Your Deck is Boring

Dear Full-Stack Marketer,

If you’re still trying to explain your ideas with endless paragraphs of text, I have bad news: your audience’s brain has already scrolled away. Canva’s State of Visual Communication in 2025 proves what we all suspected but were too polite to say out loud: visuals win, text struggles, and biology is not on your side.

Let’s dig into the numbers, the gaps, and the absurdity of how teams still try to work against their own brains.

Your brain is a visual junkie

High quality visuals encode memory 74% faster than text. Seventy-four! If visuals were a drug, they’d be banned from the Olympics. And yet, 20% of organizations are still text-first. That’s like running Netflix with subtitles only and no shows.

And here’s where it gets interesting: the world outside the office has already figured this out. TikTok has over 1.5 billion monthly users, and the average viewer spends almost 95 minutes a day on it (my screen time is above average, as any Marketer’s screen time is). Why? Because video is snackable, memorable, and visual-first. It’s literally the same principle Canva’s report proves in a business setting: visuals stick, text slides off.

It’s not just TikTok either. Video formats now dominate every platform. Reels, Shorts, Stories. They’re not trends, they’re proof that people process and retain information visually. If your company is still hiding behind endless text docs, you’re not just behind the curve, you’re competing with an audience whose attention span has been rewired by visuals.

Business leaders admit it too: 88% say visual fluency is a must-have skill for leadership roles. If you can’t present, simplify, or explain with visuals, your career path might look like a loading spinner, buffering forever while your more visual peers race ahead…

Visuals are more than “aesthetics”

Two thirds of companies report clearer and more efficient communication when they adopt visuals. 61% say it strengthens brand cohesion. Another 61% say it sharpens differentiation. Translation: visuals are not decoration, they’re infrastructure.

Think of visuals as the Wi-Fi of business communication. If it’s slow, unclear, or patchy, everything falls apart.

The Gen Z Factor

Here’s where things get spicy. Gen Z is the first generation truly fluent in visual language and confident with AI. 90% say they do their best work visually. 87% see visual fluency as critical to future-proofing their careers.

And I can tell you this firsthand: I’m a Gen Z professional. My entire career has been built on blending visuals, storytelling, and digital tools. Visual-first thinking isn’t a “nice to have” for me. It’s literally how I’ve accelerated my growth, connected with audiences, and delivered results faster than teams twice my size.

But here’s the kicker: 93% of my peers say outdated tools and fragmented workflows are slowing them down. I’ve felt that too, having to use PowerPoint when Figma Slides integrates with the brand’s design system and reduces work hours. Imagine hiring Formula 1 drivers and asking them to race with tricycles.

That’s what’s happening in most companies: they expect Gen Z to move fast, but they give us systems that make us crawl.

Leaders are secretly begging for help

Leaders confess their creative blockers loud and clear:

• 41% want freedom to experiment with AI-powered tools

• 41% want better collaboration across teams

• 38% want dedicated time for ideation

• 36% just want simpler approval workflows

That last one hits hard. If your approval process is slower than your Wi-Fi on an airplane, no amount of creativity will save you.

The AI twist: Human creativity still rules

Gen Z doesn’t fear AI. They want to lead with it. 87% believe the future of creativity means humans and AI working together. And they’re right. AI can accelerate, scale, and amplify, but the spark stays human.

Already 95% feel confident creating presentations and 94% feel confident designing graphics. Add AI to that, and you don’t just get speed, you get a turbo-charged creative department that doesn’t complain about coffee.

The chaos of 8.7 tools

Teams are juggling an average of 8.7 tools per week just to get visual work out the door. No wonder leaders bypass IT (82% admit it) and creatives sneak in unapproved tools (85%). That’s not innovation, that’s desperation.

Companies don’t need more tools. They need fewer, better, smarter ones. Simplicity is the real productivity hack.

The bottom line

Visual communication is no longer optional. It’s essential. It impacts memory, efficiency, and brand power. Neuroscience, statistics, and entire generations are aligned on this. The only people not aligned? The organizations still drowning in outdated workflows and twelve-tool chaos.

The opportunity is here:

• Consolidate your tools.

• Make visual fluency part of career progression.

• Empower Gen Z instead of slowing them down.

• And above all, stop pretending words alone can win the war for attention.

Because attention is visual. Growth is visual. And the future of work? You guessed it — visual.