1. Gallery of ProjectsExamining the Social Good infographic| 00:00 | Infographics are more than just a
collection of charts thrown together on
| | 00:03 | a funky background,
| | 00:05 | although that's often what new
designers do. In this video, we're going to walk
| | 00:09 | through an infographic about charity
donations that originally appeared on
| | 00:12 | mashable.com, and I am going to
explain the considerations that went into
| | 00:16 | planning and wireframing the layout.
| | 00:19 | Since Mashable is a blog, it had a
dimension constraint of 640 pixels in width.
| | 00:24 | There was no height constraint,
| | 00:26 | so I had to take advantage of that, and
build this infographic in a vertical layout.
| | 00:31 | Because the dimensions of this graphic
will likely require a lot of scrolling, I
| | 00:35 | wanted to draw attention with a
powerful statistic, and an image to draw viewers
| | 00:39 | in to the rest of the graphic.
| | 00:41 | As you can see from the zoomed out
view, I divided the graphic into four
| | 00:45 | horizontal sections, each of which
had its own different way to visualize a
| | 00:49 | different set of data.
| | 00:50 | There is a lot of text, but all of it
was positioned deliberately to convey
| | 00:54 | curvature, and flow from top to bottom.
| | 00:56 | So as you can see, below the
initial image, we have four sections;
| | 01:01 | one, two, three, and four.
| | 01:05 | Now that we have seen the overall
layout, let's zoom in and take a look at
| | 01:08 | each of these sections.
| | 01:09 | The first section is a line graph
drawn with a cartoon rocketship to indicate
| | 01:13 | the portion where the
growth really starts to take off.
| | 01:16 | Below that, we have a separate set of
data showing donations by group, which I
| | 01:21 | illustrated with what I
call an iconographic --
| | 01:24 | some people call them glyphs --
with numbers typed out below.
| | 01:28 | So you can see, we start with Sputnik
and end with Battlestar Galactica to
| | 01:32 | represent the data in this section.
| | 01:34 | This third section is
essentially a table, or a list.
| | 01:38 | Sometimes people call this a pedigree
chart, if there's a relationship between
| | 01:42 | what's on top and what's on bottom, but
in this case, the client just wanted to
| | 01:46 | list out the organizations in a table view.
| | 01:49 | In the final section, a cartoon
satellite and a cell phone are illustrated next
| | 01:53 | to a paragraph explaining what's going
on at the bottom, and beneath this, there
| | 01:57 | is a pictograph indicating how many
donors gave money online that year.
| | 02:01 | I used the comic artwork, the fun
elements, like spaceships, and the humor at the
| | 02:05 | bottom to balance out the seriousness
of the topic, and the text heaviness that
| | 02:09 | the client asked for.
| | 02:11 | This is an example of a very typical
infographic you might see on a blog.
| | 02:14 | I could have illustrated
this data in a number of ways,
| | 02:18 | and in the next few videos, we'll be
exploring ways to not only plan around the
| | 02:22 | data you want to display, but we'll
learn how to get outside of the box with
| | 02:25 | your infographic designs.
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| Exploring the Dogs of War infographic| 00:00 | Infographics can be an incredibly
effective way to demonstrate the complex
| | 00:03 | relationships found in data, or the
relationships between different people or objects.
| | 00:08 | In this case, we're looking at the
relationships between Google, Microsoft,
| | 00:12 | and Apple's products.
| | 00:14 | In this video, I'm going to explain the
planning and wireframing process that
| | 00:18 | went into this infographic,
which was originally on gizmodo.com.
| | 00:22 | This infographic had no particular
dimension constraints, and since there are
| | 00:26 | three factions being represented -- Apple,
Microsoft, and Google -- I decided to go
| | 00:31 | with a horizontal layout that was just
wider than a square so I could arrange the
| | 00:35 | companies in an equilateral triangle.
| | 00:38 | Each company had its own color: purple for
Apple, blue for Microsoft, and red for Google.
| | 00:45 | And where the company is intersected, I
drew a box to look like a little bomb or
| | 00:49 | explosion to contain the information
about that particular intersection.
| | 00:53 | You'll see they're not all exploding
in the exact same shape and size, and in
| | 00:56 | this type of relationship diagram, that's okay,
because the point is to show the connections.
| | 01:01 | When I initially drew this graphic, I
figured out, first, how many three-way
| | 01:05 | connections there were between the
companies, and I drew a blank box for each,
| | 01:09 | and placed it in the middle of the graphic.
| | 01:10 | Then I drew a box for each of the two-
way relationships between Microsoft
| | 01:14 | and Apple, that didn't include Google,
and the same for Microsoft and Google,
| | 01:19 | and Google and Apple.
| | 01:20 | Having figured out that there were four
two-way relationships between Microsoft
| | 01:24 | and Apple, I had to adjust the
position of all the boxes to leave room on the
| | 01:28 | side for those four Apple Google bombs.
| | 01:31 | In the middle I wanted to go for a
haphazard, bombs exploding feel, but with a
| | 01:36 | degree of symmetry. You can see that
the inside bomb boxes roughly form an oval,
| | 01:42 | or three rows pinched at the ends.
| | 01:45 | You'll also notice that there
is no title for this infographic.
| | 01:49 | I wanted the content of this
graphic to speak for itself.
| | 01:52 | When this infographic was published,
readers were quick to complain that the
| | 01:55 | graphic supposedly favored Apple.
That illustrates a good lesson about the
| | 01:59 | possible, unintentional implications in
the placement of important elements in
| | 02:03 | your infographic layouts.
| | 02:05 | By putting Apple on top, many readers
assumed it was the most important, when in reality,
| | 02:10 | the point was to show the
relationships between these three companies.
| | 02:14 | An infographic with a lot of data
points, or complex relationships to be
| | 02:17 | visualized, takes a great
deal of upfront planning.
| | 02:20 | This graphic is a good example of how
you could end up spending much longer
| | 02:25 | working on an infographic if
you did not plan it before
| | 02:28 | you started building
a high fidelity version.
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| Reviewing the Web Designers vs. Web Developers infographic| 00:00 | Infographics can be an awesome way to
compare and contrast two competing things,
| | 00:04 | whether they're objects, ideas, or even people.
| | 00:07 | The important thing is that an
infographic can help you compare data in an
| | 00:12 | interesting and easy to consume way.
| | 00:14 | In this example, I'm going to walk
you through perhaps my most well-known
| | 00:18 | infographic, which originally
appeared on sixrevisions.com.
| | 00:22 | It's part comic, part diagram,
and despite its humorous nature, was
| | 00:26 | structured very deliberately.
| | 00:28 | Since this was going to be a one on one,
head to head comparison of data around
| | 00:32 | two different parties -- Web designers,
and Web developers -- I wanted to convey
| | 00:37 | symmetry with the layout.
| | 00:39 | So in the zoomed out view, you'll see
there are three horizontal sections, each
| | 00:44 | with its own goal, or its own data to
convey, and each with its own different
| | 00:48 | height and emphasis.
| | 00:49 | This graphic is tied together
visually with the Venn diagram at the bottom,
| | 00:53 | showing the convergence of the two
sides of this head to head battle.
| | 00:57 | Zooming in, we take a closer look at the
details of this layout's symmetry and flow.
| | 01:02 | The first section is really just a
satire; a comical depiction of stereotypes
| | 01:06 | had in the Web design
and development community.
| | 01:09 | Each character has little callouts
that explain their shirt, their stubble,
| | 01:13 | their gadgets, and etcetera, but it's
tied together in the middle with this
| | 01:18 | common element, and you'll see that the
overall image takes on an N shape, which
| | 01:23 | helps bring the reader's eye
from one character to the other.
| | 01:26 | Continuing down, we have a pictograph
showing the balance between the number of
| | 01:30 | jobs held in the U.S. by each character.
| | 01:33 | You can see that the balance is clearly
in the Web developer's favor, and we've
| | 01:37 | also got little coffee cups filled
to different heights to represent the
| | 01:41 | salaries of each of these two types of workers.
| | 01:44 | And finally, at the bottom, we tie it
together with a Venn diagram, and a joke.
| | 01:49 | The two sides of this graphic, which are
separate for the duration, come together
| | 01:53 | here at the bottom for some
nice finale to this infographic.
| | 01:56 | Zooming back out, you'll see that the
footer credits are set off from the rest
| | 02:01 | of the graphic using a different color,
and the title up here stays out of the
| | 02:05 | way of the focus of the
graphic; the two characters.
| | 02:08 | There are a million ways to draw an
infographic based on a given set of data.
| | 02:12 | This is an example of just one of many
ways this subject could have been visualized.
| | 02:16 | By being deliberate with your planning,
you will be able to wrap up the data you
| | 02:19 | want to visualize into nice packages,
which is what infographics are all about.
| | 02:23 | We'll learn more about all of
that in the next few videos.
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| Reviewing the project for this course| 00:00 | We've just looked at a few examples of
different types of infographics, and the
| | 00:04 | high level considerations that
went into their layout planning.
| | 00:07 | Now I want to show you the infographic that
we're going to use for the rest of this lesson,
| | 00:12 | as we walk through, step by step, how to
go through the planning and wireframing
| | 00:16 | process from start to finish.
| | 00:18 | This infographic is about nonprofit
donations, and the goal of the graphic was
| | 00:23 | specifically to show how people who donate
online compare with those who donate by mail.
| | 00:29 | From top to bottom, you can see this
infographic has a long vertical layout, and a
| | 00:34 | nice flow that starts with the
airplanes flying across the screen, and descends
| | 00:38 | into little parachutes falling to earth.
| | 00:40 | As with other infographics we've looked
at already, because this is a vertical
| | 00:44 | layout, and because we will be
illustrating several sets of data together in one
| | 00:49 | infographic, this layout is set up
with multiple horizontal sections.
| | 00:53 | Let's zoom in and take a closer look.
| | 00:55 | The airplane and cloud theme were
all nice illustrative touches that make
| | 01:00 | this graphic come alive, but if you take
them away, what we have is a series of charts.
| | 01:05 | Before drawing an infographic like
this, you've got to first come up with the
| | 01:09 | data, and find the stories you want to
tell within that data, and then you've got
| | 01:13 | to lay out a wireframe.
| | 01:14 | Throughout the rest of the course, we'll
get more into how all this is done, but
| | 01:18 | first, let's take a look at the
wireframe for this infographic.
| | 01:21 | As you can see, it's really just a
bunch of boxes roughly positioned where we
| | 01:25 | want our different sections to go.
| | 01:27 | The nice thing about wireframes is
it's a lot easier to move and manipulate
| | 01:31 | basic boxes like these, than to draw,
move, and redraw high fidelity charts when
| | 01:37 | you change your mind about the layout placement.
| | 01:39 | In the next few videos, we'll walk
through how this infographic was planned,
| | 01:43 | wireframed, and prepped for final illustration.
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|
|
2. Planning and WireframingIntro to planning and wireframing| 00:00 | Welcome to Infographics: Planning and Wireframing.
| | 00:03 | In the next few videos, we're going
to talk about everything you'll need to
| | 00:07 | know to intelligently plan out an
infographic project, and build a wireframe like this.
| | 00:11 | Many designers simply take some piece
of information and plop it onto a canvas
| | 00:16 | when trying to do infographics, but
infographics aren't very effective unless
| | 00:19 | they're well planned, and the
information is actually interesting.
| | 00:23 | In other media, for example, a poorly
written blog won't have any readers.
| | 00:27 | A newspaper that consistently prints
boring stories will go out of business.
| | 00:31 | In the same way, infographics are not novel.
| | 00:34 | Anyone, in Photoshop, could, in theory,
draw an infographic, and as such, to be
| | 00:38 | successful, infographics have to be
useful or interesting in order to be shared
| | 00:43 | and appreciated by your audience.
| | 00:45 | Infographic literally means
information graphic, and it's a popular term
| | 00:49 | for data visualization.
| | 00:51 | Data, or information, is
essential to an infographic's success,
| | 00:55 | so part of creating a successful
infographic is finding data, sorting through
| | 00:59 | it, and organizing it, so you
can illustrate it accurately.
| | 01:02 | That means one of the most useful tools
in infographic design is actually not a
| | 01:06 | design tool; it's spreadsheet
software, like Microsoft Excel.
| | 01:10 | Here we are in Excel, looking at the
data that we used for the infographic that
| | 01:14 | we'll be recreating.
| | 01:15 | I organized the data with each sheet
representing a different chart that we'll illustrate.
| | 01:21 | This course is going to focus on
organizing data, and using it to produce an
| | 01:25 | outline for your infographic.
| | 01:27 | This outline is called a wireframe.
| | 01:29 | As you can see, we have in front of us
an example of a basic wireframe for the
| | 01:32 | infographic we'll be recreating in this course.
| | 01:35 | Wireframes give you the flexibility
to plan and move elements before final
| | 01:38 | illustration, and in the long run,
they'll save you a lot of time, especially
| | 01:43 | if you have someone else who needs to
review or approve your design before you publish.
| | 01:47 | Imagine that you illustrate an entire
infographic, spending hours of work, only
| | 01:51 | to have your boss or client tell you
the dimensions need to change, or they
| | 01:55 | don't like the layout.
| | 01:56 | By putting together a wireframe
outline of your graphic, you'll not only save
| | 02:00 | yourself the headaches of rework,
but you'll also be able to plan your
| | 02:03 | infographic concept from a high
level, and figure out how it will flow
| | 02:07 | together before you start.
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| Determining what to visualize| 00:00 | When you look at the final version of
an infographic, like the one we'll be
| | 00:03 | studying in this lesson, you can
obviously learn a lot from what's illustrated
| | 00:06 | in the graphic; that's
the point of an infographic.
| | 00:09 | But as a designer, you're always making
decisions on what not to illustrate as well.
| | 00:13 | As is often the case in creative work, less
is usually more when it comes to infographics.
| | 00:18 | In this video, I want to talk from a high
level about how to determine what to visualize.
| | 00:23 | In many cases as a designer, you will be handed
a stack of research, and asked to illustrate it.
| | 00:29 | In some cases, you'll be asked to do
additional research yourself. Either way,
| | 00:33 | it's important to think of infographics
as essentially journalism mashed
| | 00:37 | together with design.
| | 00:38 | You're taking research and data, and
displaying it in a way that is accessible to
| | 00:42 | a larger audience to learn from.
| | 00:44 | As such, the research behind your
infographics should be rigorous and ethical.
| | 00:48 | You should always use primary sources,
so sources where the research was
| | 00:52 | originally conducted, rather than
regurgitating Wikipedia entries.
| | 00:56 | Every fact you come across on Wikipedia,
or anywhere else for that matter, should
| | 01:00 | have come from an original
source, and you should go to that.
| | 01:03 | Citing the sources your information comes
from is really important for a couple of reasons.
| | 01:07 | It's a way of validating that you
didn't just make this information up.
| | 01:10 | People can check to see if you're
skewing or misrepresenting your story.
| | 01:14 | The other reason is some people may
want to learn more about the subject, and
| | 01:18 | they'll want to know where
you obtained your research.
| | 01:20 | Many infographics are generated from a
single data source. That's fine if it's a
| | 01:24 | unique proprietary data source,
| | 01:26 | like in the case with this infographic
we're currently working on. We're drawing
| | 01:30 | this infographic based on the
research of one specific report,
| | 01:33 | and we're labeling the infographic so
everyone knows that's what we're doing.
| | 01:36 | In many cases, however, you're going to
want to have multiple sources to back up
| | 01:40 | your data, so no one can accuse you of
bias, and also so you can double check
| | 01:44 | whether your data is correct at all.
| | 01:47 | In the case of the infographic we're
working on in this course, we've been
| | 01:50 | handed at a Word document that
contains a summary of a research study done by
| | 01:53 | Blackbaud, who interviewed
hundreds of nonprofits about where their
| | 01:57 | donations came from.
| | 01:58 | Blackbaud had questions about
the value of offline versus online
| | 02:02 | giving, and put those questions to
their customers, and others, in order to
| | 02:05 | compile the report.
| | 02:06 | So with this report in hand, we need
to start by asking ourselves, who is our
| | 02:10 | reader? What do we want our reader to
learn? And then we'll work backwards
| | 02:14 | from that, and write down more granular
questions that we want to answer for our readers.
| | 02:18 | In this case, the readers are small
businesses and nonprofits who are thinking
| | 02:22 | of starting to collect online donations.
| | 02:25 | Questions they may want to know are, is
online giving better than offline giving?
| | 02:29 | We could also ask, is online giving larger
or smaller, and by how much? Is it growing?
| | 02:35 | Is it cannibalizing offline giving,
or is it increasing the market?
| | 02:38 | Will offline giving go away?
| | 02:40 | And finally, what can we learn about
people who donate both off and online?
| | 02:45 | With those questions in hand, we can
now go look through the data to find
| | 02:48 | answers, and see if those answers
are compelling enough to visualize.
| | 02:52 | As you can see, this report comes with
some charts already, which we can reproduce
| | 02:55 | if we want, or we can
illustrate them differently.
| | 02:58 | Upon inspection, you'll notice that
some of the data doesn't answer our
| | 03:01 | questions very well,
| | 03:03 | like this statistic about the
percentage of organizations that collect $1000
| | 03:06 | plus donations online.
| | 03:08 | We don't have data for offline
donations to compare this with, so it'll be
| | 03:12 | out of context when we illustrate it,
and it doesn't answer the questions
| | 03:15 | that we have in our minds.
| | 03:16 | On the other hand, the data here that
says 79% of donations come from mail is
| | 03:20 | very interesting, and
we'll use that in our graphic.
| | 03:23 | Let data drive the decision making
process as you design your infographics, and
| | 03:27 | determine what to visualize.
| | 03:29 | You may just determine that the
story you want to tell is better suited
| | 03:32 | for another medium.
| | 03:33 | For example, if it turns out that
online giving was 0% of donations,
| | 03:37 | that might be better
said than illustrated.
| | 03:40 | Two good rules of thumb for determining if
your story is worth visualizing as an infographic.
| | 03:44 | One; is the data interesting to the audience?
| | 03:47 | And two; can the subject be easier, or more
fully understood, via imagery than plain text?
| | 03:53 | Once you know what you want to
visualize, the next step is to extract the
| | 03:57 | information from our report, and
organize it cleanly in a spreadsheet using
| | 04:00 | Microsoft Excel. We'll
do that in the next video.
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| Organizing your data in a spreadsheet| 00:00 | Sometimes the data you'll collect
for an infographic is straightforward, or
| | 00:03 | even sparse, but often you'll be
sitting on a mountain of information.
| | 00:07 | I prefer to put all of my data into
spreadsheets, so I can easily sort it, and
| | 00:12 | look for stories within it.
| | 00:13 | You'll also use spreadsheets for
calculating formulas for the size and
| | 00:17 | placement of elements you might be
comparing in, for example, an area bubble
| | 00:21 | chart, which we'll do in another lesson.
| | 00:23 | In this video, I just want to walk
through how I like to organize my data, so it
| | 00:27 | can be easily sorted, and
referred to while I'm illustrating.
| | 00:31 | As you can see here, we've opened
Microsoft Excel, and I've started creating a
| | 00:34 | spreadsheet for our data.
| | 00:36 | I've already filled in a few things,
which I'll explain, and then we'll work on
| | 00:39 | filling in some together.
| | 00:41 | The first sheet I like to create is a
summary of the different sections of the
| | 00:44 | infographic, or of the different sets of data.
| | 00:47 | I have a row for each section, with a
column where I indicate if this section is
| | 00:51 | going to be text only, or if there is
data on another sheet in this spreadsheet,
| | 00:55 | or if we are not going to illustrate the
data at all, as is the case here at the bottom.
| | 00:59 | Next, I create a new sheet on this
spreadsheet for each of the sets of data we have.
| | 01:05 | So in this case down here, we can
switch to Online giving keeps growing, and I
| | 01:08 | put in the three points of
data here in these two columns;
| | 01:12 | the size of the organization, and
the year over year percent change.
| | 01:15 | I have also done this with another point
of data, and now we are together going
| | 01:20 | to add the third sheet of information.
| | 01:22 | To add a new sheet, hover your mouse
down on the little Plus sign, where it
| | 01:26 | says Insert Sheet here at the bottom.
Click on that, and it will give you a new
| | 01:30 | spreadsheet. Double-click the title, and
you can give it a new title of our own.
| | 01:35 | In this case, let's go back and
think of a title that will work.
| | 01:38 | Let's create a sheet that talks about how
more new donors are coming in online every year.
| | 01:43 | So our sheet form, we will rename
by double-clicking; More new online.
| | 01:50 | First, I am going to title the
spreadsheet with the title of the section; More
| | 01:54 | new donors are coming in online every year.
| | 01:58 | So in the top left cell of the spreadsheet,
I am going to type in that title, and
| | 02:02 | I am going to use the mouse to
make that row a little bit bigger.
| | 02:05 | Now let's go to our report, and find the
data that we want to put in this sheet.
| | 02:09 | As you can see here, we already have a
little chart set up from the individual report.
| | 02:13 | It's about the distribution of new
donors by age, and their 2010 medians.
| | 02:19 | You can see at the bottom here, we have
different age groups, and each age group
| | 02:23 | has two columns coming out.
| | 02:24 | The orange is for Joined Online, and
the green is for Joined by Mail, and each
| | 02:28 | has a percentage at the top of the bar.
| | 02:31 | Since there are three data points,
we're going to make three columns.
| | 02:34 | And since each age group has two pieces
of data associated with it, we're going
| | 02:39 | to make the rows be the age group.
| | 02:41 | So for our three columns, we will do Age
Group, Joined Online, and Joined by Mail.
| | 02:51 | Now if I hover my mouse up here at the
top until it makes a little crosshair, I
| | 02:55 | can use that to expand the
columns to sizes that make sense.
| | 02:59 | So now we're going to go back to the
report, and we are going to fill in the
| | 03:03 | information for one row.
| | 03:05 | The first age group is 18 to 24; there is 1%
that joined online, and 0% that joined by mail,
| | 03:11 | so we are going to put that data
into the spreadsheet on the first row.
| | 03:20 | Now let's go and get the next age
group; age 25 to 34 had 12% online, and 3%
| | 03:26 | Offline. All I'm doing is I am hitting
Enter after I type in something in each
| | 03:36 | cell, or I am hitting the Right Arrow key.
| | 03:39 | Now I am going to go and fill
the rest of this in real quick.
| | 03:42 | Now that we've got all of our data
from our report, we can then organize it,
| | 03:46 | sort it by row, or if the data was in
different unit types, we could convert the
| | 03:50 | units so that everything is the same.
| | 03:53 | I know that spreadsheets are not the
most fun for designers to play with, but a
| | 03:56 | little organization will save you a
lot of time later, especially when you
| | 03:59 | need to go back and update a stat, or
when someone wants to see the raw data
| | 04:03 | behind your visualization.
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| Finding stories in your data| 00:00 | Data visualization and
infographics are all about storytelling.
| | 00:03 | Telling stories through pictures,
charts, and diagrams is incredibly powerful
| | 00:07 | if done right, but in order to tell a
good story, you have to find stories
| | 00:11 | hidden in your data.
| | 00:12 | In this lesson, I want to talk about three
common stories to look for in the data you have.
| | 00:16 | It's easiest to spot stories in data
when data is organized, simplified, and
| | 00:21 | sorted. That's why I like to use
Excel to store data, as we've discussed in
| | 00:24 | the previous video.
| | 00:25 | Now let's open up the exercise spreadsheet
for this video, and talk about story spotting.
| | 00:30 | You may recognize this
spreadsheet for multi-channel data.
| | 00:33 | It's the one we started working on in
an earlier video. It contains multiple
| | 00:37 | tabs, each tab with a different set
of data about charity donations, and it
| | 00:41 | contains this Summary tab at the very
beginning to tell us what's on each sheet.
| | 00:45 | When you look at a set of data, the
three easiest stories to spot are 1,
| | 00:49 | outliers; 2, trends; and 3,
counterintuitive facts.
| | 00:53 | We are going to look at
all three in this sheet.
| | 00:56 | First, let's look at outliers.
| | 00:58 | Outliers are statistics or other pieces
of data that appear far outside the norm.
| | 01:03 | In many cases, you'll have a group of
statistics that all roughly falls together
| | 01:07 | in the same general area, but one or
two stats will be far above or far below
| | 01:11 | that group; those are the outliers.
| | 01:14 | In this example here, you can spot two
big outliers; 32% and 5%. Everything else
| | 01:20 | falls within more or less 10 to 25%
range, with the exception of this 7% stat
| | 01:25 | here on the top left, which we
could say is a bit of an outlier too.
| | 01:29 | What's interesting is when you start to
investigate these outliers, you start to
| | 01:32 | learn things that make this
data really worth illustrating.
| | 01:35 | Investigating this 32% outlier, we learn
that apparently a third of lower middle
| | 01:40 | class donors -- those between 25,000 and
50,000 a year -- joined by mail, but only 5%
| | 01:46 | of the highest income bracket joins by mail.
| | 01:48 | A nonprofit might be excited to know
this information, because it could help
| | 01:52 | them target their
advertising towards these demographics.
| | 01:55 | For that reason, it's a significant
outlier that we might illustrate.
| | 01:58 | Now let's look at how to
spot trends in this data.
| | 02:01 | Trends are the direction your data points
flow when you compare them with one another.
| | 02:06 | They are usually used when
talking about time periods.
| | 02:09 | Does some statistic increase over time?
Does it decrease? Does it remain flat
| | 02:14 | forever? Is the increase or decrease
linear, or steady, or is the growth or
| | 02:19 | decline exponential, or
getting faster with time?
| | 02:22 | In this example here, you can see that
the percentage of people who donate by
| | 02:25 | mail increases with age, even though we
have a slight dip of 1% at age 65 to 74.
| | 02:32 | You can see this trend overall
increases, as we move up with age.
| | 02:35 | On the flipside, you can see here that
online donors trend upward until age 55,
| | 02:41 | and then fall off quickly.
| | 02:43 | Now let's talk about
spotting counterintuitive facts.
| | 02:46 | Similarly to outliers, counterintuitive
data, or statistics that go against what
| | 02:51 | you'd normally expect, make for
especially interesting storytelling.
| | 02:54 | Spotting these types of stories
requires a bit more of an understanding of
| | 02:57 | the subject matter,
| | 02:58 | so you can know what's
expected, and what's not.
| | 03:01 | In this example here, we have three
rows of data, but one clearly stands out
| | 03:05 | as counterintuitive.
| | 03:07 | If large businesses -- those over $10
million a year -- are growing at nearly three
| | 03:11 | times the rate of small businesses,
55.6% versus 22%, you would expect
| | 03:17 | businesses in between them to be growing at a
rate somewhere in the middle, but they're not.
| | 03:21 | As you can see, medium sized
businesses are growing 6.1% slower than small
| | 03:26 | businesses. This would lead a researcher
or an infographic designer to want to
| | 03:30 | explore the why behind that fact.
| | 03:32 | Perhaps more research will lead us
to an interesting story behind why
| | 03:35 | medium sized businesses are
apparently being more stingy than the others.
| | 03:39 | Unfortunately, sometimes there is no story
in the data you have; sometimes it's boring.
| | 03:44 | It's good to find that out
before you spend hours illustrating.
| | 03:47 | At that point, maybe it's time to
expand your research to include comparisons
| | 03:51 | that will yield more interesting results.
| | 03:53 | The bottom line with finding
stories and data is you want to look for
| | 03:56 | comparisons, and you want to look for surprises.
| | 03:58 | A good book or TV show often has a
twist, and good data visualization
| | 04:03 | storytelling often does as well.
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| Choosing the right visualizations| 00:00 | Pie chart, bar chart, line chart, 3D
hexagonal pyramid; what are you going to
| | 00:05 | use to visualize your data?
| | 00:07 | Remember, there is more than
one way to skin an infographic.
| | 00:10 | In this lesson, we're going to
talk about different types of data
| | 00:13 | visualizations, and when each
is well suited for your purposes.
| | 00:17 | Bar charts, as shown here, are good for
showing basic size comparisons, especially
| | 00:22 | among large numbers of objects.
| | 00:24 | The length of the bar
indicates the size of your statistic.
| | 00:27 | As with all types of charts, the
length of each bar should correspond
| | 00:31 | mathematically to the data it represents.
| | 00:34 | In other words, good data
visualization is not just eyeballed; it's measured.
| | 00:39 | Pie charts, as shown here, are good for
showing the comparisons of how a certain
| | 00:43 | piece of data breaks down into different groups.
| | 00:46 | You use pie charts when the sum
of all the parts adds up to 100%.
| | 00:50 | This is an example of a pie chart used
in the context of a larger infographic.
| | 00:55 | There are many variations of pie charts
out there, including donut charts, which
| | 00:59 | are essentially pies with holes.
| | 01:01 | The danger with pie charts is at a
certain point, it's difficult for the human
| | 01:04 | eye to compare the differences
in the angles of the pie.
| | 01:07 | They work great for large, obvious
comparisons, but not as great for more subtle ones.
| | 01:13 | Scatter plots are what you
used to do in math class.
| | 01:16 | You have two axes; vertical, and
horizontal, and you draw a point where your
| | 01:20 | piece of data appears at both axes.
| | 01:23 | When you draw many points of data, you can
achieve a scatter effect, and use it to spot trends.
| | 01:28 | These are effective graphs if you're
trying to illustrate a trend among an
| | 01:31 | enormous set of data.
| | 01:33 | Line graphs are essentially scatter
plots with lines connecting the elements.
| | 01:37 | Typically you use line graphs with set
intervals on one of the axes; most often
| | 01:42 | using time on the bottom axis.
| | 01:44 | These are good for
illustrating trend data as well.
| | 01:47 | Sometimes line graphs are
filled in, and become area charts.
| | 01:51 | Area charts are diagrams that compare
data using geometric shapes or areas,
| | 01:56 | where the surface area, or the real estate
of the areas, correspond to some bit of data.
| | 02:01 | They are useful when comparing the
sizes of different things, and in some cases
| | 02:05 | are plotted along a timeline to
show the change in size over time.
| | 02:09 | This type of area chart is a bubble
chart, where the area of the circles
| | 02:13 | corresponds to the size of the data.
| | 02:16 | Here is another example of a
bubble diagram in a larger infographic.
| | 02:20 | Maps are also very
typically found in infographics.
| | 02:23 | Usually data is plotted on points on
the map, and in many cases, maps are
| | 02:28 | combined with other types of charts,
| | 02:30 | like the area bubbles in this example.
| | 02:33 | Timelines are charts showing things
occurring on or between set points in time.
| | 02:37 | They are typically used for
illustrating events, or items that have one data
| | 02:41 | point, but don't need a second axis.
| | 02:44 | Venn diagrams are area charts that
intersect, where the focus of the diagram is
| | 02:49 | on how much, or how much does not, intersect.
| | 02:52 | These are especially good
for comparisons, and for humor.
| | 02:56 | Glyphs, as shown here, are infographics
where individual icons represent
| | 03:00 | some number of data.
| | 03:02 | I sometimes call these
iconographics or pictographs.
| | 03:06 | Glyphs can be squares, circles, people,
cars, or any object you can think of,
| | 03:11 | and that's where a lot of fun and creativity
can occur in the infographics you illustrate.
| | 03:15 | Relationship diagrams, or radial
charts, are circular diagrams that show the
| | 03:20 | relationships between multiple parties.
| | 03:22 | The circle is used because the different
parties have to be positioned in a way
| | 03:26 | that lets you visualize the relationships
in between everyone else, without any one
| | 03:30 | party getting in the way of others.
| | 03:32 | Flowcharts or pedigree charts are
charts where elements are connected through
| | 03:37 | lines, indicating relationships.
| | 03:39 | These are useful especially if you're
depicting evolution of some object, or
| | 03:43 | family of objects, or if
you're depicting a decision tree.
| | 03:46 | You use flowcharts when data is less
quantitative, and the visualization is more
| | 03:51 | about illustrating if-then
statements, or family relationships.
| | 03:55 | There are many, many more types of
diagrams and charts that you can use in
| | 03:58 | infographics, and often they are
amalgamations of these basic chart types.
| | 04:03 | The type of chart you should use should
depend on the type of story you want to
| | 04:07 | convey, and the type of data you have.
| | 04:09 | Also, you may choose one chart over
another simply for aesthetic purposes.
| | 04:13 | The biggest takeaway I can
leave with you on charts is this:
| | 04:16 | don't illustrate something that could
be easily understood in words, and don't
| | 04:20 | use words when a visualization
tells the story more clearly.
| | 04:24 | In the multi-channel graphic we are
wireframing for this course, I used
| | 04:27 | several variations of charts: bar charts for
the comparisons of offline and online giving,
| | 04:34 | line graphs to illustrate growth over time,
| | 04:37 | pedigree charts to show the results
springing from younger and older donors, and
| | 04:41 | glyphs for these parachutes at the
bottom that show the size of donation based
| | 04:46 | on online, offline, or multi-channel giving.
| | 04:49 | We just walked through some of the most
common types of visualizations, all of
| | 04:53 | which can be completely
malleable to your own use.
| | 04:56 | And again, there's more than one way
to visualize anything, but some methods
| | 04:59 | are better than others.
| | 05:00 | Sometimes it pays to be fancy, and make
up your own visualizations, but most of
| | 05:04 | the time, I recommend keeping it simple.
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| Planning the infographic's dimensions| 00:00 | Before we jump into actually laying
out the wireframe for our infographic, I
| | 00:04 | want to talk a little about dimensions,
and what consideration should go into
| | 00:07 | the dimensions of your infographics.
| | 00:10 | The first thing to consider is the
medium; where will this be published?
| | 00:13 | Will it be published in multiple
formats? And in that case, can you design it
| | 00:17 | with dimensions that fit all formats,
or must you keep multiple dimensions in
| | 00:20 | mind when wireframing your graphic?
| | 00:22 | Let's look at a few examples of
layouts with different dimensions.
| | 00:26 | Very commonly, infographics on the
Web are used in blogs, which are, by
| | 00:30 | nature, tall and skinny.
| | 00:32 | You'll want to know the width of the
blog you are designing for in order to
| | 00:35 | conform your infographic
dimensions appropriately.
| | 00:38 | In this example, the blog's width was
680 pixels, but they've had no height
| | 00:43 | constraint, so we built a
tall and skinny infographic.
| | 00:48 | Also common are infographics in textbooks.
| | 00:51 | In the case of an infographic you are
designing for a textbook, your dimensions
| | 00:54 | should fit the page, whether it's 8.5
by 11 inches, or a larger custom book.
| | 00:59 | In this case, this infographic, which
is a pedigree Chart, was designed to be
| | 01:04 | placed in a textbook at 8.5 by 11 inches.
That limited the amount of information we
| | 01:09 | could use to put on this infographic.
| | 01:11 | You may find that you have no
dimension constraint on an infographic you
| | 01:14 | are designing, and in that case, you
should make the dimensions fit the
| | 01:18 | story you want to tell.
| | 01:20 | In this case, I wanted to design an
equilateral triangle with some padding on the sides.
| | 01:25 | Finally, you should consider that your
infographic may be made into a poster at some point.
| | 01:29 | If that's the idea you have in mind,
you'll want to keep the dimensions to a
| | 01:33 | standard format, or leave room for the
ability to crop it to a poster size later.
| | 01:38 | The dimensions you use will determine
what kind of visualization you can use,
| | 01:42 | and also, if you need to cut data out.
If you're constrained to a poster, or a
| | 01:46 | textbook page, you'll have to
choose carefully what to put in,
| | 01:50 | but if you have no height constraint,
such as in a blog, you can worry less about
| | 01:54 | cutting things out for height.
| | 01:55 | However, too long of an infographic
with too much scrolling will cause you to
| | 01:59 | lose your readers before the end.
| | 02:01 | Just like with text, the more you
can keep on one screen, the better.
| | 02:05 | And in Photoshop or Illustrator, be sure
to always draw in high-resolution, or in
| | 02:09 | vector format, in case you need to
scale up or down the size of your canvas.
| | 02:14 | In the multi-channel giving infographic,
we have the freedom to go as tall as
| | 02:17 | we want, but we are constrained
within a set width: 850 pixels.
| | 02:22 | So let's create a blank Photoshop
document with 850 pixels for the width, and
| | 02:26 | set an arbitrary height that
allows us to play around a little bit.
| | 02:28 | I like to make the document a little
longer than I think it will be; that way
| | 02:33 | I can move my wireframe boxes
around without going off the page.
| | 02:36 | In Photoshop, go to File > New, and
create a new document with a width of
| | 02:42 | 850 pixels, and let's set the height
to 5000 to give us plenty of room to
| | 02:48 | move things around.
| | 02:49 | We will crop it later to
get to the size we want.
| | 02:52 | Hit Command and the Plus key to zoom in,
since it's very long and skinny, if
| | 02:58 | you want to focus on the details. Or
hit Command and the Minus key to zoom
| | 03:01 | out, and see the entire wireframe at once.
| | 03:04 | Now that we've got the dimensions out
of the way, let's move on to the actual
| | 03:07 | wireframing in the next video.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Wireframing a basic layout with boxes| 00:00 | A wireframe is a blueprint, or
basically a skeleton of your design.
| | 00:04 | In this video, I'm going to walk you
through the basics of mocking up a
| | 00:07 | wireframe for an infographic in
Photoshop, and then we'll use that foundation to
| | 00:12 | talk about the wireframe I used for the
multi-channel giving infographic we've
| | 00:15 | been studying for this lesson, and
you can use that to recreate that
| | 00:18 | infographic yourself.
| | 00:20 | Using the exercise file for the multi-
channel wireframe we have here, you'll see
| | 00:24 | that we have an example of the
finalized infographic hidden on this layer here
| | 00:29 | that says actual infographic.
| | 00:31 | You can toggle it by clicking this box
where an eye appears, so you can see the
| | 00:35 | infographic underneath, and you can
toggle on and off the example wireframe by
| | 00:39 | clicking this eye too.
| | 00:40 | But we're going to practice creating our
own wireframe using the blank 850 by 5000
| | 00:46 | pixel canvas we created in the last video.
| | 00:49 | Wireframes are little more than
transparent boxes that you can move around on
| | 00:53 | your canvas to decide where
you want to place elements.
| | 00:56 | We're going to build the boxes, label
them, link them, and then move and resize
| | 01:01 | them, so that you can see how to
create a wireframe for your graphics.
| | 01:05 | First, in Photoshop on our blank canvas,
let's create a rectangle using the Shape tool.
| | 01:11 | That tool is found over here on the
toolbar, or you can access it by pressing
| | 01:14 | the U shortcut key.
| | 01:16 | Once you're on the Shape tool,
you'll see that up here there are several
| | 01:19 | shapes you can use.
| | 01:20 | If you're selected on something like a
circle or a rounded rectangle, click on the
| | 01:24 | rectangle, so that you can have
the sharp corners we want.
| | 01:27 | Next you can select the
color for your shape here.
| | 01:31 | We want it to be black.
| | 01:32 | You can also change the color to
black by pressing the D key, which is the
| | 01:35 | shortcut that changes your foreground
to black, and your background to white.
| | 01:40 | Now that we're on the Shape tool for
a rectangle, let's click and drag to
| | 01:44 | create a box for our title.
| | 01:45 | Left click your mouse on the canvas, and drag.
| | 01:49 | You'll see this outline of your
rectangle. Drag it into a long and skinny
| | 01:53 | shape that we can use for our title, and then
release, and you'll see your rectangle appear.
| | 01:58 | Now, we want to change the transparency
of this rectangle so we can move it
| | 02:01 | around on different backgrounds.
| | 02:03 | In order to do that, we need to select
this layer using the Move tool, which is up
| | 02:08 | here; this black arrow.
| | 02:10 | You can also change to the
Move tool by pressing the V button.
| | 02:13 | Once you're on the Move tool,
depending on your settings, you may be able to
| | 02:16 | just click on your rectangle to
select it. That depends on if you have
| | 02:20 | Auto-Select checked here at the top.
| | 02:22 | Checking Auto-Select means
that anything you click on will be
| | 02:25 | selected automatically.
| | 02:27 | Also, you'll see here this check
box for Show Transform Controls.
| | 02:30 | Toggling this on and off will let you
adjust the size of your rectangle using
| | 02:36 | these arrow handles.
| | 02:37 | So, let's have both of those
checked, and select this box.
| | 02:41 | Now, there are two ways to
adjust the transparency.
| | 02:44 | One is over here on the Layers palette.
| | 02:46 | With that shape and that layer selected,
you can go over here where it says Opacity,
| | 02:50 | click this dropdown, and adjust
this slider to adjust the transparency.
| | 02:56 | You can also use shortcut keys.
| | 02:58 | The shortcut keys 1 through 0
all set the transparency.
| | 03:02 | So if you're selected on this, and press
1, you get 10% transparency; 2 is 20, 5
| | 03:07 | is 50, 9 is 90, and 0 is 100%.
| | 03:11 | Let's set this to 30%
transparency by pressing the 3 shortcut key.
| | 03:16 | Now I want to add a label to this so that
when we move it around we know what it is.
| | 03:20 | To add a label, select the layer on the
Layers palette here, and go down to the
| | 03:26 | bottom to this little icon
that says Create new layer.
| | 03:30 | Click that, and it will
create a layer above this shape.
| | 03:33 | Now go to the left to your toolbar, and click
on the big letter T, which is the Text tool.
| | 03:38 | You can also access the Text
tool by pressing the T shortcut key.
| | 03:42 | Once you have the Text tool
selected, click it on top of your box.
| | 03:46 | I like to use the centered text on this, so
when I type, it stays in the center of my box.
| | 03:51 | You can also adjust the size, and the
bold, or italic, or regular font style, or
| | 03:58 | the font itself, up here using these controls.
| | 04:00 | Let's make this font size 24 pixels, and
we're going to type Title of Infographic.
| | 04:06 | In order to get off of the Text tool,
just click on the Move tool again.
| | 04:11 | Now you can adjust where you want this
title to go by clicking and dragging it anywhere.
| | 04:16 | We'll leave it in the center.
| | 04:17 | By clicking off of this onto the
canvas, you'll see I've deselected it.
| | 04:21 | Now we want to link these two layers
together, so any time we move the box, we
| | 04:25 | also move the title.
| | 04:27 | You can link them together by
selecting them both, either by clicking and
| | 04:30 | dragging over both layers, or by clicking
one layer on the Layer palette, hitting
| | 04:35 | Shift, and clicking the other layer.
| | 04:38 | Once you have both layers selected, go
down to the bottom of the Layer palette
| | 04:42 | where there's this little chain link
that says Link Layers, and click it.
| | 04:44 | You'll see these links appear, and
that means any time you click one of these
| | 04:48 | and move it, both of them move.
| | 04:51 | This also goes for resizing it.
| | 04:53 | To resize, click on your element, and
then click and drag on the corners, and you
| | 04:58 | can change it to any shape you want.
| | 05:00 | You'll notice that the text gets
skewed when you resize this way.
| | 05:05 | So I'll hit Esc to undo this resize, and
we'll do this again, but holding the Shift key.
| | 05:11 | The Shift key lets you resize it
proportionally, so that nothing gets skewed.
| | 05:16 | So we'll resize it a little bit, and to
confirm our changes hit the Enter key,
| | 05:20 | or Return, on your keyboard, and now
I'll move this back to the center by
| | 05:25 | clicking and dragging it.
| | 05:26 | Let's create a few more boxes.
| | 05:29 | Going over here to the Shape tool again,
I'm going to click and drag a little box
| | 05:33 | for the introduction paragraph.
| | 05:35 | I'm going to go over here and adjust
the Opacity to 30%, and then I'm going to
| | 05:40 | create a new layer above it.
| | 05:43 | Using the Text tool, I am going to click
in the middle, and type Intro paragraph.
| | 05:47 | Now I'm going to select both these layers, and
link them together, and then we can move them.
| | 05:55 | Say you have a box that you've drawn --
| | 05:59 | I'm going to draw this box -- and you
want to adjust the shape before you have a
| | 06:03 | label, then you can adjust that any way
you want just by clicking and dragging.
| | 06:08 | Once you have a label,
it's going to skew the text.
| | 06:11 | Rearranging elements is simple.
| | 06:12 | You just move them around until you
have them where you want, and in this way,
| | 06:16 | with your wireframe, you can make sure
you have everything where you want it
| | 06:19 | before you start drawing the final graphic.
| | 06:22 | Now let's walk through how the multi-
channel giving infographic was wireframed.
| | 06:26 | You'll see we have a title at the top,
and then we have an intro paragraph box,
| | 06:30 | and then below that, we have
boxes for each of our charts.
| | 06:34 | They're set up horizontally, so
one chart gets a little stripe of the
| | 06:37 | infographic, and they're labeled.
| | 06:39 | If we want to change which chart goes
above which chart, we can do that by
| | 06:44 | simply clicking it, and moving it.
| | 06:46 | As we scroll down, you'll see at the
bottom we get rid of the horizontal layout
| | 06:50 | for a minute with this final graphic;
the glyph that shows mail donors, online
| | 06:55 | donors, and multi-channel donors.
| | 06:57 | These are where we're going to draw
the glyph that gets increasingly big with
| | 07:00 | the size of the donations, and then at
the bottom, we have a little stripe for
| | 07:04 | sources, and the logo, so we can
give credit for this infographic.
| | 07:08 | Feel free to play around with this yourself.
| | 07:10 | We've just walked through the steps for
planning and wireframing in infographic.
| | 07:14 | At this point, we're ready to get
approval on the layout from whoever needs
| | 07:17 | to approve it, and to start designing the individual
charts that we want to fill in these sections.
| | 07:23 | We'll leave that for another day,
though, and just practice planning and
| | 07:25 | wireframing for now.
| | 07:27 | Feel free to go back to any of the
previous videos to review the process as you
| | 07:31 | work on your own infographics.
| | 07:32 | Good luck!
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