Options for Combining Visuals Using the bikablo Technique

Here are six ways you can combine pictograms, figures, and containers to create new “key visuals”. 

This examples are from our Visualization handbook „UZMO – Thinking with your Pen“:

• Adjacency
• Intersecting
• Inclusion
• Merging
• Overlapping
• Substitution

The simplest way to combine images is to portray them adjacent to each other – this allows you, among other things, to play with size proportions.

By allowing two images to intersect, an area of intersection is revealed, which can represent a compromise, an area of agreement, or a commonality.

Inclusion means making the internal characteristics of an object apparent.

In merging, two separate elements are merged into one – an ideal way to create compelling logos (a technique Brandy also loves to use).

If you need to save space and also establish a link between two elements, overlapping is the best technique – and the one we use most often.

By substituting a vocabulary element with a different icon, you can create some very surprising key visuals.

Exercises: How to Compose Visual Vocabulary

If you’d like to test this out, try this little visual presentations exercise: take these two visual vocabulary elements and draw them in different combinations:

Using this playful method, you will likely arrive at results that never would have come up if you had simply deliberately set out to think up a solution.