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So you decided your organization needs a style guide to save lots your team lots of time when creating charts, enhance brand cohesion, and improve trust with your stakeholders.

In my previous post I described how to identify if your team needs a Data Visualization Style Guide, how to secure buy-in from leadership and your coworkers, and some great resources to review before you get started.

This post will outline the key components of your Data Visualization Style Guide and how to ask for feedback that will make this new resource actionable.

Every guide might be a little different depending on your field and your data.

Here are the key components of my Data Visualization Style Guide.

Note: The instructions in green type in the pictures below are for style guide users. These instructions help the user better understand the components of each chart type.

Chart Structure

This is a general overview of how charts should look for your team. This includes some of the basics of each chart, such as formatting for figure numbers, chart titles, chart subtitles, and axes.

Chart Typography

I used Amy Cesal’s Sunlight Foundation Data Visualization Style Guide and Jon Schwabish’s Urban Institute Style Guide as my starting points for choosing font size for different components of our charts. I was redesigning our reports at the same time I was making my style guide, so through trial and error my team determined what font sizes worked for different kinds of materials, e.g., reports vs. PowerPoints.

Color Palette

If you have agency colors, you should use those as a starting point.

The picture of the color palette below shows the different colors assigned to my public health programs for HIV, STDs and HCV. Each program is encouraged to start with their main color and then use the other colors in the palette as needed.

Your Data Visualization Style Guide should start with the same fonts and colors from your organization’s existing branding guidelines, if they exist.

If you need to create your own color palette or add colors to your agency’s color palette, here are some great tools:

• For inspiration on color combinations used by other businesses: https://brandcolors.net/
• To test out your color combinations, adjust your palette, and identify tints (lighter versions of your main color) and shades (darker versions of your main color): https://coolors.co/.

Identifying Tints and Shades

Here is how I identified the tints and shades for each color in my color palette.

Step 1: Once you have your color palette identified, select the symbol inside the yellow circle below:

Step 2: Then use a system to select the additional tints and shades for your style guide. By system, I mean I selected every other color (see the arrows and instructions in the picture below) for my tints and shades. I repeat steps one and two with each color in my color palette.

Check for Sufficient Foreground/Background Color Contrast

To ensure your colors are contrast compliant based on the Americans with Disabilities Act, here is an accessibility checker: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/.

Including Lots of Color Codes

Ideally, a Data Visualization Style Guide should be user friendly with several different kinds of chart-making software.

By including all the different color codes, it minimizes the number of steps a person has to take to convert a color into the code they need (e.g. from RBG to HEX).

Also, maybe your whole team just uses RBG and CMYK color codes now, but by including all three, you are increasing the sustainability of this style guide if your team adds new software that uses a different color code in the future.

Recommended Color Combinations

This was really important to my team members. Some people don’t want to spend lots of time making decisions about colors. Providing color combination recommendations in the style guide saves my coworkers lots of time, but still allows room for creativity and autonomy.

Fewer decisions to make = timer saver.

Map Color Palette

We determined through trial and error that the overall color palette in the style guide could not be applied as is to maps because we needed colors with higher contrast between one another.

The viewer has to be able to tell the difference between the colors when they are in close proximity to one another.

I adjusted the colors slightly for my map color palette to ensure they would be distinguishable from one another when the colors are close together.

Map labeling is tricky. We ran into many different opinions about how maps should be labeled. It’s easy to over label a map, especially when you are dealing with small spaces, such as counties in a state. Also sometimes there are limitations with the mapping software when it comes to colors and labels. The maps above were made in GIS.

It’s important to ask yourself if the audience is really going to look for the label on each county, or do they just need to get a sense of the color scale.

Ask the question, what do I want my audience to understand from this map? How will the map be presented? Presentation? Report? Online? Interactive?

Example Charts

This is one of the most important sections!

This section can feel like a big undertaking. Start by looking at your organization’s existing data documents. Identify the chart types that your colleagues use regularly and then consider adding a few other chart types to increase chart variation options for your staff. For example, include a lollipop chart in addition to a bar chart, and a waffle chart in addition to a pie chart. This section can include as many or as few charts as you see fit for your organization.

This is another example where the trial and error process is so important. Because we created this style guide while redesigning large data reports, we were able to test different sample charts for the style guide. We adjusted line and dot thickness, label placement, chart sizes, and font size to figure out what worked best. Then we used the style guide to standardize our decisions for future data deliverables. Our decision process was a balance of data visualization best practices, the story we were telling with our data, and my colleagues’ input.

Other Data Visualization Resources

If you think your team is interested in other data visualization information, then you could include additional resources at the end of the document.

How to Ask for Feedback about Your Data Visualization Style Guide

**This is really important.**

About halfway through the development process of my Data Visualization Style Guide, I sent the guide around for feedback from coworkers I knew were going to use it. I asked for specific feedback on what is working and not working. Am I on the right track? Is this resource useful and clear?

Then I incorporated their feedback and created an almost final draft of the guide.

When I had an almost final draft I asked for even more feedback! What doesn’t make sense? What would make this resource more useful to you? What should be included to make this useful to a future new employee of our team?

In this final feedback stage, it was important to share our evolving style guide with team members who hadn’t seen earlier drafts and maybe were only going to make charts occasionally. These folks could provide feedback on what made sense and where guidance was missing. Ideally, a new employee could pick up our new Data Visualization Style Guide and use it to make charts that align with the program’s brand without needing additional guidance.

Reminder: Don’t ask for feedback unless you plan to use a good percentage of it. It wastes people’s time and sends a message that you don’t value their opinions. Not using their feedback at all could reduce the number of people who use your guide because your colleagues don’t feel invested in it.

How We’ve Used Our Data Visualization Style Guide

Here are some examples of data materials created using our Data Visualization Style Guide:

1. Wisconsin HIV Annual Data Report
2. Wisconsin HIV Data Two-Page Summary
3. Wisconsin Hepatitis C Annual Data Report
4. Wisconsin Hepatitis C Data Two-Page Summary

Key Takeaways for Creating Data Visualization Style Guides

Here are three lessons learned.

• Before you create a Data Visualization Style Guide it is crucial to secure buy-in from leadership and the majority of your colleagues who will be using the style guide. This buy-in will help ensure this document is relevant and will be used for future data-intensive materials.

• Before you start creating this resource, ask future Data Visualization Style Guide users: “What should be included in our style guide that would make this resource useful to you and increase the chances that you will use this tool to guide chart creation?” This is key because it ensures that you include what is important to your data team.

• Create a style guide as you are redesigning data documents. Don’t try to create a style guide and then apply it to lots of documents. Working on the style guide and data materials side by side will ensure you create a resource guide that actually works. This will set you and your new tool up for success.

The Benefits of Having a Data Visualization Style Guide

Designing a Data Visualization Style Guide may sound like a lot of work, but the benefits for your organization are enormous.

You will:

• Save your colleagues valuable time when designing data deliverables
• Enhance your organization’s brand, communications, and professionalism
• Increase the accessibility and communication of your data to key stakeholders because of your consistent use of data visualization best practices.

Bonus: Purchase Our Guide

The ideas and examples shared here and my previous post should give you all the tools you need to get started.

Or, save time and download our guide.

The post How to Create a Data Visualization Style Guide to Tell Great Stories (Part 2) appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Is this you?

• Different members of your team are working with data and creating charts.
• All of your charts look a little different.
• You would like to redesign or improve your upcoming data reports, presentations, and dashboards to better align with data visualization best practices and your agency’s brand.
• You would like to build trust with your stakeholders and tell clearer stories using your data.

A Data Visualization Style Guide is a great tool to enhance brand cohesion and save you and your co-workers lots of time in the long run. This resource will reduce the number of decisions your team members have to make about font, font size, line thickness, color, and chart size each time you make a chart. Maybe creating a Data Visualization Style Guide sounds really exciting to you (like me!) or maybe you would prefer to put it at the bottom of your to do list right after scanning and filing all your paper documents (nice in thought, but really never going to happen). I am here to tell you, if you follow these steps and create a Data Visualization Style Guide, the payoff will be incredible for both you and your team.

Benefits of Creating a Data Visualization Style Guide

1. Time Saver: You won’t have to spend 15 minutes trying to decide what colors to use in your latest chart, what font size your title should be, or the line thickness in your line chart. This style guide will already have clear recommendations on all the data visualization steps that eat up your time.
2. Get everyone using data visualization best practices: If you are reading this blog, maybe you and some of your team members are excited about how thoughtful data visualization can improve your communication skills. However, a style guide can help get the rest of your colleagues on board to create effective charts that are accessible to a variety of audiences.
3. Tell great stories: Incorporating data visualization best practices using a cohesive look for all your charts will improve your professionalism and help communicate your message to all your stakeholders more effectively.

Getting Started with a Data Visualization Style Guide

Here are the first steps to create a user-friendly Data Visualization Style Guide:

Identify a need for a Data Visualization Style Guide

My public health team had to redesign all our major data reports and create new data one-pagers for a variety of audiences, including the general public, nurses, doctors, and other public health professionals. Several team members analyzed the data and created charts. Our team wanted to make sure all the reports looked cohesive, while also using our limited time efficiently. I proposed creating a Data Visualization Style Guide to better align all of our upcoming reports. This avoids one person having to make all the charts or edit all the charts so they look cohesive.

Secure Team Buy-In

Before you create a Data Visualization Style Guide, it is crucial that you secure buy-in from majority of your colleagues who will be using the guide. Make sure your leadership team is also on board. Getting buy-in before you start will help ensure this document is relevant to your coworkers and will be used to create future data reports.

For example, to get buy-in, I coordinated multiple meetings with several data experts and project teams would be creating charts for our annual reports and future data presentations and dashboards. It only makes sense to create this resource if your team is generally on board and can see the benefit of developing this new tool.

In these meetings, I shared some of the existing charts from various reports to illustrate the current lack of cohesion among all our charts.

I also showed some examples of Data Visualization Style Guides from other organizations, and explained how this kind of resource might benefit my team.

Then I asked our future Data Visualization Style Guide users: “What should be included in our Data Visualization Style Guide that would make this resource useful to you and increase the chances that you will use this tool to guide chart creation in the future?” This question is key because it ensures that you include what is important to your team of data users in this document.

Timeline

It took seven months to go from project proposal to completed resource guide because I created this document while also redesigning several data reports.

Creating this guide was a trial and error process. This meant that when I sent out the completed style guide, it had already been used to create six different published materials, which proved that it made sense and was applicable to my colleagues and their work.

A key takeaway is to create a Data Visualization Style Guide as you are editing data documents. Don’t try to create a style guide and then apply it to lots of documents. Working on a new guide and data materials side by side will ensure you create a new tool that actually works and not one you think will work with your data and the materials your team creates.

Software Used to Create a Data Visualization Style Guide

I created the charts for my style guide in Microsoft Excel and did the layout of this document in Microsoft Publisher. However, this style guide could be created in whatever Microsoft program you feel most comfortable working in, whether that is Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or Publisher.

Researching Existing Data Visualization Style Guides

Once it was clear my team was on board with using a Data Visualization Style Guide, I went to work researching the best ways to create this new resource. This research phase was extremely helpful and outlined the process for creating my guide. Here are my favorite resources to check out before you start:

1. Amy Cesal’s presentation on why you need a style guide. Her presentation has some great tips that helped me get started, including the advice to update documents while creating my guide.
2. Policy Viz’s list of Data Visualization Style Guides. Take a look at how other agencies approached style guides and see what components you want to include in yours.

Coming Soon

In my next post, I’ll outline the key components of every Data Visualization Style Guide and show you how to ask for feedback, so your new resource is immediately applicable for you and your team.

The post Why You Need to Create a Data Visualization Style Guide to Tell Great Stories (Part 1) appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

You know the document. It’s the one your agency references over and over again, but nobody has the time to redo or update such a long reference guide. This year, I had a 120-page HIV testing program protocol from 2009 that desperately needed a content and formatting overhaul. So I tried Ann’s tips on redesigning reports, and here is what I learned.  

This project took several months because I was working on it alongside other projects. I completed this whole update in Microsoft Word. There were two phases of this project, content editing and redesigning the layout of the report.  

[I use the term “protocol” in this blogpost to refer to document containing a set of requirements that need to be met for a funded agency to run a specific program or project.] 

Redesign Tricks that Work

Here are four strategies for redesigning your report: 1) add color, 2) add more visuals, 3) add checklists and summary lists, and 4) create a 20-minute cover.

1. Add Color 

I added color to each section of the protocol so the viewer can quickly tell which part of the guide they are reading.  

Bold color helps break up the long document and makes it more engaging. I also included an overview at the beginning of each section, so the audience knew what information they would find in each part of the protocol. 

When selecting colors from your agency’s brand colors, try to choose colors that have high contrast against a white background. The American Disabilities Act includes a section on 508 compliance, which means that all content on a website must be accessible to people with disabilities. This definitely applies to text. I use this color contrast tool to determine if my colors meet the federal recommendation of WCAG 2.0 level AA standards. Your colors should at minimum be AA compliant if you are adding color to your text.  

Tips for Adding Colored Blocks Behind Text

Here is a trick to create more accessible documents and save you time when you are adding color to your headers and sub headers: 

1. Format your heading exactly as you want, including font, font size, and color. 
2.  Highlight the text you want to be the heading and right click on Heading 1 at the top of your page (see picture below). 
3. Select “Update Heading 1 to Match Selection.”  
4. Now anytime you want to format your text as Heading 1, just highlight the text you want to format and click Heading 1 at the top of the page. Boom. Done.  

This shortcut works for multiple headings and sub headings and is a major time savor when reformatting documents. This strategy also helps make your document more accessible under 508 compliance guidelines because it helps software for people with disabilities better navigate your content. 

2. Add More Visuals

To make our agency’s document more reader friendly, I wanted to add as many visuals as possible. I looked for places where a visual might help the audience better remember the content. This could be icons, photos, diagrams, timelines, etc. All of these help break up the text for a reader. 

3. Add Checklists and Summary Lists to Long Documents 

This is a lengthy document, so to make it easier for our partners to use, I added check lists and summary boxes with color for quick, easy reference. 

These check boxes can be found under the bullet lists in Word.

I broke down the longer lists into more digestible groups that could be taken out of the protocol and used independently.  

4. Create the 20-Minute Cover 

This cover really did take just twenty minutes to design.

I chose a compass for the background because these program guidelines provide guidance and direction for our grantee agencies who conduct HIV testing around the state. 

I also used a photo of a compass as the background for each of my section headers to build continuity throughout the whole document.  

Report Cover Tips

Try these additional tips when creating your cover:

• Consider the main points of your report or protocol when searching for photos. Use your main ideas to guide your photo searches. Think of what your protocol or report symbolizes and start by typing those words into the photo searches.  
• Avoid images and clip art you see regularly. For example, try to stay away from pictures of puzzle pieces, big question marks, and light bulbs. A good rule of thumb is if you have seen it a lot then it might be overused.  
• If you are going to use a picture of people in the background of your cover, consider what color you put over your photo. Some colors like green or red may unintentionally make the people in your image look sick, or it could just be unflattering.  
• Another option is to use a large icon or vector image to fill the background of your cover. Choose an icon that fills your whole page. Check out these other two reports where I used an icon instead of a photo: 

Result 

To redesign this protocol, I added color to my section breaks and headers, included more diagrams and visuals, created easy to use checklists to make this long document more user friendly, and inserted a 20-minute cover. Ann’s blog post helped launch this redesign, and then I was able to build on her recommendations. I was surprised that her cover strategy works and really only took 20 minutes to find a photo and design the cover. Using a different photo with each report makes each cover unique and saves me from having to come up with a new cover design for each publication.  

Deciding on colors and fonts upfront also saved me lots of time during the redesign phase. It minimized the number of decisions I had to make while reformatting the document. I have received positive feedback from our partners that this version of the protocol is more user friendly and accessible. It is easier to find and retain the key information they need to know about their program.  

Going through this redesign process helps legitimize our department and show that our content and program requirements are up to date with the latest national guidelines. This helps build rapport with our grantee agencies and minimizes the number of repeat questions that are now readily answered in this easy to use protocol. 

Check out the full protocol.  

A Data Visualization Style Guide 

Redesigning this protocol inspired me to create a data visualization style guide for my department, similar to a communications style guide. A data visualization style guide establishes color, font, line, and size guidelines for charts and maps, so anyone can make charts or reports in our department, and they will all look cohesive and align with our brand. 

Here are some examples of data visualization style guides. 

Branding continuity builds trust with your key stakeholders and makes you and your work look more professional. 

Learn More from Sara DeLong 

Subscribe to my blog, so you will be the first to know when I post about creating this data visualization style guide!

The post Report Redesign Tricks that Really Work! Make Your Materials More User-Friendly appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Sara was serious about taking her skills to the next level. Over the past six months, Sara started her own data visualization blog, and Sara and her team transformed their lengthy technical reports into visual summaries that local health departments and community-based organizations crave.

I talk about the 30:3:1 approach to reporting in Soar Beyond the Dusty Shelf Report. The gist is that you write a technical report plus shorter summaries, like a three-pager or a one-pager.

Sara and her team of public health researchers took the 30:3:1 approach to the next level–they even developed a media campaign to get HIV data out of dusty spreadsheets and into the community. You’ll love the photos of the bus and the bus stop in her article.

I hope you enjoy learning these practical tips about effective data communication from Sara DeLong. –Ann

Do you have a long report that took a lot of time and effort, but you’re not really sure how anyone is going to use it? Annual progress reports, data publications, strategic planning documents… many of us spend a lot of time writing these documents, and they’re necessary to capture a lot of detailed information.

Here is an example of how I turned a long report into accessible, graphic summaries, and eventually into a media campaign.

The 130-Page Report

The Wisconsin Integrated HIV Prevention & Care Plan 2017-2021 is 130 pages long.

I took this 130-page plan and paired it down to a 10-page overview document and a one-page snapshot.

10-Page Overview

The 10-page overview is primarily used by local health departments and community-based organizations to identify strategies and data that will support their grant writing.

Readers can pull out the key points of the report more quickly with enough detail to support their own strategic plans and align their proposed activities with statewide plans.

Here is a page out of the 10-page overview:

1-Page Snapshot

The one-page snapshot is intended for the general public, specifically anyone who would like a quick overview of how Wisconsin plans to address the HIV epidemic in our state.

These one-page summaries are helpful for media releases and make great handouts for public presentations on the HIV Integrated Plan.

5 Steps for Transforming a Report into Digestible Summaries

Shedding over 100 pages of content isn’t as simple as hitting the delete key, but with a little planning, you can create tailored one-page and ten-page summaries for your target audiences. Here’s how.

Step 1. Identify the Main Points with Input from Colleagues

My colleagues worked really hard to put together the 130-page strategic plan. One of the biggest challenges of creating the one-page snapshot and the ten-page overview was getting the team to agree on the most important information to highlight for various audiences. Start by identifying your audience and the content that is most important to them. This can take several meetings and revisions, but this step is crucial before you start designing.

Step 2. Create a Style Guide that Specifies the Document’s Fonts and Colors

I created the snapshot and overview documents above, and a colleague created an accompanying slide deck. Designing a brief style guide made it easier to collaborate with my colleagues. Style guides can vary in detail, but creating one with just fonts and a color scheme can make a big difference in the consistency and efficient production of your final deliverables.

I intentionally chose colors that would pop off the page to make the materials as visually appealing and engaging as possible. I also used icons throughout the summary documents. This content can be dense, but icons help break it up for the viewer. Ann Emery demonstrates the power of icons in her blog post, How to Visualize Qualitative Data.

Step 3. Design, Edit, Seek Feedback, Repeat

Since a large group worked on the 130-page document, my team members had different ideas about how the most important information should be represented. Asking for feedback throughout the development of these materials was central to the success and usefulness of the final documents. These feedback sessions included in-person meetings and edits passed via email. By the end, everyone on the team had provided their input and felt a greater sense of ownership of the final products.

Step 4. Pick a Realistic Timeline

These materials were created and approved over the course of two months. The Wisconsin Integrated HIV Care & Prevention Plan has been in use for about two years now, and the summary documents are used regularly when presenting to the public or working with community partners. Even internal staff tend to refer back to these overview documents instead of the 130-page report.

Keep in mind that it’s never too late to put a summary document in play! Ideally, all the final products would be released as a package at the same time, but in our case that wasn’t feasible. These summary materials were created two months after the full report was published.  In future iterations, we plan to create supplemental materials like these when a large report is in the final stages of production.

Step 5. Pick the Right Tools

I created these materials using Microsoft Publisher, which functions a lot like Adobe InDesign but is something all of our staff have on their computers. You can use whatever software you prefer, even Microsoft Word.

The Impact of the 10-Page and 1-Page Overview Documents

We shared the 10-page overview and one-page snapshot with our community advisory group.

They provided great feedback and then requested even more accessible materials covering these HIV-related topics.

So our team went back to the drawing board.

As a result of the community advisory group’s feedback, we contracted with a media firm to develop the HIV in Real Life media campaign based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

This media campaign features residents of Milwaukee who have been impacted by HIV and addresses HIV-related stigma through stories, images, and video.

This was a different kind of information design that looks nothing like the 130-page plan.

There is no mention of the large plan on the HIV in Real Life website, even though its overarching principles are present throughout the campaign.

In the end, the overview documents were a critical stepping stone from the large report to the final media campaign.

The overview documents enabled conversations about how to make the key messages from Wisconsin’s HIV Integrated Plan more accessible to the general public.

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Media Campaign as Information Design

In this media campaign we focused on the stories of people impacted by HIV to highlight data and facts about HIV.

Ronnie tells the story about how the unconditional love of his family is a big reason he is living with HIV and thriving.

Jaymes shares that he learned the hard way how to be a friend and an advocate for the people in his life living with HIV.

Tianna talks movingly about her unwavering support for her best friend, Corey.

These stories counter the fear and stigma commonly associated with HIV. They begin to change the narrative that has been around since the 1980s.

When my team started exploring the possibility of a media campaign, we posed the same questions we ask when approaching any data visualization project.

• Who is our audience?
• What are the main points?
• What is the best method to convey those main points?

We knew we didn’t have all the answers. So we took the general concept of a media campaign to our partners. We attended community events, board meetings, coffee dates, and had many phone conversations.

We got feedback on those three questions, but we also talked to experts who had run previous, local media campaigns to learn from their past successes and challenges.

All those conversations taught us one thing: we couldn’t create this HIV media campaign in a bubble. So we formed an advisory board of community stakeholders to guide its development.

Color

In data visualization, we try to title our graphs using the main findings from the data to do the work for the viewer.

We also focus on using action colors to highlight specific information in our charts. Those same data visualization principles were applied in this media campaign.

Color was the easy part.

We knew we wanted to use bright, vibrant colors to challenge the fear and stigma commonly associated with HIV.

When the campaign launched, someone came up to me and said, “If someone drives by a billboard and just sees the word HIV and those colors this will be a success, because it is so different than people’s misconceptions of HIV.”

Headlines

Creating the headlines was the hard part.

This project started with a 130-page strategic plan, and we had to narrow down the message of our campaign to just a couple of words that would fit on a bus, billboard, or online banner ad. This took a lot of trial and error and actually ended up pushing back our launch date because it was so important to get the headlines just right.

The community advisory board that provided feedback throughout campaign development was instrumental in identifying the final headlines for the campaign. In the end, this campaign was particularly meaningful because it was collaborative and community driven from day one.

Learn More

Take a look at the complete one-page snapshot and ten-page overview documents to see how I transformed my long report into graphic summaries to create an impact.

Not everyone has time or resources to develop a city-wide media campaign, but as data visualization practitioners, advocates and experts we should continue to look for ways to transform long documents into more accessible products that maximize their value for a variety of audiences.

The post Could Your Long Report become a City Billboard? Use Data Viz Techniques to Create High-Impact Materials appeared first on Depict Data Studio.