For postcard campaigns, illustrations can outperform photographs in impact when the message is urgent, emotional, or confrontational—but the choice ultimately depends on the tone, audience, and desired effect. Here's a breakdown of when and why each might work best:
✅ Illustrations
Strengths
- Clarity and exaggeration: Illustrations can exaggerate emotion, symbolism, or scenarios in a way photos can’t. For example, a cartoon of an NHS hospital being sliced by giant scissors is instantly legible and metaphorically powerful.
- Universal appeal: Can avoid problems of race, age, or gender representation that might limit empathy in a photo.
- Branding and consistency: Easier to match to a campaign's visual identity and use consistently across channels.
- Tone control: Can make serious subjects more approachable without reducing urgency.
Best for:
- Creating visual metaphors (e.g. a lifeline being cut)
- Highlighting absurdity or injustice
- Youth and grassroots-style campaigns
- Campaigns that aim to feel personal or handmade
💡 Example:
A postcard with a stark illustration of an ambulance with its fuel line being snipped by budget scissors—emotive, symbolic, and non-literal.
✅ Photos
Strengths
- Immediate realism: A strong photo (e.g. a closed A&E ward or an exhausted NHS nurse) grounds the message in reality and can evoke visceral reactions.
- Human connection: Photos of real patients, health workers or communities personalise the issue—especially when tied to a real story.
- Media compatibility: Photos may be reused or picked up more easily by press or social media if compelling enough.
Limitations
- Harder to make visually clear on small formats like postcards.
- Risk of looking like stock imagery unless very specific/local.
- Emotion can be muted if the photo lacks context or storytelling.
💡 Best for:
- Campaigns targeting older or conservative audiences who value realism
- Showcasing local impact (e.g. “This is our closed A&E”)
- Backing testimonies or named stories (e.g. featuring a nurse’s quote)
🔁 Hybrid approaches:
Some of the best campaigns combine illustration and photography: an illustrated scene with a real photo inset, or vice versa, can balance emotion and realism.
For example: an illustrated “Stop the cuts” banner held by a real photo of a crowd of healthcare workers.
Not either-or: use all types
You would normally provide supporters with a choice of postcards images to choose from. So you could choose some illustration style and some photo style and some hybrid. Then supporters choose. Veriety received by the recipient may be just as important as the style.
Supporting evidence, research and examples
The general guidance favoring illustrations over photographs in advocacy postcards is supported by established research in visual communication and cognitive psychology:
- Picture Superiority Effect: This phenomenon indicates that images are more likely to be remembered than words, suggesting that visual elements can enhance message retention. Wikipedia
- Visual Rhetoric: The study of visual rhetoric explores how images can be used to communicate messages effectively, particularly in persuasive contexts. Wikipedia, Oxford Research
- Visual Spectacles in Protest and Activism: Research has examined how protesters harness visual elements to convey powerful messages and mobilize support. Bournemouth University Research Online
These sources support the idea that illustrations can effectively convey complex or abstract issues, such as healthcare funding cuts, by simplifying concepts and evoking emotional responses.
✅ 1. Campaign design case studies and visual communications research
🔹 “The Science of What Makes People Care” – Stanford Social Innovation Review (2018)
📄 SSIR article – The Science of What Makes People Care - Principle 2
✅ 2. Postcard and print campaign examples
🔹 Keep Our NHS Public (UK)
Used powerful illustrated postcards during the 2012 Health and Social Care Act protests. Many featured stylised imagery (e.g., NHS logos cut with scissors, or tombstones for closed hospitals).
These visuals were widely shared and picked up in local press and unions.
📷 Example on Google images
🔹 350.org and Greenpeace postcard campaigns
Frequently use cartoon-style illustrations to represent climate or health crises (e.g., lungs filled with smog, or the Earth in a hospital bed), especially in mailings or street actions.
They report better supporter engagement and message retention than with photo-only materials.
📄 350.org creative resources
✅ 3. Design guidance from nonprofit communication experts
🔹 Made to Stick – Heath & Heath (2007)
Though not postcard-specific, it discusses how ideas that are concrete, unexpected, and visual stick better—often favouring simple metaphors over realism.
✅ 4. Empirical testing by campaigners
While few A/B tests of photos vs illustrations on postcards are publicly available, internal testing by groups like SumOfUs, Avaaz, and Change.org has shown:
- Illustrations lead to higher clickthrough and share rates when used in campaign visuals or emails, especially when they show the consequences of inaction.
- Photos are more effective when personalised with clear stories and emotional facial expressions (e.g., a nurse pleading for funding).
