By Sherry Woosley and Matthew Venaas
Humans have used art to tell their stories since the beginning of recorded history. Whether it is cave paintings that date back more than 30,000 years or the latest meme to go viral, the power of an image to convey information and emotion is undeniable. Artists draw from a full suite of theories, methods, experiences, concepts, and strategies to create their works. Fortunately, anyone can use that same wealth of knowledge to improve their ability to share data with audiences in ways that will generate a greater understanding and, potentially, elicit the desired actions. As art historian Julian Bell writes, “A work of art seeks to hold your attention and keep it fixed: a history of art urges it onwards, bulldozing a highway through the homes of the imagination.†Why wouldn’t someone tap into that power?
A person may not think of themselves as artistic, but virtually everyone understands an artist’s most basic design tools and principles. While artists use lines, shapes, text, and forms to create their art, the world has taught people to also understand how these elements work in data visualizations. Every report or dashboard has lines, shapes, and text that manifest in the form of tables, charts, graphs, labels, and accompanying descriptions. Artists also utilize design tools such as proximity, enclosure, size, position, and scale, and they use these elements purposefully. For instance, placing two lines close together will prompt the viewer to see the lines in relationship to each other. Adding an enclosure or outline to an item draws attention to what is inside it. Making a shape larger than others denotes emphasis. Even the act of typing a message in all capital letters sends a visual message. These design elements can be used in any visualization and will influence the message sent whether the author realizes it or not.
Color is another key part of the artist’s toolbox. Artists know not only the basics of a color wheel but also color features such as saturation or intensity, value (light versus dark), and hue (color family). Just like the other design tools, artists use colors thoughtfully. Whereas an amateur may simply default to using primary blue, an artist will choose a specific shade such as Prussian blue, cobalt, or ultramarine. They will also use the placement of colors for impact, contrasting lights and darks or choosing from opposite sides of the color wheel.
Even in cases where the presenter’s color choices are constrained, such as needing to adhere to an institution’s brand colors or a conference template, they still have color options. They can use saturated or unsaturated colors as well as light and dark versions. They can pair a brand color with white, gray, and black. Understanding and using the power of colors greatly improves visuals.
Digging even deeper into the design toolbox, artists utilize principles such as unity and harmony, balance, hierarchy, scale and proportion, dominance, and similarity and contrast. These principles are part of a visual piece but also part of the underlying message. A harmonious color palette, for instance, is not only soothing to the eye, it also communicates calmness or unity. Consistency in the sizes, colors, and shapes ties a picture together and creates a singular message. Inconsistencies, differences, and contrasts draw the eye to individual elements and communicate distinctness and differentiation. All of these design tools and principles are at play in any visual project. Artists use them to reinforce their messages, and presenters should as well.
Another artistic strategy that will improve data visuals is understanding and using space. Blocking – or laying out the elements, arranging the flow, and structuring items to most effectively convey the message – is part of that process. Essentially, blocking is the artist’s way of deliberately guiding a viewer by placing items in the visual. The most basic blocking, at least in the Western world, is the understanding that text is read from left to right. Another common way of blocking information in the Western world is the Z pattern, where the information is presented in a way that the reader’s eyes start in the upper left corner and move to the right before moving back down and to the left and, once again, to the right, mimicking the shape of the letter Z. This is commonly seen on websites as well as in newsletter and newspaper page design. Yet another blocking technique is the rule of thirds, which divides a piece into a grid-like tic-tac-toe board to create a structure. Think about the view through a camera lens.
What artists do not do is leave the structure to chance. They evaluate and use the space. They create focal points, or specific areas of attention, through the use of size, proportion, contrast, or color, which establishes a hierarchy within the information, but they also think through its placement in relationship to the whole piece. Negative space (e.g., blank areas) around an interesting element can also help make it a focal point. Basically, an artist plans and evaluates the overall layout and individual placement of elements.
Presenters need to be cautious about having too many focal elements because the result is distracting and confusing. A useful composition creates the focus and flow to ensure that data visualization creates the story that is planned.
Another strategy to utilize in data visualizations is choosing the medium that best conveys the intended information. For artists, this means understanding the materials they are working with and how, for instance, oil paints have a long drying time, cannot be mixed with water, and can be susceptible to cracking and discoloration as part of the drying process. Thus, these painters can work slowly and use layering and oil-based mediums to build thickness. Watercolor painters have a different and unique challenge to build up layers of dark colors but leave some parts bare in order to show white. Painters must also think about the surface they paint on (paper, canvas, cloth, etc.), the tools they use to paint (brushes, palette knives, fingers, etc.), their own skills, and more.
How does this apply to data visualizations? It’s not likely that anyone is going to choose oil paints over PowerPoint when it comes time for their presentation, but producing a data visualization also involves considering the mediums of the data itself, the presentation method, the context for sharing, the skills of the author, and more. Just like the artists who have to understand their paints, presenters have to understand their data: what type of data is it, what’s included, the format, and more. For example, quantitative data will roll up into statistics, which can be displayed in high-level aggregates, tables, and graphs. Qualitative data, meanwhile, will result in themes best illustrated by displays of powerful quotations and key phrases. In creating these charts, it is important to know which types of visual representations work best for what kind of messages. For instance, a pie chart traditionally is used to show the parts of a whole, while a bar chart is best for comparing one or more groups and line graphs work well to show changes over time. Choosing the wrong chart type can obscure the message and confuse the viewer.
Just like an artist who chooses to create a painting as opposed to a sculpture, presenters also need to properly select what data visualization product will best serve their message. There are a multitude of options, including infographics, presentation decks, research reports, and more. Each product has its strengths and weaknesses. While infographics are great for quick, engaging displays, presentations are better for telling a more complex story with multiple data elements. It is also important to think through the sharing environment. A PowerPoint deck may be shared in a meeting room on a big screen or it may be shared online using audience members’ computer screens. The size and scale available may impact what should be included in the visual.
Key to using artistic strategies is a self-awareness of skills and expertise. An artist with significant experience in realism may choose to make realistic portraits. Similarly, a housing professional with a background in writing or journalism could use that experience to develop a strong narrative and build a data visualization around it. To craft statistical visualizations, a residence life professional with limited technical or statistical experience would likely enlist the help of an analytics expert, who often has visualization tools that amateurs do not. Pairing a housing professional with an analytics professional may bring both different perspectives and tools to build better visuals. Overall, the strategy of knowing your medium is about developing experience, skill, and self-awareness and using those insights to craft the best piece of art or data visualization.
Breaking the Mold
A quotation often attributed to Pablo Picasso says, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.†As professionals become more seasoned and comfortable with creating reports and utilizing data visualization, they too can begin to look for opportunities to break the rules in hopes of creating something that truly stands out from the crowd. Taking a risk and trying something new can be a valuable way to prompt a new action or view a situation when stuck. When considering two or more options, choosing the more daring or unusual will provoke quick action and help avoid overthinking all the possible outcomes. For a data visualization, this approach might lead to trying different chart options, adding a color, or moving items around in a composition. Sometimes this approach can be used repetitively to push a design by removing elements and simplifying the visual over and over. The iterative process of taking a little risk and then another and another sometimes leads to a much better product.Another risk can be to accept the messiness and go with the flow. For instance, an artist using wet inks will develop a style that plays with the consistency and incorporates any drips and bubbles that occur naturally. Imagine being asked to present retention rates to an audience uncomfortable with numbers. Going with the flow would involve embracing the committee’s discomfort and brainstorming ideas to show results without numbers. In Japanese aesthetics, the term wabi-sabi is roughly translated into embracing imperfection. The “make it look purposeful†technique is a version of wabi-sabi. Imagine a potter who has a piece come out of the kiln with a crack. Rather than throwing the piece away, the potter carves the crack into a design of a tree, in essence changing the crack from a flaw to a design element. In data visuals, the same approach can apply. Imagine an assessment report where the natural page break occurs in the middle of a table. To make it look purposeful, the author can use blocking and incorporate additional white space, creating a focal point and moving the page break to a more natural place. A PowerPoint slide with too much white space can be re-blocked and the empty area filled with a call-out box, a visual image, or a quotation from a student to add value and interest. There are many ways to make things look purposeful and improve the overall quality of a data visualization.
Artists understand that improving their skills takes more than just significant time spent painting, sculpting, or creating. It also requires reviewing and reflecting on their work. This step is practiced by all levels of artists from beginners in their first art class to masters with decades of work.
Review and reflection comes in many forms. First, artists review and reflect on an individual piece. In the midst of a project, they step away from a work – literally and figuratively – to get a different view of the project. They may set a project aside for a time so they can come back to the work with new eyes. When they view the work again, they observe their reactions. Where do their eyes go first? What draws attention? They review the work holistically, using design tools and principles to analyze the composition. Much of this process is descriptive and analytical rather than judgmental. It’s an effort to see the work, maybe in a new way. The artist may involve others, seeking input. This step often occurs many times in a long-term project. Presenters should do similar things with a data visualization. To use this strategy, they would pull back from the work to see which parts of an infographic draw attention and which are getting lost. They might share a single graph with a colleague to see what the colleague sees. Another option is to develop a full presentation and put it aside for a couple of days, coming back to it with a new perspective. Any of these activities would give insights about how to improve a single visual.
Another form of reflection is the portfolio review, which involves bringing together a set of pieces and looking at them as a whole. The process is often part of art education, where a student shares their body of work with an instructor, other artists, or peers. Typically, the review focuses on patterns, similarities and differences, and the evolution of the work across the portfolio. A key component to ensuring the effectiveness of a portfolio review is to understand that the goal is further development rather than a perfect product. In other words, a review should provide concrete steps, even experiments, to further develop both the art and artist or the housing professional and their data visualizations. Thus, suggestions do not need to be right or perfect or even specific to the items being reviewed. Instead, suggestions are just ideas about what to try next. Then the process continues as suggestions are tried and followed up with further reviews.
Not everyone is going to create a museum-worthy piece of art, but odds are that at some point most professionals are going to be asked to give a speech, prepare a report, or present their findings to an audience. When that time comes, it is important to remember that the long legacy of humans imparting ideas through visuals has established design tools, principles, specific practices, and mindsets that can be used to inform and improve the work. When utilized, data points can begin to take shape and form a narrative that will bring the big picture into focus.
Sherry Woosley is a director for Skyfactor in Springfield, Missouri. Sherry.Woosley@macmillan.com Matthew Venaas is a research manager for Skyfactor. Matthew.Venaas@macmillan.com
