The Information Design Handbook

There’s a lovely new book that just came out called The Information Design Handbook by Jenn and Ken Visocky O’Grady. it is similar to mine but they focus on the principles of information design (their book is square too which is cool!)

Most of the content in the book can apply to slide design. Here are some that stood out as being readily applicable to presentations:

Grouping is a design principle that wasn’t covered in my book, but it’s a good one. When you arrange information, their proximity and placement lead the viewer to believe they belong together. Meaning can dramatically change the context of content. In the example to the left, our emotional response to the dog image changes dramatically when it is placed with an image of a young family or converted to grayscale and paired with a photograph of a cage.

They also referenced a fascinating study on the ClearviewHwy type design project. The objective of the study was to create a font used in freeway signs that increased the distance of legibility. The goal was to improve safety and increase the distance of visibility for the visually impaired. This is important as the average age gets older every year. So, if my premise is true that slides are like road signs, looks like sans serif has won again!

A nice nod to Richard Saul Wurman’s LATCH theory of organization is a must-have in a book like this. I covered it in an earlier post.

Presenting at the Apple store was surreal.

There was a nice enthusiastic crowd which included folks from O’Reilly, some family, some TEDsters, Tony Zander (who took the photos for me) and Bert Decker and his wife Dru. Bert did a great blog post on the power of Twitter for this event. He used Flip Video to capture the event. I think I need one of these. I tie my Twitter into my Facebook status so I only have to update one place. I’m not sure what happened in the last two days but I’ve had over 30 Twitter invites. I can’t seem to find the blog or article that pointed this way but it’s a great way to see immediate bursts of blog and press attention. It might have been Garr’s tweet that pointed to Bert’s blog post.

Getting into the Apple store is a huge milestone for me. Almost all the books in the store are on how to use applications so mine really stands out. Look how lovely slide:ology looks on their shelves:

I won huge Mom points with my 18-year old son who put the Apple Store announcement on his Facebook page. He’s the one who talked me into buying a Mac years ago by telling me, “If you carry a Mac instead of a PC, you’ll look 15 pounds lighter.” That’s all I needed for a sales pitch.

In other news, they gave slide:ology away at the Convergence Conference last week in addition to the TED book club which is pretty cool.

There are two more speaking engagements in the next two weeks. Ryan Orcutt and I will be presenting at Carnegie Mellon University. We’ll be working on Wednesday with the design grad students and critiquing the work they’re doing for the AIGA Aspen Design Challenge. After that, we hold a workshop on diagrams and data and than Thursday evening there’ll be a public lecture which you’re all invited to.

After that, I’ll visit my Mom and sister in Hattiesburg, MS and then head up to NYC to speak at Columbia Business School at NYU. That presentation is from 12:30 to 2pm at Uris Hall.

After that little whirlwind, the family is coming to meet me in NYC and we plan to watch the Thanksgiving day parade, eat Thanksgiving dinner at Tavern on the Green, see an opera and Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. It just doesn’t get better than that!

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image by flickr user stefan friedle

It was the only graphic in the entire presentation.

I impulsively reached for the delete key, even though we were just reviewing the deck. He stopped me and said, “What’s wrong with it?”

Hmmm.

Let me say first that I have nothing but the deepest respect for this client. And because I’ve known him for years, I felt I could say to him,

“Dude, it’s horrible.”

He suggested we come back to it later, and when he noticed that I started gagging every time we passed this particular slide, he relented. I clicked on the offending image and brought my finger down hard on the delete key. (Very satisfying.)

I’m afraid there’s no single rule I can give you with regards to choosing illustrations for your presentation. I can tell you that this particular one is probably not a good choice. And I can tell you that if you click “Insert clip art” in PowerPoint, you’re probably not going to get a very good one.

Remember how stores used to sell CDs full of “15,000 pieces of clip art”? Well, there was a reason it only cost you twenty bucks.

More importantly, clip art has gone far beyond the realm of “tired cliché”. Clip art achieved cliché status during the Clinton Administration. And most of your colleagues gave it up years ago.

You can, too. Let the clip art library rest in peace.

First there’s everyone’s favorite:

PresentationZen by Garr Reynolds

This book is in the #3 spot of all Business books. The book was beautifully written and designed by Garr himself. It covers how to prepare, design, and deliver a presentation. It ties in principles of simplicity and clarity and shows tons of examples of well-developed and designed presentations. Garr carries a special place in my heart because he’s become a great friend and is the one who talked me into writing my book and I’m glad he did! The intro by Guy Kawasaki summarizes the book best…

Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam

This book plays a significant role in opening up the eyes of the business community towards visual thinking. His S.Q.V.I.Δ. acronym is my favorite concept in the book. He developed taxonomy for problem solving in pictures. I met him last year at the VizThink conference in San Francisco. Very smart AND nice guy, check out his BNET video, it gives a good flavor of the book.

Run out and get these books! They are a permanent part of my collection!

We’ve all sat through it a million times.
Most of us outright ignore it.

We tune it out, turn on our iPod, and start perusing the aisles of the Sky Mall. Some people even spark up conversations while it’s happening.

Can you imagine a presentation less engaging than the airplane safety announcement?

The audience members (passengers) have completely disconnected from this presentation almost as soon as it starts, and some sleep right through it.

The presenters (flight attendants) performing the famous “seatbelt skit” put about as much effort into it as the person on the loudspeaker puts into reading the narrative.

The information contained in this presentation is more important than most of the presentations you’ll ever see. We are talking about people’s lives here. And yet, the script is usually boring, the visuals weak or nonexistent, and the delivery downright terrible. This is not good.

It’s also something I didn’t really consider until September 4, 2008.

That morning I boarded a Virgin America flight to San Diego, unprepared for the surprise waiting for me at seat 5E. It certainly wasn’t the flat panel display embedded into the seat (I specifically picked Virgin to try out their cool in-flight entertainment system). The real surprise was how they used that system to deliver a first class pre-flight presentation.

Prior to takeoff, the display caught my eye when it lit up with a red glow. The crew chief stood in the aisle, introduced himself, and politely asked if we would direct our attention to the displays in front of us. Everyone did.

Almost immediately, I knew this safety announcement was going to be different. The characters had style and grit. The transitions were smooth and innovative. The voice talent was sarcastic and conversational. It held my attention the entire time. And it wasn’t just me; the entire plane was silent. People were engaged.

Finally someone has given the airline safety announcement the respect it deserves.

And they’ve given us two important lessons:

Lesson one: Take cues from your audience. How many times are you going to give that same presentation before you do something about the people who tune out, shut down, or literally fall asleep while you talk?

Lesson two: If you find your passengers reaching for oxygen masks during your next presentation, wake them up with some style, some grit, and maybe even a little sarcasm.

Put another way? Dare to be different.

In many ways, cartoons are the ultimate visual metaphors. Using hardly any words, a good cartoon can convey humor, emotion, and complex information about a scenario, at a single glance.

Copyright 2008 Daryl Cagle - All Rights Reserved. www.caglepost.com

Here’s one I thought had genius in its simplicity and clarity of meaning.

No words are used but the meaning of the cartoon is clear to anyone who’s ever played a game of tic-tac-toe: Obama is going to win.

Now picture this version:

Obama holding a sign that says “Winner” and McCain standing next to him holding a sign that says “Loser.” The meaning is the same but it seems stupid and uninteresting when presented in that way. What’s the difference?

Instead of simply stating the facts in an obvious way, the illustrator used a visual metaphor.

What’s a visual metaphor?

Like a verbal metaphor, it tells a story. It compares one subject to another in an indirect way. We gain greater insight into the primary subject because attributes of the secondary subject are assigned to it.

Visual metaphors work the same way. Typically, two different subjects are combined into a single image, thus creating a new meaning and giving us greater insight into the original subject.

We must first comprehend each subject separately before we are able to derive a new meaning from them when they are combined. This is why it is important to chose images that are unambiguous in their meaning and have a clear and established cultural symbolism.

In this case we recognize McCain and Obama (primary subject) and we know they are engaged in an election contest. We also recognize a game of tic-tac-toe (secondary subject) and quickly assess that McCain has no way to win. Discovering the new meaning is gratifying for us as viewers. It engages us in the learning process and makes the information more compelling.

Another reason this cartoon is effective is that as humans, we are constantly drawing conclusions and projecting outcomes. Picture the tic-tac-toe cartoon with all the spots filled in and Obama with three-in-a-row win. Is seems flat and dull and pointless, doesn’t it? Again, the meaning is the same but the experience is a lot less satisfying because there is no narrative and no conclusion to be drawn.

What about this cartoon?

Copyright 2008 Wright - All Rights Reserved. www.caglepost.com

This example demonstrates the energy created by incorporating narrative and by building expectation.  Would this have been as powerful if the cartoon was drawn showing the scene 10 seconds later, when the piano had already dropped? Of course not. The meaning, that the US economy threatens both campaigns remains the same, but the tension and excitement is gone. When we look at this cartoon we see a scenario “in progress” which has more energy than one which is resolved and has already come to an end.

Food for thought:

• How can you use visual metaphors more effectively in your communication?
• Are you spelling everything out for your audience and depriving them of the joy of discovery?
• Do your images and data presentation show the piano as about to drop… or already fallen?
• Do you build tension into your images (and thus inject energy and expectation) or do you show everything resolved?
• How can you give your audience enough information to help them draw the right conclusion for themselves without shoving it down their throats?

(This, by the way, is the secret of successful fiction writers. They tantalize you with hints to get you guessing at how the book ends. Then they give you the ending you want but in a way you didn’t expect. The book is satisfying because you and the author went on a journey together and arrived at the same destination.)

Do you set your audience up to track with you and then reward them with unforgettable “Aha” moments?

Irrespective of who you voted for, our new president and every member of Congress will have to face this issue, whether they like it or not.  Yes, I know.  This doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with exciting communication design, but don’t hit the snooze button just yet!

This remarkable, non-partisan documentary is called I.O.U.S.A and has the best info graphics I’ve ever seen on this subject.  Good news for those of you who missed it when it first came out in August, its second release in theatres starts Oct 31, just in time to scare you spitless.

Being forced to watch two hours of facts and figures on our national deficit sounds like the sort of inhuman torture an IRS operative might use to extract a confession from you, admitting you fudged on your travel expenses…

But far from being a rigor-mortis-inducing-snore-fest, surprisingly, this movie delivers heaps of compelling information in an emotionally engaging way.   In fact, the best part of the movie is not the live-action segments but the outstanding motion graphics, by designer Brian Oakes, explaining the facts and figures.

Let’s take a look at what makes this movie a case-study in outstanding info graphics.

Information graphic designed by Brian Oakes, I.O.U.S.A., 2008

Matching the design to the medium. The design had to look good projected in a movie theater, so the background couldn’t be sterile but it also couldn’t be so busy that it detracted from the information being presented.  Oakes chose a tan background with hairline vertical white lines.  He also darkened the outer edges which made it look like an old-time movie. The effect is rich, without being cluttered and creates a vintage feel which matched the money theme he used throughout.

Oakes’ animations have a big, cinematic feel despite the fact that what he’s essentially showing us are  pie charts and line graphs.  One of the ways he achieves this is by zooming in and out in a way that doesn’t feel gimmicky but actually helps tell the story.  If you want ideas on how to use motion to make data easier to understand, then this movie is a must-see!

Matching the design to the data. The sheer volume of data (3 binders’ worth) and the need for accuracy and simplicity, plus the fact that you can’t just trot out chart after chart in a movie, required carefully thought out solutions.  Oakes created some memorable new visual metaphors for his story but also relied on tried-and-true data displays, like bar graphs.

Information graphic designed by Brian Oakes, I.O.U.S.A., 2008

Telling a visual story. A story has a beginning, a middle and an end. We all know that on the macro level, the best presentations naturally follow this rhythm, but what about applying that approach at the micro level, to charts and graphs? Stories also have cause and effect. Oakes’ motion graphics tell dozens of mini stories with each sequence. Watch the movie for some great ideas on how to “humanize” info graphics and turn them into a narrative.

Creative use of brand elements. The “brand” for this movie is US currency. Oakes used a dollar bill and a penny as his source of inspiration for the look and feel of the movie and also as actual brand elements. In one animation, a penny rolls up and down along a timeline showing the amount national debt. In another clever sequence on federal oversight, he animates the signature of the treasury secretary as it appears on a dollar bill. Watch a short clip with a few sequences.

Even the movie poster has a lot to teach us about visual story telling. We immediately understand what’s happening, without having to be told. The White House (i.e. American government) is in financial trouble! The stormy sky and boarded up windows are great dramatic touches.

I hope you’ll get to see this “scary” movie.

Happy Halloween!

Watch the Movie Trailer

Food for thought:

• How does the background you’re choosing perform in the medium the presentation will be viewed in?
• Do your animations feel “trapped in a slide” or do they have a bigger, cinematic feeling?
• Is there a simple but meaningful visual metaphor you could use as a theme?
• Are you using movement and animation in a meaningful way to display the information in your charts, graphs, lists and timelines?
• Is there a way you could combine images with data on graphs or charts, without getting cluttered?
• Can you make your audience feel like they’re experiencing a story when they view your charts and graphs, instead of the inevitable “data blob,” because you display information in a narrative that has a beginning, a middle, an end and within this sequence you show cause and effect?

She even tried to make a 2×2 display of them thinking that if there were more of them, that’d make it better. This close-up shot still doesn’t compete with signs in the background over 50 yards away.

What went wrong:

• Font: The fonts are too narrow and ornate. Look at the small “a” for example. The small opening of the “a” makes it hard to process the letters as you speed by. The “c” in City Council ranges between thick and thin strokes.
• Background: The background color is too mid-tone. It needed to be either very dark or very light and had a bold, contrasting font on it. What are those swooshes there? And what value do they add? The dark and teal blue look like they make a wave. Why?
• Photo: I think she’s an attractive gal but does her picture need to be on the poster? How many votes did that gain? Am I supposed to recognize her when I go to Safeway? It took up valuable space that was needed for her name.

If I had to pick my candidate based on which one made the strongest visual impression on me, she’d lose. But I’m not that shallow; she helped put in the Stevens Creek Trail by my house so…

Our first night in Toronto, we awoke at 2AM, to a fire alarm. The exit signs at this hotel are a major failure in information design. Fortunately there were no flames.

The Toronto Meetup Was a Hit

So, I had my first social networking phenomenon in Toronto. I twittered and blogged that I’d be in Toronto at Second Cup on Wednesday night and the coolest group of folks came out for a fascinating discussion on life values, passions, politics, presentations, communication, and paying it forward.