In the old days of Facebook — a couple of weeks ago — people would dutifully cut and paste political messages, quotes, aphorisms, etc., into their status updates. Recently I’ve noticed a growing phenomenon that is both ridiculously simple AND effective.
People are simply putting text in the form of pictures. Like this one:
That’s it. Just put words in a box and share. Yet somehow it grabs your attention (in spite of Facebook’s penchant for burying photo posts in the ticker instead of the main feed).
Sometimes people will give them a nice typeface treatment:
Some go a step further. Instead of just typography in a box, it’s a photo of the words in some other form or setting. (Albeit, they may be photoshopped in, but the effect is the same.)
Other times they’ll pair it with a photo. Like this.
Or some other artwork, like this.
This one, of course, has been making the rounds. I thought it was from Grammar Girl, but it’s actually a Facebook site.
Which brings us back to the question: what are these things called? They’re not substantive enough to be infographics. I was thinking Pictoquotes. A friend online suggested Pictocons. Infopics?
Whatever you call them, it seems like an embarrassingly easy way to communicate information more effectively. As in, “who needs professionals?”