A lot of my communication with colleagues is through diagrams. A well made diagram can convey a lot of useful information that is difficult to get across in text.
One of the cool things about diagrams is that you can use them to subtly express things that are hard to say in words. Your choice of font, of color, how you group things or align them, a judicious use of arrows, all of these add to your story.
It’s not just that you use diagrams to show all the parts of whatever you are talking about. You are also using them to show which relationships are really important, and to get across the proper sense of hierarchy and flow.
It’s still amazing to me that in school they don’t teach you how to make good diagrams. Some people manage to pick it up on their own, and it’s a shame that those people need to be largely self-taught.
Why don’t we have proper diagram-creation literacy in our education system? I don’t have a good answer to that question. Do you?
The concept of adding illustrations to written prose is something that (at least in my experience) was never taught in school. In actual professional work, I find adding diagrams, photographs, etc. is most always at least half the effort of creating any useful document. Often it’s a major portion of the work.
The process of adding figures and photos to a document and getting the layout correct is often fiddly and challenging. I’ve had to climb that particular learning curve at least half a dozen times for various document creation systems (including scissors and glue).
Document layout, typography and illustration are important communication skills. Spending even a few weeks on the topic would give most college students an edge.