Bringing your story to life
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Transcript of Bringing your story to life
THE VISUALISTTHE VISUALIST
LET’S BRING YOUR STORYTO LIFE
MARKETPLACE.VISUAL.LY
We’ll assemble a creative team that best fits your
needs, guarantee timely delivery at a fixed price,
and provide premium support and seamless
collaboration in our proprietary Project Center.
To request a design consultation, contact us at [email protected] OR 1.855.968.DATA
XX
Content is still king
For more than a century, marketers have built brands by aligning themselves with compelling and relevant content. From soap operas -- the first form of “branded content” —to sponsorships, from commercials to advertorials, brands have long understood content’s value in creating consumer connections.
Brand as Publisher
The world has changed. Today’s marketers are increasingly publishers in their own right, creating content to help tell their stories, cultivate audiences, and increase their businesses’ bottom lines. According to eMarketer, content marketing is now the #1 focus for marketers, ahead of email marketing, SEO, and even social media. Nearly half (48%)
BRANDS HAVE LONG UNDER-STOOD CONTENT’S VALUE IN CREATING CONSUMER CONNECTIONS.
by Kristin Kovner
XX
of marketers devote at least 10% of their budgets to content creation; 19% devote 25% or more. In total, marketers spent a whopping $43.9 billion on custom content production and distribution in 2013, according to the Custom Content Council: up 9.2% from 2012.
This huge investment in content spans a variety of formats: print, blogs, email, infographics, video, virtual events, webinars, whitepapers, podcasts, interactives, e-zines. The use of infographics and video, in particular, is accelerating, but the unifying theme among all these growing content formats is their emphasis on visual storytelling.
The Power of Visual
Storytelling
Marketers are turning their focus toward visually-driven content formats because they work.
With the average brand now posting 1.3X daily to websites, blogs, and social channels like Facebook and Twitter, according to Hubspot, content creation has become a necessary part of every marketer’s strategy.
Brands are increasingly turning to partners – like Visually - to help generate this content. The Content Marketing Institute recently found that the majority of marketers (62%) currently outsource content creation to partners – a trend that increases with company size and is especially true for video production.
Best Practices for
Content Marketing
At Visually, we work with the world’s leading brands every day to help them tell their stories effectively. We fuel their content marketing strategies by employing a world-class team of graphic designers, data journalists,
writers, developers, editors, animators, and producers across a variety of disci-plines, including infograph-ics, interactives, and videos.
In the pages that follow, you’ll find rules for creating videos and insights into the new, marketplace-driven economy, along with tips and tricks for telling your brand stories in innovative ways. Please share your thoughts with us @visually and #contentisking, and find inspiration for your own content marketing efforts at marketplace.visual.ly.
Visual formats:
Grab and hold consumers’ attention, a key benefit for marketers in an age of clutter, noise, and short attention spans.
Invite engagement, driving greater brand recall and consumer impact than text alone – as Edgar Dale famously conceptualized in his Cone of Learning, we remember only 10% of what we read, but 50% of what we hear or see.
Drive social distribution, generating earned media impressions and delivering greater audience reach. In fact, we have found that posts with visual content generate 30X more pageviews than posts with text alone.
ORIGINS OF COMMON UI SYMBOLSThey are road signs for your daily rituals—the instantly recognized symbols and icons you press, click and ogle countless times a
day when you interact with your computer. But how much do you know about their origins?
SOURCE: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/08/computer-symbols-history/all
This terror is known by many names: the hypnowheel of doom, the spinning pizza, the pinwheel of death, the SBBOD (spinning beach ball of death). Apple officially calls it “spinning wait cursor,” but most Mac users hail it with a simple expletive. It first appeared in Apple’s OSX and continues to indicate that an application is not responding to system events. As many have noted, the SBBOD is actually an evolution of the wristwatch “wait” cursor that the company first used in early versions of the Mac OS. While its design origins remainremain mysterious, Apple likely dropped the watch as it reminded users of the time passing as the program remained perpetually hung up. Despite this, the modern iteration has proved only one thing though: it’s entirely possible to despise a pretty, hypnotic spinning wheel.
⌘What do Swedish campgrounds and overuse of the Apple logo have in common? A lot, according to Andy Hertzfeld of the original Mac development team. While working with other team members to translate menu commands directly to the keyboard, Hertzfeld and his team decided to add a special function key. The idea was simple: when pressed in combination with other keys, this “Apple key” would select the corresponding menu command. Jobs hated it—or more precisely the symbol used to represent the button—which waswas yet another picture of the Apple logo. Hertzfeld recalls his reaction: “There are too many Apples on the screen! It’s ridiculous! We’re taking the Apple logo in vain!” A hasty redesign followed, in which bitmap artist Susan Kare pored through an international symbol dictionary and settled on one floral symbol that, in Sweden, indicated a noteworthy attraction in a campground. Alternately known as the Gorgon loop, the splat, the infinite loop, and, in the Unicode standard, a “place of interest sign,” the command symbol has remained a mainhas remained a mainstay on Apple keyboards to this day.
Ah @, the only symbol on the list to earn a spot in the MoMa’s architecture and design collection. How has this fetishized symbol become so potent over the years? It probably has something to do with the net-ruling rune’s deep and mysterious origins. It has been known by many names: the snail (France and Italy), the little mouse (China), the monkey’s tail (Germany). In 1971, a Bolt, Beranek & Newman programmer Raymond Tomlinson decided to insert the symbol between computer network addresses to separate the user from the terminal.terminal. Prior to Tomlinson’s use, the @ also graced the keyboard of the American Underwood in 1885 as an accounting shorthand symbol meaning “at the rate of.” Go back even further and things start to get hazy. Some suggest that @ has its origins in the sixth century, when monks adopted it as a better way of writing the word ad—Latin for “at” or “toward”—that was not so easily confused with A.D., the designation for Anno Domini, or the the years after the death of Christ.
@
Back in 1995, a small group at Apple—the main developer of FireWire—set about designing a symbol that could accurately reflect the new technology they were working on. Originally intended as serial alternative to SCSI, FireWire’s main allure was that it promised high-speed connectivity for digital audio and video equipment. So designers opted for a symbol with three prongs, representing video, audio and data. Initially, the symbol was red, but was later altered to yellow for unknown reasons.
People were confused by “the standby state.” It seemed counter-intuitive for an electronic device to be neither on nor off. So, after the IEEE nicked the ICE’s standby button (remember?), it decided some rechristening was in order. The governing body renamed standby mode “sleep,” to invoke the state where humans are neither on nor off. Today, a crescent moon is the de facto sleep state symbol on devices in the United States and Europe. Its metaphorical power is undeniable! Travel to Japan, though, and you’ll probably see the occasionaoccasional “zzz” button.
Created as part of the USB 1.0 spec, the USB icon was drawn to resemble Neptune’s Trident, the mighty Dreizack. (But that doesn’t mean you should go around stabbing people or trying to domesticate dolphins with your flash drive.) In lieu of the pointed triangles at the tip of the three-pronged spear, the USB promoters decided to alter the shapes to a triangle, square and circle. This was done to signify all the different peripherals that could be attached using the standard.
While the play/pause symbols aren’t native to computers, they’ve made their way onto keyboards, media players (real and virtual), and every other device capable of playing audio or video. Unfortunately, neither the right-pointing triangle nor the double pause bars seem to have a definitive origin. They first appeared as tape transport symbols on reel-to-reel tape decks during the mid-1960s. In some cases, they were accompanied by the (double triangle) rewind and fast forward symbols. The direction of the play ararrow indicated the direction the tape would move. Easy.
As far as the pause symbol goes, many have noted it resembles the notation for an open connection on an electrical schematic. Some say it is simply a stop symbol with a chunk carved out of its center. We’d put our money on a more classical origin: In musical notation, the caesura indicates a—wait for it—pause.
You’ve probably heard the story of 10th-century Danish King, Harald Blåtand, as it relates to Bluetooth, right? He was renowned connoisseur of blueberries; at least one of this teeth was permanently stained blue; yadda yadda yadda. What you might not know is that the Bluetooth symbol is actually a combination of the two runes that represent Harald’s initials. It just so happens the first Bluetooth receptor also had a “teeth-like” shape, and was—you guessed it—blue. But the symbolic interplay doesn’t end there. As the Bluetooth SIG notes, Blåtand “was ininstrumental in uniting warring factions in parts of what are now Norway, Sweden, and Denmark—just as Bluetooth technology is designed to allow collaboration between differing industries such as the computing, mobile phone and automotive markets.
Despite being “invented” many years prior, the thing we now recognize as the Ethernet port symbol was actually designed by IBM’s David Hill. According to Hill, the symbol was part of a set of symbols that were all meant to depict the various local area network connections available at the time. The array of blocks, which are purposefully non-hierarchical, each represent computers/terminals. While Hill makes no specific mention of Bob Metcalfe’s earliest Ethernet sketches, the modern symbol uses them for inspiration.
It’s plastered on T-shirts; it tells you which button will start your Prius; it’s even been used on NYC condom wrappers. As far back back as World War II engineers used the binary system to label individual power buttons, toggles and rotary switches: a 1 meant “on,” and a 0 meant off. In 1973, the International Electrotechnical Commission vaguely codified a broken circle with a line inside it as “standby power state,” and sticks to that story even now. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, however, decided that waswas too vague, and altered the definition to simply mean power. Hell yeah, IEEE. Way to take a stand.
They are road signs for your daily rituals—the instantly recognized symbols and icons you press, click and ogle countless times a day when you interact with your computer. But how
much do you know about their origins?
http://visual.ly/origins-common-ui-symbols
SHARING ECONOMY?IS YOUR BUSINESS READY FOR THE
From finding places to stay
with Airbnb to snagging a ride
with Uber, the collaborative
economy model has so far
focused primarily on consumers.
Yet the industry, estimated to
be valued at over $26 billion, is
already challenging standard
notions of business. While most
assume that big companies will
find the collaborative economy
too risky, too unstable, or too
unorthodox, that hasn’t stopped
companies in fields like graphic
design, software development,
and even outsourced back-office
ACCESS TO MORE OPTIONS
One of the biggest strains on
productivity and customer
satisfaction in any market is a
lack of access to the full range of
available options. Be it choosing
the best advertising firm, finding
a web designer, or identifying the
perfect creative talent for a new
infographic, the selection process
is often so limited by geography
and awareness that the match is
less about finding the perfect fit,
and more about making the best
of what’s available.
The collaborative economy and
the marketplaces through which
it runs help solve this problem
by aggregating thousands of
potential matches in one central
online location. Working online
eliminates geographic concerns
and places the emphasis squarely
on achieving the ideal fit.
Marketplaces employ advanced
algorithms to help filter vast
amounts of information so each
individual can find the best match
possible, regardless of how much
they know about the market.
The chances of finding the talent
you need to complete a task
are much higher than if you just
consulted your address book,
asked for recommendations, or
relied on an agency. And a true
marketplace goes both ways.
Take Uber, which insists that both
drivers and passengers rate each
other before they can complete
a transaction. In this way people
are rewarded for a job well done,
providing a natural performance
incentive that raises the quality of
the marketplace.
services from shattering these
preconceptions and proving
the viability of the model for
the world’s largest and most
influential brands.
So why are companies like Visa
and Microsoft turning to the
collaborative economy? Simply put,
in many cases the collaborative
economy model produces the
highest-quality results while
cutting down on turnaround time
and cost. Here are three reasons
why the collaborative economy has
had a pull on top-tier brands:
BY STEW LANGILLE
THE MODEL IS FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGING THE WAY BUSINESSES WORK.
ARE YOU IN?
2
The decentralized nature of the collaborative economy leads to exciting collaborations.
THE PROCESS IS MORE
NIMBLE AND COSTS ARE
GUARANTEED
In a standard search, once a
marketing manager has selected
an agency or freelancer, starting
over if difficulties arise can be a
long, arduous process. At best,
the marketing team needs to find
another designer or agency, wasting
valuable time, money and effort.
Collaborative marketplaces already
help mitigate this result with their
smart matching capabilities, but the
guarantees some of them offer - like
switching designers at no additional
cost - can provide peace of mind
and willingness to consider new and
innovative ideas. In fact, the ability
to offer specialists, where one might
have settled for a generalist in the
past, is one way the collaborative
economy is able to deliver higher
value to those that participate in it.
For the talent, too, it’s attractive.
Creatives want to work on
interesting projects with top
brands. The decentralized nature
of the collaborative economy makes
this possible and leads to exciting
collaborations where talent is the
only true cost of entry.
Many marketplaces also provide
cost guarantees that reduce one
of the primary pain points of
interacting with a freelancer or
agency--price. Because prices are
set in advance, both sides have a
preexisting understanding that
helps brands and designers avoid
surprises and allows clients to focus
exclusively on the project.
IT’S MORE EFFICIENT
For a brand looking to outsource
a project, two key factors are how
much it will cost and how quickly
it will get done. One of the biggest
costs for any design agency or
freelancer is the time and effort
necessary to seek out and identify
new clients.
Marketplaces give designers the
ability to focus on designing, which
means they can do more projects at
a faster rate, with a lower cost. This
filters directly back to the brand, who
pays less for the project while also
cutting down dramatically on their
search time.
However, the benefits go far beyond
lowering costs for designers and
taps directly into the value of a wide
marketplace. Because brands have
access to far more creative talent,
they are exponentially more likely to
have a great fit for the job, available
to complete the job under any time
constraint. Whether it be two weeks,
two days, or 24 hours, tight deadlines
are more easily met with a wider
talent pool.
The value of the collaborative
economy is that it places an emphasis
on maximizing value. Resources--be
it unused apartments, hotel rooms,
cars, or creative freelancers--are
often wasted as their availability goes
unseen by those who could potentially
utilize them. The Internet provides
the ideal means of overcoming this
obstacle by aggregating vast amounts
of data in central locations. Now,
information is readily accessible, and
with the rise of mobile devices, it is
accessible at all times of day.
Marketplaces all but eliminate risk
for those that participate in them by
making sure the talent is suited for
the task and by keeping the supply
and demand sides honest through
an ongoing process of evaluation and
feedback. Marketplaces add value
for both, which is the secret to their
scalability. Consumers get it already.
It won’t be long before the enterprise
catches up.
Stew Langille is the CEO of Visually. Follow him on Twitter at @slangille
pic of Stew?
THE COLLABORATIVE ECONOMY IS NIMBLE. WITH ITS GREATER SUPPLY, A MARKETPLACE CAN PROVIDE CREATIVES WITH EXTREMELY SPECIALIZED SKILLS.
3
Visually connects the world’s leading brands with seasoned creative professionals to create amazing visual content.
The world’s best creative talent
designers animators journalists developers
Find out more and join us at visual.ly
The script – or the story – of a video is the gold. “Story?”
you ask, “How can I tell a story in sixty seconds? Don’t
people just want to see a bunch of flashy, cartoony
images?”
Think of what grabs you right in the beginning of a video.
It’s the promise that you’ll be taken on an informational
journey involving something you can relate to, or want to
relate to, in an entertaining manner.
A big part of this can be achieved by developing the
script from the core of what your product or company
stands for, as opposed to stringing together buzzwords.
The language should naturally unfold from the heart of
the video.
Our advice: Don’t write the script yourself, at least not
entirely. You’re too close to the fire. Too attached to your
product. Give a professional writer an outline of what
you’re looking for and let them do what they do best!
Cramming ten years of your company’s history into
your video won’t work. It’ll likely be visually crowded
and overwhelming. The only way to stuff that much
information into a reasonable running time is to speed
up the video, but that would make the information flow
too fast for any of it to sink in.
Our advice: A calculated rundown of your company’s
history won’t get people hooked. What will do that is a
story about the product or idea you’re presenting. So ask
yourself: what’s most relevant to the story I want to tell?
You could spend hours presenting either side of the
immigration debate, for example — yet a video Paragon
Design Group created for the George W. Bush Center
through the Visual.ly Marketplace presents engaging
data on the issue, without overwhelming the viewer:
On a good day, most people’s attention span for online
videos is about 90 seconds. A thought-out and well
paced visual-story balance can get all of your points
across in that time or less. Well rounded is better than
longer.
Our advice: Resist the temptation to keep extending
the running time and try refocusing on boiling down the
main elements that you want in your video.
Here is a video that walks us through decades of history
– in just 80 seconds:
Music should be an accent to any video, not something
that takes the audience’s attention away from the
visuals. It should enhance the subtle emotional beats
that drive the story forward and support keeping the
audience engaged.
The images seem to hang too long up against the
voiceover that’s relaying twice as much information.
This is usually a budget issue, but better to wait until you
have a bigger budget than not enough animation. Or…
too much animation.
Our advice: You don’t want your video to be Cars 3.
You want it to be visually exciting, but you don’t want
to blast potential clients away with so much action that
they forget what they’re watching. The pacing of the
animation should flow naturally with the voice over
and/or the music.
7 Mistakes
That Could Turn Your Video
into a Disaster
It’s every marketer’s dream: producing a company video
that goes viral or gets nominated for an Emmy Award.
A video should, at the very least, engage its target
audience, while getting a brand’s key message across.
There’s no lack of articles offering advice on how to do
just that. Yet, many marketing professionals get it wrong.
Let’s take a look at seven common mistakes that, if avoided,
can help you shape your video into a captivating, and even
inspiring, advertising tool.
BY tasha hardy
2. OVERLOADING THE VIDEO
WITH INFORMATION.
4. CHOOSING MUSIC THAT
STANDS OUT TOO MUCH.
5. MAKING THE ANIMATION
TOO FAST- OR SLOW-PACED.
3. MAKING IT TOO LONG.
X
1. OVERLOOKING THE
IMPORTANCE OF THE SCRIPT.
http://vimeo.com/70493105
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXXAUqilOaw
There needs to be a flow to the script that explains your
company and/or what you have to offer. This seems
obvious, but a lot of videos provide only disjointed
company information and don’t have a clear intention.
Our advice: You want to engage your audience right
off the bat, take them on a little journey that shows the
richness of your products and services and leave them
wanting more.
Voice overs can be pricey. Depending on the length of
the voice over, amount of re-records and language, you
can expect to pay anywhere from $200 to $450.
Sound like a lot? Contemplating having your Aunt Mary
take a crack at it? Think twice. A voice over can make or
break a video.
Voice over artists are professional actors, trained in
using their voice as a tool to sell – your product. They
know where to “punch” a point in the script to get your
viewers’ attention, but also where to soften up the mood
to induce certain emotions, like trust (in your company
or product). They also have state of the art equipment
that makes for a crisp, clear read, whereas standard
computer microphones often come off staticky or
muffled.
Our advice: Animators generally have their favorite
sources for voice overs and it’s best to trust their
judgement. But you have a hand in it, as well. Have the
voice-over actor submit a few recordings to you after
giving them direction, or direct them live and have them
play the recordings back.
Tasha Hardy is the Video Marketplace Manager at Visually. Connect with her on Twitter: @londonfogger.
7. USING VOICE OVER READ BY
A NON-PROFESSIONAL.
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6. NOT HAVING A CLEAR GOAL
IN THE FIRST PLACE.
CONTENT IS KING
now devote at least
has
and
to content creation
49%
O
F M A R K E T ERS
10% of their budget
are the fastest-growing
content marketingtactic among
infographics
marketers*
#1
B2B
DID YOU KNOW?
30MILLION
visitors to date
= 2 MILLION
largest database
data visualizations of designers
65K
of marketers62%
now use video in theircontent marketing
with and
PUBLISHERVisually
CEOStew Langille ([email protected])
CCOLee Sherman ([email protected])
CMO Tal Siach ([email protected])
EDITORAleksandra Todorova ([email protected])
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jared Fanning ([email protected])
DESIGNSofya Yampolsky ([email protected])
Contact Us(855) [email protected]
Visual content can be a powerful thing. Infographics,
interactive visualizations, presentations, videos: when
done well, they can get your company name or product
out there, build trust among customers, help create or
establish a powerful brand or message.
Visual content can inform, entertain, impress. But to do
all that, it needs to be done well.
Too often, brands focus on results, but sidestep the
key ingredients of a successful visualization that would
actually bring those results. They want a viral visual.
They want pageviews, media pickups, social media
shares, conversion rates.
But viral doesn’t always equal good in a more
conservative sense: a solid, informative, ethical piece
that is beautifully designed and flawlessly executed.
At Visually, we start each project trying to achieve just
that. Unfortunately, some projects get hijacked by rigid
corporate branding demands or unrealistic expectations
on part of the commissioner or designer… or both!
Others succeed. From our most successful projects --
and the experience of going through not-so-successful
ones -- here are the five key ingredients of visual content
we can all share with pride.
Aleksandra Todorova is the Editorial Director at Visually. Follow her on Twitter: @Aleks_Todorova.
X
by Aleksandra Todorova
THE FIVE KEY INGREDIENTS
GREAT VISUAL CONTENTof
http://visual.ly/search-sweet-death http://visual.ly/sugargram
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5
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Successful projects start with a great idea. To come up with one of those, it helps to think like a journalist. Journalists, unless they are covering breaking news, usually work with cycles. Take the personal finance space: in November and December, everyone writes about holiday spending and saving. In January, it’s credit card debt hangover. February: love and money. March: taxes. And so on. Every year, the stories are similar, if not the same. So everyone looks for new angles or interesting ways to tell those stories. Some succeed, many get lost in the noise.
It’s the same with visual content: chances are, your idea has already been done. Can you tell it in a new, more interesting way? Can you tie it into a recent event or interesting trend? Can you find a useful and informative angle that will really benefit your target audience? If not, you will only be putting your name and company logo on a piece that will become one of many — but not one that stands out.
A GREAT IDEA
Too often, we end up with more data than is needed to make a single infographic, video or interactive. And that’s perfectly fine — as long as you’re OK with excluding some (or a lot!) of it from the piece we’re working on. Trying to say everything with one piece almost always results in something no one finds interesting or sharable. It either has too much information in it and it becomes overwhelming, or lacks an actual story.
If you find it impossible to cut data out, get a fresh set of eyes. Here, your designer can be incredibly helpful: ask them what they would leave out if they were confined within certain print dimensions. What is the most interesting story that they see?
WILLINGNESS TO LET THINGS GO
Think your company’s new product or factory is interesting enough to showcase? Unless your new product is the cure for cancer or your new factory was built on the Moon… chances are most people won’t care. Blatant self-promotion will also make it very difficult, if not impossible, to garner interest and pickup — not to mention, respect — from mainstream media and large websites. Even if you do have super interesting, never-before-released data, try to present it the way a respected publisher would: focus on the data and the story, not on the brand. If the story is good, the brand will get noticed. Trust us.
HONESTY AND HUMILITY
Speaking of trust: it’s imperative. Your researcher and/ or editor know best how to find and tell a good story. Your data analyst knows best what your data says. Your designer knows best how to design. Trust those people—your creative team—to do the best job they can, because you can be sure that they are trying. Being too controlling as a client or showing in any way that you do not trust the team will only alienate them. You will lose their trust, but worse, you will lose their creativity and eagerness to produce something that they, too, would showcase with pride.
TRUST
Many data visualization professionals, especially in the academic community, start with a data set and dig for stories in it. That is a great way to find new and interesting stories — provided you’ve got a good data set to work with. But in business, many commissioners are unwilling to take on the risk that their data will tell a story they (or their CMO) will not like.
So projects often start with an idea, followed by chasing after the data to support it. If the idea is flexible (i.e. we can change things if the data we find points us in a different or more interesting direction): great! If not, however, finding the data to support and visualize it is often a wild goose chase. Those are usually the cases where you must resort to questionable sources or even tweak data points in order to tell the story you are set on telling. And that’s just wrong.
THE RIGHT DATA
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MORE THAN HALF WAY
TO CREATE GREAT STORIES,DATA JOURNALISTS NEED TO MEET DESIGNERS
Data journalism is a relatively new (at
least in name) field of reporting. The
amount of data created in our lives
and work is increasing exponentially,
so it makes sense to have journalists
dedicated to making sense of it all.
But a journalist and data together do
not necessarily make data journalism.
Great data journalists have another
essential quality: a sense of design.
At Visually, we pair data journalists
with data designers to get projects
done. Most of our journalists meet
the designer halfway, by handing off a
text-based outline. This usually results
in good projects, but not necessarily
great projects.
A great data journalist, on the other hand,
can elevate the outcome to greatness
by meeting the designer more than half
way — even if the designer is mediocre.
The first step to being a great data
journalist is becoming familiar with
the wide array of data visualization
styles that do NOT come out of Excel.
They often have strange names like
choropleth, sankey, treemaps, and
parallel coordinates.
But don’t let the names scare you. At
some point, all of these only existed in the
mind of some creative individual.
Data visualization is a rapidly changing field with plenty
of unexplored territory. The below visualization doesn’t
have an official name... so let’s call it “The Hairball.”
The chart below is one of the holiest relics of data
visualization. It was published in 1869, well before any
of the modern visualization tools we use today — like
Tableau, Processing, R, or Excel — existed.
So don’t let tools hold you back, either. All you need to
get started in visualizing data is paper and a pen, and
maybe a ruler. The tools will help you deliver something
end-to-end — that is, from data to design — but if you are
working with a designer, let them do the final stretch.
Once you have familiarized yourself with these design
techniques you have to learn to see them in the data
you are researching. This futuristic ability comes
with practice.
You, the journalist, are the closest person to the data.
You have the widest view and can spot the unseen
angles and can capture the tone. If all you are presenting
to the designer is some bullet points and summarized
articles, then that myopic view is all the designer has to
work with. A great designer may be able to make some
magic with that but great data designers are just as
rare as great data journalists.
When you are doing your research and looking
at a spreadsheet, try to think of possible visuali
-zation methods.
As an exercise, try to avoid using bar and pie charts.
These are the tourist traps of data visualization and
will distract you from the real wonders down the road.
Sometimes the data may fit well into a sankey diagram,
or perhaps it’s a tree map, or stream graph. All of these
types can convey a ton of information and carry a story,
and if you are not looking for them, you will miss the
opportunity for telling a great story with data.
Journalists are not designers, so they’re not expected
to start pushing pixels or vectors around. This is the
designer’s job and what they are good at. But meeting
the designer more than half way means providing some
visual structure -- something as simple as a sketch in
a notebook -- that the design can then run with and
create something great.
Jess Bachman is a Creative Director at Visually. Follow him on Twitter: @mibi.
by Jess Bachman
YOU, THE JOURNALIST, ARE THE CLOSEST PERSON TO THE DATA.
http://visual.ly/tech-patent-wars
http://visual.ly/napoleons-march-moscow-war-1812
See no data, design no data