements don’t automatically complement each other. It’s the complete opposite: Images can compromise the meaning of the text, or even impede it. As the psychology of perception proves, due to evolution, we perceive images or image like elements before the text. They support the text depending on how the images are arranged and designed. This has to do with the interaction between our left and right hemispheres. Whilst our speech and analysis centre is located on the left, image processing is dedicated to the right. In this age of information overload, the left side of the brain is constantly burdened. When you target the reader specifically with picture elements on the right side of the brain, this offers enormous potential. Well-designed and arranged image elements increase the chances that one text stands out from the others in a magazine. They also support the central message of the text, making understanding clearer.

With regards to mailings, there is a lot of unsolicited reading material for the recipient, which should, however, not miss its aim intended by the sender. On average only 2% of the words which we read are actually perceived. It takes a maximum of 20 seconds of the reader’s time to decide whether the mail should be moved to junk. Therefore, if you believe in just a few seconds that the mail is beneficial, you will read on. The first eye-catching element helps to influence what will be perceived next. In the interaction between text and image, it is important to indicate the benefits to the reader in the first few seconds. The reader only lingers over an A4 page for just a few seconds and focuses only on 10 stopping points. The brain receives just partial information from the whole mailing. These fragments, however, are enough to form chains of information. After this extremely brief time of consideration, the reader already believes that they know the complete content of the mailing. On this basis, the reader decides to read on. Within the first 20 seconds, only about 50% of all mailings survive the first wave of being thrown into the junk.

If you want to increase the success rate of your marketing and PR text, you should always choose simple and topic related picture elements. Diagrams, sketches, tables, headlines, etc. serve as images or image like elements, which the reader perceives well ahead of the text itself. With the help of pictures you should point out the benefits of your products and services to the reader at an early stage. Even content of complex passages of text is conveyed extremely efficiently through info graphics. These types of picture elements support the text in a clear, precise, and vivid way.

Even if in principle a picture is worth a thousand words, the key to success doesn’t lie simply in using an image. It always depends on the significance of the content, the appealing design, and the strategic positioning of the picture in the text.