I love The NY Times and their graphics department, but I do have to agree with Gothamist on this one, that someone kind of fell down on the job on trying to describe the recent JP Morgan trade debacle.
Here’s The NY Times’s attempt at graphic simplification:
And then here’s Gothamist’s awesome and bitchy take down analysis of The NY Times.
Sorry, but graphs like these just give me a headache.
I’m all for creative data design, but by the third triangle graph in this article, I was begging for a couple of overly beveled, badly colored Excel pie charts…
So we were just given as a gift the most amazing blender I’ve ever seen. It’s called a Blendtec, and these guys are serious not just about blending, but industrial and product design. Seriously, take a look at the product video on their home page.
One of the things that sets this blender apart from others is that there are pre-programmed functions that combine different speeds with different times. In other words, the Blendtec people have decided that the best way to crush ice is to do it at a certain speed for 15 seconds, then a higher speed for 10 seconds, then back to the original speed for another 10 seconds. And this is what the pre-programmed “Crush Ice” setting does. Cool! But how do you describe this exactly to the consumer?
Another company would have explained the process in a table of numbers, no doubt. But Blendtec wisely explained it graphically:
I loved it, but…it still took me a few seconds to figure out exactly what was being communicated. What threw me were the heavy boxes. They were chartjunk. There was so much ink on the page, it was distracting, and since the boxes were different shades, I assumed that the shading carried some meaning. But the shading really doesn’t impart any information. It’s a red herring. I thought it deserved further simplification, and that I could do better. First I tried this…
It was better, I thought. The shadings were gone, and the story was actually a little clearer. But were any shadings necessary? Could more screen ink be removed…?
This was what I settled on…
Is this better? And by that, I mean clearer? Thoughts?
Okay, now it’s time for margharitas!
Last week, Duarte Design, launched Duarte Diagrammer, an online store offering pre-made presentation diagrams and graphics. All graphics are downloadable as PPT files, whereupon they can be edited, recolored and further customized. Duarte is certainly not the first to this game, but I do like their iTunes-like pricing (everything is 99 cents) and the categorization that attempts to help the user identify exactly the type of diagram they need. Many of the diagrams will be familiar to readers of Nancy’s excellent book, Slide:ology, which includes a healthy section on various diagrams and process graphics.
It should be no secret by now that I’m all for shortcuts for presentation design—such as reusing elements from previous presentation, using PPT’s tools instead of Photoshop and even “stealing”. But, I have another dirty secret, and that is that on occasion I actually buy other people’s work in the form of pre-made graphics.
Because I have the skills to create many graphics myself, most often I do fire up the sketch pad or Illustrator or PPT and start building needed graphics from scratch. (Sometimes, I will also make use of pre-made vector stock files.)
But every so often, I have a need for a presentation graphic that someone has already spent a lot of time and thought creating. So I get out my credit card.
A recent client insisted that their product line be shown as a hierarchical pyramid. Okay. I wanted to give them a 3D pyramid, but I couldn’t find anything with the right number of levels in my past work or on any professional stock site (like Shutterstock or Getty.) But I did find a perfect set of 40 PowerPoint-ready pyramids at PresentationLoad.com. So, $29 and 3 minutes later, I had my pyramid and continued working on the content. Sure, I could have spent an hour or two perfecting the perspective myself in Illustrator, then importing into PowerPoint, but it just wasn’t worth the time. Take a look—you can buy the same pyramid right here.
My friend Mike Parkinson runs a great site called BizGraphicsOnDemand.com, and puts it to me this way a few years ago:
“What’s your time worth? Isn’t spending a few bucks on a pre-made graphic better than spending hours designing it yourself when the result will be the same or probably even better?”
He’s right. I’ve bought a few things from him over the years. Mike’s site also has really nice categorization, and if you’re interested in really learning how to create and choose the right business graphics, I suggest Mike’s seminars, book and other resources which you learn about at his other site, BillionDollarGraphics.com.
The above are just a few that sites provide quality elements for your presentations, but there are many more you can find that will sell you whole template designs. The reason I’m not recommending those sites is because I’m a firm believer that you don’t actually need templates for presentations. If you missed it, I discussed that in a guest post at Indezine.com. But since a graphic itself very often is the focus of a slide, by all means take advantage of those who have tread before you…
I wrote the following for an internal Edelman blog and thought I’d post it here as well…
“Data-Ink Ratio” is a principle originated and championed by Edward Tufte, the godfather of modern information design. Tufte has been both lauded and vilified for his insistence on minimalism, a philosophy that is at the heart of Data-Ink Ratio.
I LOVE this Slate.com animation of the Republican Iowa Horse Race. Yes, it really comes to life as an actual horse race.
My favorite part was watching Cain come from behind, lead and then die.
I just came across this fantastic analysis by Charles L. Mauro on the success of Angry Birds. While many will claim that it is pure marketing and hype, Charles argues that 1.2 billion hours a year people spend playing the game means that it is actually the user experience and design of the game that accounts for its success.
It’s definitely one of the smarter and more thought-provoking pieces I’ve read in a while. Check it out on his Mauro on Media blog.
(Credit: 
