Stunning Visuals for your Next Crowdfunding Campaign With Tips from Indiegogo

Indiegogo is where makers and entrepreneurs can bring their ideas to market. Each day, their dedicated team helps individuals, groups, and nonprofits raise money online to make their projects a reality through the power of crowdfunding.

Indiegogo’s mission is to empower people to unite around ideas that matter and together make those ideas come to life. With the help of a thriving community, Indiegogo is redefining entrepreneurship – shifting it from being a privilege to a right. The team believes every inventive idea should have its shot, and every creative entrepreneur should have their moment.

There are a few parallels between Indiegogo and Piktochart. Our team’s belief that anyone can design something beautiful has empowered our 5.5 million users to create something remarkable when some never thought they could. We believe the ability to visually tell a story should be accessible to everyone who has a message to share.

Indiegogo’s Senior Director of Social Innovation, Breanna DiGiammarino, is a fan of Indiegogo campaigners using creative images to help supporters digest important information. When we saw her recent tweet, it got us thinking here at Piktochart.

Piktochart offers professional visuals to create presentations, infographics, posters, reports, and more. To create professional-looking graphics, sign up for free and customize a template. Add icons, illustrations, charts, and images. Get started now.

Including images betw/ campaign sections makes the page easier to read. Check out @piktochart, @Venngage, @fotoflexer or @pixlr!

— Breanna DiGiammarino (@gogobre) March 22, 2016

What if we worked alongside the Indiegogo team to create an amazing template for any crowdfunding campaigner to use in their next campaign?

Not all crowdfunding campaigners are design-savvy, and much of their focus is on their cause, so having a simple template for them to use to communicate their message could be a huge timesaver for them.

The Power of Visual Storytelling

“Effective visual storytelling is not only key for crowdfunding success – it’s fairly critical for any piece of online content to really resonate,” said Rachel Allen, Campaign Strategy Manager at Indiegogo.

Rachel’s role at Indiegogo is to lead a team of six strategists who work closely with Technology, Creative, and Social Impact campaigns to coach those campaigns to success.

“Our team works together to gather all of the best insights that go into making great campaigns and translate those insights into education and product improvements,” she explained. “I started at Indiegogo as our first Design and Technology Strategist, and in that role, I worked with hundreds of campaigners to help craft their story, perk structure, and outreach strategy.

“My favorite part of my current role is that I get to think about crowdfunding strategy for a wide range of projects – not just technology, but also creative and social impact campaigns. Through working with our talented strategist team, I’m constantly blown away by their creativity and passion for our customers. And of course, it’s always fun to be up on the latest and greatest innovations in crowdfunding.”

Rachel said she always tells crowdfunding campaigners that when someone looks at your campaign, you only have a matter of seconds to make an impression.

“The best way to make a strong first impression is through compelling visual design – a photograph of someone using your innovative technology or a colorful infographic showing the impact of your cause can often convey more in a quick glance than the minutes it would take to explain the idea in words,” she said.

The Indiegogo team has found that innovative visuals are critical to a campaign’s success. In fact, campaigns with a pitch video raise 4 times more than campaigns without one! The team infers that if video is that powerful, so are other forms of visual design like high quality photos, images, and infographics.

Rachel believes strong visual storytelling is also very important in terms of establishing trust. When campaigners create a well-designed page with clear subject headings, consistent spacing, and informative graphics, she finds they can immediately inspire trust in a first-time viewer.

“It shows that you put in the time and care necessary to create a truly great project,” said Rachel. “Incorporating photos of team members or other people involved in your project can also help backers relate to what you’re doing in a more personal way.”

Our New Crowdfunding Campaign Template

So, if well-designed infographics, images, videos, and other visuals are important for campaign success, why don’t more crowdfunders use them?

“The challenge for campaigners is the difficulty of filling in a blank sheet of paper,” explained Rachel. “Many campaigners know that they need to have compelling images to be successful, but they don’t know what kind of images to include and where they might go on the page.”

That’s where our amazing Piktochart team comes in!

We have a team of 5 designers here at Piktochart, and for work on this collaboration, Maxi Albella enthusiastically volunteered to head up the design.

“This is the first time I’ve worked on a template for crowdfunders,” he said. “It was pretty interesting to learn about what we can do and how we can help users to create a visual so they can showcase their new product and have a better reach.”

This template was unique and special for our team. We included 10 sections with images, charts, and icons. This was based on the feedback from the experienced Indiegogo team about what works best for campaigns they have seen over the years. Thanks to the valuable feedback from Rachel and her team at Indiegogo, Maxi designed this new crowdfunding template. [try it out here!]

“It was a challenge to create so many sections,” said Maxi. “I think it will be great for campaigners to have several options  when they use this template. They can delete or duplicate all of the sections to really customize the template to help them tell their story visually.”

Rachel said she is proud that this new infographic template is both useful and educational.

“I’m particularly excited that we are offering folks the ability to make timelines, charts, and icon-oriented graphics, which are typically a heavy lift for campaigners to make on their own,” she said. “From working closely with campaigns and A/B testing different landing pages, I’ve seen the real-time changes in results that come from changing a page’s visual design.”

“Piktochart’s Indiegogo template is based on visual templates that we know have worked well in the past for other campaigns. Piktochart’s template will make creating a campaign much easier and provide much needed help with how to structure and format campaign stories.”

Throughout the design process, Maxi decided to make two important changes in the template. The team at Indiegogo shared their real-world experience with us, which led our team to take a walk in the shoes of campaigners in order to see how we can make their visual storytelling process easier and, in the end, come away with an amazing design to share with their potential backers.

“The first change was to introduce a full sized image and to include room for a written description below,” explained Maxi. “Crowdfunders can use this section to introduce a powerful picture of the product to their audience. It’s eye-catching and puts the product front and center. The second change was thanks to valuable feedback from the Indiegogo team. Thanks to Rachel, we decided to incorporate a section with a pie chart so campaigners can show some data to the audience.”

In the end, Maxi said this was one of his favorite design collaborations.

“Indiegogo is a well-known company, and their team helps people transform an idea into reality,” he said. “It is a pleasure to work alongside companies like this. It feels good to know this template will help people every day. Indiegogo’s team was very collaborative and kind. They provided us with useful feedback to make the design the best it can be for campaigners across the world.”

Rachel said she has used Piktochart many times for presentations and other educational blog posts. She was familiar with our app and had ideas based on her own use of the product.

“It’s such a great tool and easy for anyone to create something that has a professional look and feel without needing special training,” said Rachel. “What I learned is that it’s super easy to work with the Piktochart team to get these templates made, and I’m excited to see what people do with them.”

Want to give this template a try? Sign up for free to get unlimited access!

Inspiration from 3 Indiegogo Campaigners

To help inspire your creation, we asked Rachel to share her team’s favorite visual storytelling examples from past Indiegogo campaigns.

“There are a few campaigns that we use again and again as examples of excellent visual design,” she said.

The Core, a compact wireless speaker

Rachel said the Indiegogo team likes this campaign as an example of strong overall story structure:

• the page leads with a short product description
• a “hero” image
• quotations from the press
• touches on all of the benefits and features in a concise and well-balanced way.

“The Core also has a great variety of product photography, from close-ups of the speaker’s texture and button interface to medium shots of what it looks like in an apartment space, which is helpful for providing backers with the context needed to understand the The Core’s size, look and feel,” she noted.

Cuddle & Kind, handknit dolls made by Peruvian artists

Rachel likes this campaign because it shows how campaign owners can use both images and infographics to illustrate the scope and impact of their project.

“Cuddle & Kind are handknit dolls made by Peruvian artisans, and part of each contribution goes towards providing meals for hungry children,” said Rachel. “The team uses the top of their campaign page to display a graphic that introduces all of the dolls with pictures, names and quotes. They also include infographics with different font sizes and color for emphasis to show how the dolls are made. Showing both product photos with infographics really helps us understand both the product and its impact in a matter of seconds.”

Luna, a lamp that looks like the moon

Rachel said this campaign is a great example of how product photos that evoke strong emotions are sometimes all you need.

“This campaign is for a lamp that looks like the moon, and their photos which include close-ups of tiny astronauts, a woman reading alone in her apartment, and a child playing in his room really showcase a sense of wonder and romance that fits perfectly with the product,” she said.

We’d love to hear what you think of this new template. Come take a look! Have you crowdfunded before? What was the visual communication process like for you? What did we get right in this template? And what do you think is missing?

Special thanks to the entire team at Indiegogo for guiding us along in the process of this template creation!

With Piktochart, you can create professional-looking visuals without any designing experience. You can also collaborate with a team to save rounds of editing, organize all visuals in a folder and customize using brand assets. Get started for free.