SmartDraw Software Announces Support of Visual Grammar to Enable Enterprise-Wide Adoption of Visual Communication

SAN DIEGO, March 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, SmartDraw Software announced support for visual grammar in all of its enterprise solutions. Until now, there has been a lack of standard rules for communicating with visuals in business, which has reduced their effectiveness for widespread communication and, therefore, has hindered broad adoption.

To combat this problem, SmartDraw developed Visual Grammar—a set of simple rules that ensure visuals communicate in a universally understood way. Just as a word processor automatically applies proper formatting to text documents, SmartDraw's visual processor software automatically applies Visual Grammar rules to every visual.

SmartDraw's Visual Grammar rules make enterprise-wide visual communication fast and effective, and are built into the only solution that natively provides all of these benefits:

• Consistently formatted visuals no matter who creates them
• The ability to focus on the message, not formatting
• Significant productivity gains through reduced miscommunication

Visuals let you condense even complex information into a form that is both quickly digestible and shows connections and relationships. Studies show that communicating with visuals is up to six times more effective than communicating with words alone. However, companies risk losing these gains if the visuals they create don't follow a set of generally accepted rules that make them understandable to everyone.

Companies that have adopted SmartDraw's visual processor and visual grammar enterprise-wide have seen significant return on investment, improved communication effectiveness and increased productivity.

SmartDraw Enterprise Customer Profiles

The Two Basic Rules

Years of research from established design and communication disciplines have shown that business visuals, including flowcharts, mind maps and other visuals that involve shapes and lines must follow these two simple rules:

• The Consistency Rule
• The One-Page Rule

Specific Visual Types such as decision trees, organization charts and others can also have their own specific visual grammar rules.

For an overview of Visual Grammar, read the white paper or watch the video.

About SmartDraw Software

SmartDraw Software, LLC helps businesses increase their bottom line by improving communication, refining operations, completing projects on time, and successfully implementing their plans through the everyday use of visual communication. Publisher of SmartDraw VP, the world's first visual processor™, SmartDraw Software enables business professionals to easily and automatically create more than 70 types of common business visuals, including flowcharts, project charts, mind maps, org charts, timelines and more. SmartDraw lets anyone achieve professional-quality results in just minutes. SmartDraw is used by more than half of the Fortune 500, as well as thousands of law firms, police departments, health systems and private enterprises of all sizes. SmartDraw Software, LLC is privately-held, with headquarters in San Diego, California. For more information or to download a free trial of SmartDraw, please visit www.SmartDraw.com.

SOURCE SmartDraw Software, LLC