12 Interesting Visuals To Refresh Your Memories

by golbguru on June 20, 2007

Finally, here is a post with a few words, but with a lot of material.
Some of you will probably recollect the posts because of the corresponding pictures - for those who don’t, this will be a quick revision. You can either click on the image or on the heading above the image to read what it is about.

Useless aquarium

fishnflush4

Mail-in rebates analogy

rebatehurdles musings

Tomatoes in a bra

tomato in bra

Milk bottles in a carnival

milk bottle pyramid trick explained

Folding dollar bills

dollar-bill-shirt musings

Making right turns

right turns and left turns

Education and financial well-being

education musings

Biogas - energy from waste

Basic biogas generation concept

Speeding ticket probability

probability of getting a speeding ticket

Do you have a plan B?

flowchart2

Latte factor discussion

latte factor

True cost of owning a car

true cost of owing a car

Do you *remember* these images better than the wordy post content? Do images/illustrations make a difference in your perception of the content?

If sufficient readers respond, this might turn out to be an instructive experiment; if not, then let’s just consider this a self-link-love post and move on. :)

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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }

1 TFB 06.20.07 at 8:19 am

Your visuals are great. Do more of these!

2 plonkee 06.20.07 at 8:23 am

I remember the gist of the post from the images. And the images made me smile. And I was considering reading the posts that go with the images I didn’t recognise.

Does that help?

3 Gaming the Credit System 06.20.07 at 9:05 am

Yes, I remember most of these. (I think the ones that I don’t remember are from before I started reading this blog.) Anyway, I really like your visuals. They add a lot to the post. Everybody likes a nice chart to summarize a point succinctly. It’s a cliche, but sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.

4 golbguru 06.20.07 at 10:02 am

TFB, Plonkee, Gaming the Credit System: Thanks for the encouragement. I put them up instead of links after I read this post at Problogger (it’s a guest post by Lorelle VanFossen) about the importance of images/illustrations in posts.

I have a theory that will be tested with this post (probably) - people remember images long after they forget the contents of a post. When they want to recollect the content, it’s the image that first comes to the mind and then the corresponding text is recollected. Also, I think people remember posts with images longer than posts without them.

If you want to go deeper into this; what I am trying to imply is that images act as vectors (pointers) to information in our brains. :)

5 GeekMan 06.20.07 at 10:57 am

I agree about the images being enjoyable and memorable, but I think it has a lot to do with their frequency. I think that if every post had a picture then they would stop being so enjoyable because they’d become the norm and not the exception. Once something becomes the norm it just becomes “noise” and far less memorable. In which case the wordy posts would become more memorable due to their infrequency. I guess what I’m saying is, keep us on our toes by continuing to mix up the posts between words and illustrations.

Remember what Horace Porter said, “Be moderate in everything, including moderation.”

6 ibrahim 06.20.07 at 10:58 am

What may be interesting is just doing a picture blog with little snippets of explanation where needed.

7 golbguru 06.20.07 at 11:02 am

GeekMan: Yep, point taken. Hopefully I am not pushing images too strongly. I forgot to mention in my earlier reply - images can either make or break your blog :) Apparently (according to the Problogger post) irrelevant and persistent images drive away loyal readers. :)

Ibrahim: Hopefully I won’t go to that level - the type you described is called a “photo blog” and personal finance blogs can’t be photo blogs. :)

8 db 06.20.07 at 2:57 pm

Honestly, I wouldn’t even bother to look at the image.

If I saw too much of this sort of thing I’d stop visiting the blog.

9 Yan 06.20.07 at 3:38 pm

I am doing pretty much a photo blog over the past week. Just too many things to show. It seems like my readers like it so far. Or maybe it is something else… :-)

10 Sharon 06.20.07 at 10:48 pm

Your visuals rock Golbguru. It really does get the point across, of course, with the great commentaries and the x marks the spot pointers.

:)

11 Super Saver 06.21.07 at 2:48 am

Golbguru,

Great idea of using the pictures.

The pictures were an excellent and quick reminder of each referenced post, and the important points in the post.

12 Christine 06.21.07 at 9:11 am

I am a visual person, so I love the images. Although I agree, too many in a post become an issue. Love the post about speeding. I sent it to my 2 college age boys.

13 ispf 06.21.07 at 11:23 am

I love the pics on your blog. I think they add a lot of personality… It’s the combination of unique pictures and perspectives on your blog that keeps me coming back.

And to answer the question of your experiment, yeah, the pics do remain in the memory for longer.

I would say just keep doing what you are doing now, and you should be fine for a long long time to come :)

14 minimum wage 06.24.07 at 2:43 pm

I didn’t get the one about education and financial well-being. My financial well-being was high during my last year of high school but went downhill in direct correlation to the furtherance of my education. Today I have a college degree and my financial well-being is close to the level of a street person.

15 Sharon 06.24.07 at 6:39 pm

Minimum Wage, I really get what you are talking about. Life sometimes is really strange. There are a lot of people out thee with great degrees or college education that has financial wellbeings close to the “level of street person.”

I actually have been thinking of upgrading my education in the near future. And this time, I have decided to search for what are going to be considered hot jobs in the next 5 - 10 years.

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