Visual Storytelling: Don’t Show Everything

 

"Dalli Klick" was a legendary television game in Germany that achieved cult status. Part of the popular quiz show Dalli Dalli, hosted by Hans Rosenthal from 1971 to 1986, the game challenged contestants to identify an image from a tiny visible fragment. Piece by piece, more of the picture was revealed until someone recognized the motif and correctly guessed what it was.

A simple concept—but one that delivered tremendous fun for audiences of all ages.

Our ability to complete incomplete images, known as “filling in", is a fundamental aspect of our visual intelligence. We can use our internal visual database to supply missing information and mentally complete pictures—even when the final piece of the puzzle is missing.

The Power of Imagination: Filling In

A commercial produced for a Japanese children's foundation uses the phenomenon of filling in in a deeply moving way. A young boy draws only with black crayons. His parents are distraught. Teachers, doctors, and psychologists cannot explain why the child paints exclusively in black. Then, suddenly, everything begins to make sense—but see for yourself: LINK.

Every visual experience activates photoreceptors in our brains, which in turn stimulate neighboring ganglion cells and receptive fields. This is how visual information is stored and how, over the course of our lives, we build a kind of visual map of the world. This neural framework enables us to rapidly classify and interpret visual stimuli.

Try brainstorming with the help of a cognitive map. Visualize a challenge or problem as a geographic landscape. This visual brainstorming technique encourages you to represent issues and objectives symbolically. Sketch data, facts, topics, obstacles, and opportunities as “countries,” “islands,” “mountains,” or “valleys.” Use varying sizes and colors, create spatial relationships and pathways, and gain a fresh perspective on your challenge through this creative method.

Visual Maps: How We Fill the Gaps

The strength of these learned visual patterns is explained by psychologist Karl R. Gegenfurtner of Justus Liebig University Giessen:

“When we enter a familiar room, we very quickly gain the impression that we have taken it in completely. Visual memory allows us to reconstruct an entire scene from only a limited amount of sensory information, filling in the gaps with content that has already been stored. However, reconstructing a complete image from a few key details can also lead to errors. Significant changes within a scene may go unnoticed or only become apparent after prolonged and careful observation. This phenomenon is known as change blindness. The image of the world that we reconstruct is based largely on assumptions about the nature of that world. Only a small portion of it is actually represented within our visual system.”

What This Reveals About Our Worldview

This insight runs deep. Seeing is far more than a simple stimulus-response mechanism. It is an active process of construction through which we not only perceive the world but also interpret and explain it.

This is what philosopher Martin Heidegger aptly referred to as a “world picture” (Weltbild). Heidegger used the term to describe the web of meanings that we continuously project onto everything we see, creating connections that extend beyond any single image.

Psychologists take this idea one step further. They argue that seeing—and reflecting on what we see—plays a crucial role in shaping our self-awareness and identity. We perceive ourselves through visual experiences: in mirrors, in self-portraits, and, of course, in selfies.

An important fact to remember is that our brains make surprisingly little distinction between reality and representations of reality. Psychologically, we respond to images, photographs, and films in much the same way as we respond to real-life events. Brain scans of someone viewing a frightening or humorous photograph show activation patterns remarkably similar to those of a person actually witnessing the event firsthand. The same regions of the brain light up. Only additional sensory input—hearing, touch, smell, and taste—helps us fully distinguish reality from representation.

Visual stimuli store experiences, emotions, and the stories connected to them. Images have the power to reactivate those emotions and retrieve those stories from our visual memory. That is precisely what makes visual storytelling so compelling.

For more insights, background information, and practical examples of storytelling in marketing and public relations, explore my latest book, Between the Lines – How Smart Brands Use Story to Win Markets and Build Trust, available now in ebook and hardcover editions: https://a.co/d/02umOt7i

This text was written by a human; AI tools were used for translation, spelling, and grammar review. Photo Rishabh Dharmani - Unsplash