Tag: Communication

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Reading List EN

RL #027: Creating Brochures and Flyers ‒ a Useful Addition to the Communication Toolkit?

Waaahh! Next week already we should be on the way. Toulouse is the destination. France. And we are in charge of the exhibition booth. Now, five minutes before departure, project brochures are to be printed. So in this Reading List, we’ll look into the question of whether and how it still makes sense to create flyers and brochures.

Please take with you: Flyers for eternity

The success of the Internet could be seen as having replaced a wide variety of print media over the past few decades. On social media, customers can be approached, informed, and acquired quite easily. At least that’s true for those hip industries that flood our social media feeds: Morning Routine, Home Improvement, Crypto, and Travel. Brochures and flyers that also have a higher environmental footprint ‒ do we still need that?

Flyer from car show on table
Photo by Ejov Igor: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-autosalon-brochure-on-brown-surface-14425192/

Topics that are less lifestyle-oriented or that are sensitive in their content have a much more difficult time in affirmative social media environments dominated by visual content. An application to participate in cancer studies would be an example of this. Or projects that address energy poverty (e.g. EnergyMeasures). Highly specialized audiences also continue to be receptive to analog formats such as brochures and flyers. However, both types of print have real advantages. In this context, the print format of flyers and brochures has concrete advantages. In Forbes magazine in “Paper Beats Digital In Many Ways, According to Neuroscience,” Roger Dooley argues that print formats with little text increase brand recognition much more sustainably than digital counterparts.

As with any communication product, success with brochures and flyers depends on target-group-optimized content, format, and call to action. Special attention should be paid to interoperability. On her blog, author and writing coach Annika Lamer (in German only) elaborates that flyers and brochures act in tandem with websites: namely, in most cases, the interaction that follows the flyer takes place online. Flyers and brochures are a bridge to the website or, even better, a tailored offer on their website.

Giving structure to brochures: from handouts to folded flyers to squares

When developing the flyer, we do not classically start with the text. We start with the structure. Actually, we start with layout and structure, and text. All together. First, they determine the rough scope, then choose the format, and then design the text. Each page in the flyer gets a topic. Proposal for three folds with six pages: a title page, a contact page, three pages for three contents, and one page for extra content. No theme gets two pages. Consistency is key. The very descriptive graphic about this, given here, can be found in Annika Lamer’s blog post.

Brochure division according to Annika Lamer.
Annika Lamer, 2016. Url: https://www.annika-lamer.de/so-entwickeln-sie-einen-starken-flyer/lamer_flyer-aufteilung/

The texts themselves should be short. Short does not mean that everything should be shortened. It means that you limit yourself and present only the most popular or exceptional of their achievements and results. We have written about the importance of brevity in a previous post. You got 8 seconds only!

Things that must be included in the flyer? Logo, publisher (incl. web address), texts structured by crisp headlines and subheadings, images (and or infographics). If you have any, do not forget seals, sponsors, or references, e.g. of legal nature. We reached the design.

Brochure design: from content to images to infographics

Moving on from the target group to the general design. Many people skim-read and discard flyers or brochures in one motion. Flyers and brochures that work with loads of text and photographs disappear even faster in the trash can than brochures with schematic infographics. This is at least, what Terabe et al. argue for in “The Impact of Flyer with Infographics on Public Awareness and Interest to Transportation Project.” Picture Superiority has been around for a long time ‒ we could write about Infographics Superiority in the next Reading List. An exciting topic.

Different brochures on one table
Foto von RODNAE Productions: https://www.pexels.com/de-de/foto/information-daten-flyer-ein-haus-kaufen-8292889/

Good examples and hands-on instructions for creating your brochures and flyers, with and without infographics, abound. At OIKOPLUS, we like to get inspiration, especially when things need to be done quickly. For example, Canva or Envato. For projects and events in the field of art and culture, Visme offers great inspiration. That’s probably how we’ll do it for the next one of our brochures. Fortunately, a week is longer than 5 minutes.

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Reading List EN

RL #023: To the point: presenting scientific content

July and September are conference months in Europe. During the day, the sun is pleasantly high and outdoor and indoor areas can be used without much extra effort. The mood is good, almost exuberant. At most universities, teaching has either just ended or not yet begun. It is holiday time and depending on the place and interest, some add 2-3 days to the conference. There are others who come sooner. Besides the pleasant setting, however, conferences are also those moments in a scientific career when you need to generate attention for yourself and your scientific work. In a highly fluid context, you get to know your closest allies, your co-authors, and future superiors. In order to do this, however, you have to convince them with your ideas. And that means, above all, getting to the point. This is exactly what this reading list is about.

Photo by Mikael Kristenson on Unsplash

Getting to the point: English as a twofold barrier

To get to the point means first of all to leave out everything unnecessary. No details but only what is most important for your argument should be articulated. Synonyms are ‘to say something clearly’, ‘to be frank’, ‘not to hide something’, ‘to be clear’, and ‘to express yourself unambiguously’. Not that easy when much of the communication is in a foreign language. In Nature’s career column, Roey Elnathan 2021 (paywall) called for broad-based mentoring programs for aspiring and experienced scientists who publish in foreign languages. According to Elnathan’s, precision and accuracy cannot be achieved otherwise.

But English is only the current lingua franca of science. In the video podcast Languages in Science by MetodieStrategie, Timothy E.L Douglas explains that we have already experienced Latin, German, and French as scientific languages since the 17th century. He speaks for the European-Western and international science community. Most recently, Douglas says, science has become more linguistically diverse again.

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

Another important point Douglas makes in the podcast concerns the target audience. And here, it seems, native English speakers often find it most difficult to adapt their own language skills to the community. As with writing readable academic texts, knowing your listeners and readers is a prerequisite. They define the framework for the infamous point to which we should bring our argumentation. Complaining at a high level?

I am designing a presentation. So what should be brought to the point?

In short: everything! The introduction, your research question, and, if available, your hypotheses. The methodology. The visual material and your argumentation. No detail that is not needed, no subordinate clause too much. Short sentences delivered at speaking speed, not reading speed, with pauses for breath. Because many present their arguments in combination with text, images, and visualized data, here a reminder: get to the point!

First of all, it should be noted that diagrams, graphs, and also photographs are permissible for communicating knowledge and content within peer groups. At least, that is what Laura Perini argues in Visual Representations and Confirmation (paywall). The images and visual representations that Perini classifies as for the science community are thus unlike the images representing science that the Max Plank Society, for example, offers for sale. They have no point, but aesthetic value? Again, the question of the listeners applies. A picture to trace the history and context, a map to locate, and a graph to show statistical distributions. To keep the latter clear, here are a few meaningful visualizations and the University of York’s DIY Wiki.

Photo by David Pisnoy on Unsplash

Focus on your particular interest: Get feedback, collect ideas and suggestions, forge alliances

Last but not least a tip; a suggestion. After my own first experience on the conference floor, I quickly realized that I sometimes don’t get the kind of feedback I would need. But if your presentation was an argument to the point, then you can expect the same from your listeners. Give them a question to ask. Share what has been on your mind since your last learning and invite them to think along with you. Your own needs should be brought to the point as well. Because only when you return from your conferences with good discussions in your pockets will you find the motivation for preparing for the upcoming conference summer.

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Reading List EN

RL #022: What you don’t know that you should know about energy sharing

With the current environmental and political climate, the media’s occupation with the topic of energy transition has become more prevalent than ever. Although many news outlets succeed in giving a well rounded and balanced debate on the role of governments, private companies and policies, still very little space is given to exercising the thought of citizen-led efforts for autonomous and local energy control. 

Hearing concepts such as sovereign, citizen-led or equal citizen participation within the complex world of energy production can often sound like empty or futuristic phrases, which have no ground in real life. That is understandable, considering the little media coverage citizen-led efforts get, however it is not true. This paper, by students from business management and environmental studies, shines a light on the concept of energy communities, which are based on a collaboration between citizens, governments and businesses for a clean energy transition. Even though these initiatives are not so popularized, they are, as pointed out by Sara Giovanni from Energy Cities a European learning community for future-proof cities, making a great contribution to fight climate change. It is therefore important that the communication and information flow outlets about these organisations are improved and this is what this reading list will be focusing on. 

Turning to the external

Some of the prominent issues within the process of promotion of energy communities is first of the lack of easy access to information, which means a need for an active search, which is difficult without having any prior knowledge. Another problem, as pointed out by Wahlund and Palm from Lund University, is the bias towards a decentralized energy model and an underrepresentation of energy communities (EC’s) within the mainstream media. What follows, as presented by the results of this study from two Universities in the Netherlands, is the lack of trust of the wider public towards EC’s and thus an indifference towards taking an active role in energy transition. 

On the brighter side, however, for those who already have the sprouts of interest towards EC’s there are various sources including this repository from European Federation for Agencies and Regions for Energy and Environment, which is aimed to give an insight into not only the examples but also various publications and updates related to Energy Communities. Another, a more general example of an informative database is the Projects for Public Spaces website, which brings together a wide array of community led projects from all over the world. 

Turning to the internal 

One of the benefits that internal communication within energy communities have is the already existing interest in active participation within energy transition, which acts as a drive to seek out and create new knowledge sharing opportunities. This has resulted, as presented by this research paper from the University of Bologna, in quite a large number of attempts being made in order to create EC’s and improve the communication between them. Many studies, like this one, have also been conducted in order to analyse new methods of knowledge sharing within the energy industry and changes, which can be made to adjust the sector to 21st century standards. 

According to John S. Edwards from Aston University in Birmingham, however, what renewable energy communities still lack is a good grasp on knowledge management and knowledge distribution, which is very well developed in the oil and gas sectors, causing green energy promotion and internal knowledge exchange to lag behind the fossil fuel industry. The acquisition, archiving and use of knowledge within energy communities is, as maintained by William King in his PhD research in Coventry University, much more understood in the commercial branches than within the EC’s, which are still early in their developmental stages. There is additionally, no theoretical framework that would act as a universal manual, which would specify effective knowledge management strategies (including even the language used, glossary of key terms and their applicability to various contexts). 

Energy transition is in many aspects still in its early stages, but through improvement of various elements including turning this niche market into a mainstream process through a more easily accessible media coverage can increase the speed with which current traditional and centralized energy systems are transformed into a community led, collaborative effort.