Beer Delivery Visualization

Time to tackle some of the more important parts of life. I saw this delivery schedule in a cooler at a DC Whole Foods. Bell’s Beer is from Kalamazoo and we take pretty big pride in our hometown beer. So we (I mean, I) get really geeked when Bell’s shows up during travels. But this delivery schedule? It’s not working for this data visualizationist (I just made that term up – how does it sound?).

I couldn’t put my finger on precisely what bothered me so much about it, so I took a snapshot and mulled it over for a few weeks. Here is the revised chart I settled on.

The revision still isn’t sitting right with me, but I’ll tell you what important changes I did make:

1. I reversed the order of the listings. Previously, the beers that are delivered year-round were closest to the headers listing the months. That meant that the ones that were the most narrowly distributed were furthest away from the month listings, making them the hardest to decipher. In the revised version, I also just put the month listings across the bottom of the chart, too. Why not?

2. The beers are in a very slightly different order, now depicted by the length of months they are on the market. Just adding a little more logic.

3. The labels over the bars make for less seek-and-find. Previously, the viewer would have to locate the desired beer label, trace the bar to the right, and then simultaneously locate the months across the top, traveling that information down the graph, to find where the paths crossed, just to determine if Favorite Beer was in stock. Too much. This way, we remove one element of difficulty in decoding the chart. Still, I’m unhappy with how I had to abbreviate the top two beers to make them fit in the label.

4. White background. The textured orange background (intended to be beer) was too busy and conflicted with the colors used to differentiate each bar. I’m not totally in love with my new color scheme, but it’s a step up.

If I had access to the beer label icons, I would have still placed them along the left side of the chart. That visual cue is important for the viewer to quickly identify the beer in question.

Eye Gaze & Image Placement

I went to my favorite city in the world a couple of weeks ago – Washington DC. Of course, I didn’t have enough time to explore everything I’d wanted, which included the new Museum of African American History and Culture. But I did catch the promotional signage in the Metro (and one for the Museum of African Art). Let’s pick them apart a bit, shall we?

In this first photo (sorry its so dim around the edges, but I was in the Metro after all), the designers used the power of eye gaze to both draw in the viewer and then direct the viewer’s attention toward the supporting text.

The photo of the artifact was taken at a slight angle, which gives it directionality and a bit of warmth. Think about how much flatter the ad would be if the photo had been taken fully face on. The directionality of the picture and the smart placement of the image so that eye gaze can support the text really unite the ad. When graphic designers say a design should have “unity” this is part of what they mean.

Now check out the eye gaze and directionality in the second ad.

What struck me about this one the most was that the eyes gazing toward the text seemed to belong to white people and that the black people in the ad were facing away, in a bit of an oppositional stance. Perhaps that’s on purpose, to underscore the struggle that the museum is honoring. Yes, let’s suppose that’s the case.

Whether intentional or not, these two ads remind us that there is power in the eyes. When we feature people in our evaluation reporting, position the photo so that the subjects are facing the text, focused internally, rather than literally having their backs turned to the content.

Releasing the Evaluation Report Layout Checklist

So I made this lovely checklist of graphic design best practices as a product of my dissertation (Standing Rule: If you want to know the details of my dissertation, you’ll have to buy me a drink). It included input from a panel of graphic designers including Peter Brakeman, Christy Kloote, Chris Metzner, and Kevin Brady.

I’ve been having such a great time travelling around the country, giving workshops on the checklist and using graphic design to improve the way we communicate in evaluation. But I’ve gotten overwhelmed with requests for the checklist, so I’ve decided to make it freely available:
http://bit.ly/EvalReportLayoutChecklist

Enjoy! And do post comments on your use of the checklist. (Well, your nice comments anyway.)

Evaluation Report Layout Checklist

A graphic designer, I am not. A laborer of long words and awkward sentences structures, I am. That’s why I became super fascinated by the world of report layout and formatting. Maybe the geekiest hobby, I hear you. But so important!

I’ve detailed the importance of good communication elsewhere on this blog. For evaluators in particular, the packaging and presentation of our content are often dealbreakers. Indeed, at times our choices in font and line length actually impede our clients’ ability to comprehend our findings. Yikes! Not our goal!

After reading a bazillion books and getting input from a panel of graphic design experts (Kevin Brady, Peter Brakeman, Christy Ennis Kloote, and Chris Metzner), I’ve compiled a checklist of graphic design good practice specifically for written evaluation reports.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Want a copy? Send me an email.

But be warned, I’m about to use the checklist on roughly 90 evaluation reports as part of my dissertation. Surely in there I’ll find good reason to make a tweak or two. I’ll post the revised version then. But in the meantime, go forth and make good work!