Using Visuals Module Twenty Five McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2014 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc All rights reserved Learning Objectives LO 25-1 Identify stories for business visuals LO 25-2 Select visuals for stories LO 25-3 Apply principles for good design LO 25-4 Apply principles for effective color and clip art use 25-2 Learning Objectives LO 25-5 Apply principles for accurate and ethical visuals LO 25-6 Synthesize visuals with text LO 25-7 Prepare print visuals for use in presentations 25-3 Using Visuals In the rough draft use visuals to: See that ideas are presented completely Find relationships 25-4 Using Visuals     In the final draft use visuals to: Make points vivid Emphasize material Present material more compactly and with less repetition Focus on information that decision makers need 25-5 What are stories, and how I find them? Good stories may:  Support a hunch you have  Surprise you or challenge so-called “common knowledge.”  Show trends or changes you didn’t know existed 25-6 What are stories, and how I find them? To find stories: 1.Focus on a topic 2.Simplify the data 3.Look for relationships and changes 25-7 Paired Graphs Tell a Complex Story 25-8 Choose the Visual to Fit the Story 25-9 What design conventions should I follow? 25-10 Tables  Round off to simplify the data  Provide column and row totals or averages when they’re relevant  Put the items you want readers to compare in columns rather than in rows  Screen alternate entries or double-space after every five entries to help readers line up items accurately 25-11 Pie Charts  Starting at 12 o’clock, go clockwise to each smaller percentage or to each percentage in some other logical order  Make the chart a perfect circle  Limit the number of segments to five or seven  Label the segments outside the circle 25-12 Bar Charts  Order the bars in a logical or chronological order  Put the bars close enough together to make comparison easy  Label horizontal and vertical axes  Put all labels inside the bars or outside them  Make all the bars the same width  Use different colors for different bars only when their meanings are different 25-13 Varieties of Bar Charts 25-14 Line Graphs  Label both horizontal and vertical axes  When time is a variable, put it on the horizontal axis  Avoid using more than three different lines on one graph  Avoid using perspective 25-15 Can I use color and clip art?  Use no more than five colors when colors have meanings  Use glossy paper to make colors more vivid  Be aware that colors on a computer screen always look brighter than the same colors on paper 25-16 Can I use color and clip art?  Clip art  predrawn images that you can import into your newsletter, sign, or graph  Chartjunk  decorations that at best are irrelevant to the visual and at worst mislead the reader 25-17 What else I need to check for? To make your visuals more accurate:  Differentiate between actual and estimated or projected values  When you must truncate a scale, so clearly with a break in the bars or in the background  Avoid perspective and three-dimensional graphs  Avoid combining graphs with different scales 25-18 Chartjunk and Dimensions Distort Data 25-19 Truncated Scales Distort Data 25-20 Integrating Visuals into Your Text  Refer to every visual in your text  Summarize the main point of a visual before you present the visual itself  Spell out numbers that fall at the beginning of a sentence 25-21 Can I use the same visuals in my document and my presentation?  For presentations, simplify paper visuals  To simplify a complex table divide it into several visuals  Visuals for presentations should have titles but don’t need figure numbers 25-22 ...Learning Objectives LO 25-1 Identify stories for business visuals LO 25-2 Select visuals for stories LO 25-3 Apply principles for good design LO