How to Build a Team Through Visual Design

How do you build a rock solid team when everyone is at home due to a crisis?

Team-building ideas are often physical activities — tried and tested exercises, games, communication techniques, and on-site tools. Right now these activities are a no-go.

But there’s one more approach that’s often overlooked: well-executed visual design. 

HR can rely on visual design to find and keep the best hires. Employers can leverage it to tell the company’s stories and present strong calls to action. Employees can use it to stay up to date.

Here are four strategies to build a stronger team using visual design projects.

You don’t have to wait until things get back to normal to start on this, too — you can start upping your design game for team-building right now! 

Employees dread reporting.

But what if they just reuse beautifully designed report templates and add images and icons alongside the company’s colors, plus avoid long blocks of text?

Approaching regular reports as visual design projects helps everyone avoid monotony and makes it more enjoyable.

For the rest of the team, added visual cues make important points easier to remember, and keeps everyone interested. 

Here’s one example of building a team through design: repurpose Piktochart’s report templates to present information on team-centric topics. 

Voicing out your support and presenting clear metrics goes a long way toward overall team loyalty and unity.

This template also provides an overview of the team’s weekly performance and present areas for improvement.

However, be careful not to provoke unhealthy competition or unrealistic expectations within the team!

Modern posters and flyers aren’t limited to office walls, bulletin boards, and doors!

They employ positive and informative visual storytelling to get their point across, as well as encourage staff to join in or stay motivated.

The classic “Rosie the Riveter” poster: not just for improving wartime morale.

Their purpose hasn’t changed in the time of COVID-19.

They’re a good way to announce company or department-wide matters such as big projects and events, charity and community initiatives, and employee recognitions.

But they can also be adapted to suit our unique circumstances.

Organizing a charity event and want to get your team involved? Use this template and quickly produce a shareable poster.

Because live sports events are on hold, you can edit this poster template to announce e-sports events your employees might like—for example, NBA Live games or Formula 1’s Virtual Grand Prix races.

Or maybe more casual events are a hit in some departments.

For instance, use posters to share brief but critical information about COVID-19 hygiene and protection basics.

Posters inform everyone of all-hands or one-on-one video calls (with a link to the virtual meeting room to be used), announce charity drives or employee-only online workshops for team and personal development, or initiate small online gatherings after work to relax and socialize.

This Piktochart flyer template presents the needed details for employee claims, the date of implementation, and the next steps.

While ‘flyers’ are often interchanged with ‘posters,’ flyers are actually smaller and contain more text.

That’s a callback to its roots in being handed out on the street (as opposed to being posted vertically) and needing to contain as much basic information as possible for recipients. 

Companies can use flyers to provide specifics about their financial assistance programs or mobile counseling and mental health services in their respective areas.

Departments can also make their own flyers to detail new team onboarding and handover checklists.

A new hire may want to remember how they’re supposed to proceed after Step 1, or what happens when they choose to do something else instead.

And some of your team members might be doing exceptionally well in their jobs—and you want their stories to motivate others, too. 

Want to showcase your entire team? This infographic template keeps the look simple and clean so everyone gets their time to shine.

This infographic template highlights select team members and their experiences at the company, which can convince professionals with similar profiles to apply for open positions.

Infographics are your best team-building option for these cases.

They’re informational and great for showing processes and checklists, not to mention scannable and shareable.

Infographics don’t require much explanation; and can be considered the middle ground between comprehensive reports, visual-heavy posters, and text-heavy flyers.

Lastly, if you want to grab people’s attention online, social media graphics are great at doing that job.

Out of our four visual design types, it’s the one with the biggest potential to reach the most people wherever they are online.

Job applicants, as well as clients and customers, will definitely notice well-made social media banners or headers, as well as excellent and relevant visual content.

Custom social media graphics can also be a subtle example of how to build a team.

By putting that growing team front and center on official social media accounts, companies indicate they’re as much about their people as they are about business. 

This Instagram Stories template doubles as a unique job-vacancy notice.

This simple LinkedIn header template for your personal or company page also delivers a call to action.

Your Twitter header can highlight team milestones, office premises, or special occasions such as holiday parties or awards ceremonies.

This collage template lets you choose five photos with different dimensions and orientations for variety.

For team-focused visuals, you can do “behind the scenes” or “a day in the life of…” posts of your colleagues and employees.

Again, this places them in the spotlight and recognizes them for a job well done. 

HR can also use social media posts to announce job vacancies and promotions, company announcements and milestones, or even trivia on individual departments.

Optics matter, especially in uncertain times like today. 

With everything that’s going on, no one has the time or patience to read the fine print.

It’s here that visuals prove their worth—and visual design, its current status as an underused company asset. 

Creating your internal company materials with your employees as the primary audience and beneficiary provides unquantifiable benefits, and serves up good cases on how to build a team.

However, just because you’re building a team from scratch doesn’t mean you have to do the same thing with your design projects!

Piktochart offers a broad selection of templates for reports, posters, flyers, infographics, and social media graphics. 

Just choose your template, add in your text, customize your visuals, and you’re ready to print or share them online!

Ready for your first visual storytelling project? Go to piktochart.com and sign up for an account so you can get started.