Colors direct our eye movements, and therefore our brains and attention.

It’s up to you: will you help or hinder your reader’s understanding?

Step 1: Start with Your Brand Colors

Otherwise, your graphs, slides, and dashboards will be Frankensteined.

I’ve written about brand colors and brand presents in other posts.

Some of those resources include:

• Examples of organizations’ brand colors used in graphs
• How to read color codes in style guides
• How to enter your custom color codes in Excel

Step 2: Do Your Accessibility Testing

I’ve written about colorblindness, color contrast, grayscale printing in other posts.

Some of those resources include:

• An official color contrast test
• An official colorblindness and grayscale printing test

Then, your accessibility testing “results” should go inside your organization’s Dataviz Style Guide.

Step 3: Apply Those Brand Colors According to the Data & Variables

Now, it’s time to apply those branding colors to ensure that your graph is intuitive.

Look at your graph: Is your variable binary, sequential, diverging, or categorical?

Or, do you want to tell a story with a dark-light contrast?

Binary Variables Get Binary Color Schemes

Binary variables include yes/no data, such as:

• yes/no survey questions
• people who speak Portuguese as their primary language vs. people who don’t
• people who own a home vs. people who don’t
• people who graduated from program on time vs. people who didn’t
• people diagnosed with an illness vs. people who don’t have it

For binary variables, choose one brand color. The “presence” of the attribute gets the darker color, and the “absence” of the attribute gets the lighter color.

Here’s an example:

Sequential Variables Get Sequential Color Schemes

a.k.a. ordinal

Sequential variables have a natural order.

Examples include:

• age ranges (5-9 year olds, 10-14 year olds, and 15-19 year olds)
• income levels
• highest educational level completed (some high school, high school diploma, some college, etc.)
• years (Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3 of a project)
• semesters (fall, spring, fall, spring…)
• cohorts (first cohort of participants, second cohort, etc.)

For sequential variables, choose one brand color, and use a light-dark gradation of that color.

Here’s an example:

Categorical Variables Get Categorical Color Schemes

a.k.a. nominal

Categorical variables include:

• race/ethnicity (African American, Asian, Hispanic/Latin@, White, etc.)
• gender (male, female, nonbinary, genderfluid, etc.)
• chapters of a report
• sections of a presentation
• categories of a dashboard

For categorical variables, use a different brand color for each category.

Here’s an example:

Diverging Variables Get Diverging Color Schemes

Diverging variables are opposites.

Examples include:

• agree/disagree scales on surveys
• changes over time (e.g., “50 percent decrease” or “70 percent increase”)

For diverging variables, choose two brand colors, and place the darkest shades on the poles.

Here’s an example:

Combining these Techniques

In most real-life projects, we need to combine these color techniques.

In this map makeover, for example, we needed to:

• use brand colors, not software defaults;
• use two brand colors, one for each category; and
• apply a dark-light gradation to each map, because these are ordinal variables.

In this population pyramid makeover, we needed to:

• use two brand colors, one for each timeframe, and
• apply a dark-light storytelling emphasis to each pyramid.

Your Turn

What types of color questions do you have? Comment below..

Color-coding by category is greater.

But avoid using those brand colors as body font within paragraphs.

Colored font is okay for headers, but not for the body.

What’s Inside

0:00 Intro

0:31 Before: Example from a Public Workshop

1:33 After: Dark Dark Dark Gray Body Font

2:21 The Before-After Difference

Accessibility means different things to different people.

I see two main types: Big A and little a.

1. Big A Accessibility means that our graphs meet official accessibility guidelines so that they’re understandable for people with disabilities. In the United States, that means 508 Compliance.
2. Little a accessibility means that our graphs are understandable for non-technical audiences; skimmable; and generally not a garbage heap of jargon.

Both Big A and little a are central in my work.

Here’s where you can learn more.

Big A Accessibility

Here’s a (partial) list of everything you’d need to do to pass 508 compliance guidelines.

Directly Label

Remove legends and directly label the data.

Add White Outlines

Outline the touching, filled shapes with white borders (i.e., cells in a heat map, slices in a pie chart, locations in maps, rectangles in stacked bar charts).

Make Sure Graphs are Legible for People with Color Vision Deficiencies

Red-green colorblindness isn’t the only type, but it’s most common.

And, it’s the most problematic for data visualization. We love to use “stoplight coding,” especially in dashboards. We’ve all seen dashboards where green means “we met the target” and red means “we didn’t.”

For people with color vision deficiencies, those reds and greens just look like yellows all blended together.

Tips:

• Avoid red-green color combos (try red-blue, orange-green, or orange-blue for stoplight coding instead).
• Use direct labels.
• Test your drafts.

Make Sure Graphs are Grayscale-Friendly

Printing is less common nowadays, especially with so many people working from home indefinitely. Who wants to pay for their own color ink?!

Your infographics, reports, slideshows, and reports might still be printed.

And they might be printed in grayscale.

Let’s plan for grayscale printing ahead of time to make sure the visuals will still be legible, just in case they’re printed.

Tips:

• Use direct labels.
• Add white outlines.
• Test your draft.

Use Plenty of Color Contrast

The other night, as I was reading my 4-year-old a bedtime story, I was struggling to read the words on the page. The book used colored font against a colored background, and the words were kinda small. Those were all fixable problems!

Tips:

• Don’t use colored text against a colored background. Here’s how to place text on top of photos so that it’s legible.
• Make sure all your colored text (e.g., for headings) is bold.
• Make sure your grays are dark enough. Software defaults are terrible at this. Enlarge and darken those defaults!!

Use Larger Fonts

Increase the font size (I recommend 11+ for documents and 18+ for slideshows, not Excel and Tableau’s puny size 9 defaults).

Again, the software defaults don’t help us here. Their defaults are usually way too small.

Add Alt Text

Add alt text to all images for standalone documents (reports, dashboards, infographics, etc.), including graphs.

Molly Burke’s Instagram is my favorite alt text inspo.

little a accessibility

These are techniques that won’t necessarily help you pass official accessibility guidelines… but are still a good idea if you want to make charts that people actually understand and use.

Actually Use Graphs

Use less text and more graphs!!!

Add graphs alongside those boring bullet points.

Choose the Right Chart

Go beyond the bar chart.

Use Data Storytelling

Use data storytelling, which I define as:

• writing takeaway titles instead of topical titles and
• highlighting one key finding at a time in a darker color.

Color-Code by Category

One of my favorite techniques of all time.

Color-coding by category helps us chunks the information into manageable pieces.

We can color-code in presentations, reports, dashboards, and one-pagers.

Lower the Reading Level

I’ve written about reading levels several times:

• In this blog post, you’ll see a re-written chart title for a conference slide.
• Here are some common data phrases, re-written.
• Here are some common research methods phrases, re-written.

Lower the Numeracy Level

Here’s how.

Use a Consistency Text Hierarchy

Make sure all the Heading 1s match, all the Headings 2s match, and so on.

Use Horizontal Text

It’s faster to read than diagonal and vertical text.

Avoid Underlines

Only use underlines for hyperlinks (not for headings).

Avoid ALL CAPS

It feels like shouting and takes longer to read than mixed case letters.

Place Text Next to the Graph

Not on the next page so that it’s faster to read.

Add Symbols and Icons

They make graphs easier to navigate and they boost the memorability of our findings.

• Here’s an example with state icons.
• Here’s how to use the StateFace font.
• Here’s an example with realistic human icons (instead of gingerbread people).
• And the realistic human icons, in a GIF!

Presentation-Specific Techniques

Talk about one thing at a time so that what your audience is hearing and seeing match.

Use a microphone!!! In-person and online. I don’t care if you think your voice can fill the room. It can’t, especially for people who are hearing-impaired. For virtual presentations, purchase a microphone. Or, at the bare minimum, wear the earbuds that came with your phone (because they likely have a built-in microphone). Tinny, echo-y sounds are hard for all of us.

Report-Specific Techniques

Follow the 30-3-1 approach. Limit the body to 30 pages (or less!), and then create a separate 3-pager and 1-pager.

Use visual appendices instead of black and white appendices to make the patterns more obvious.

Dashboard-Specific Techniques

Don’t expect busy, non-technical audiences to interact with your dashboards.

Involve the End Users

Involve the end users in the sensemaking process, e.g., by using data placemats and by following the Choose Your Own Adventure method in presentations.

Listen to what users say they need… but give them what they actually need.

Remember the Humans Behind the Data

I love this example.

Your Turn

Which of these techniques are you already using?

Why techniques might you try in the future?

Sometimes, it’s easier to understand several small graphs than a single graph.

I was recently working with an organization to visualize which states were using their software programs.

States might use:

• Software A
• Software B
• Or, both software A and B

Before: A Single Multicolor Map

Here’s what their visualization looked like.

They had a single U.S. map with one color for each scenario:

• one color for states using Software A
• another color for states using Software B, and
• another color for states using A and B.

Fairly straightforward, right?

It took us a while to spot patterns, though. Three colors is a lot to understand at once. It’s not impossible, but we had to think about it for a moment.

Multicolor (well, multi-hue) maps take a while to interpret.

Multi-hue maps aren’t colorblind-friendly. Here’s a simulation of what the map would look thanks to https://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/.  

Multicolor maps aren’t grayscale-friendly, either.

After: Small Multiples Maps with One Color Each

In lieu of a multicolor map, try small multiples!

In the redesign, we created three maps instead of one.

Now, we’re showing a single variable on each map, so the audience can understand it at a glance.

Small multiples binary maps (your dark brand color + light gray) are often faster to read than multi-hue maps. It’s counterintuitive, I know. We’re asking people to read three maps instead of one. But, three fast maps will beat one slow map any day of the week.

Small multiples binary maps are colorblind-friendly. Everyone can spot the dark brand color vs. the light gray.

Finally, small multiples binary maps are grayscale-friendly. Everyone can distinguish the dark gray vs. light gray.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Both styles fit on a single page (a goal in their project).

Both styles have room for explanatory sentences (something I recommend in all one-pagers).

Only the small multiples version is colorblind-friendly and grayscale-friendly.

I’d argue that the small multiples version is faster to read, too.

Download the Files

Want to explore my Excel file and Word doc?

You’ll see:

• How I formatted the Excel table that feeds into the maps
• How I arranged everything inside good ol’ Word

Download them here: https://depictdatastudio.gumroad.com/l/SmallMultiplesMapsInExcel

Your Turn

Have you split your multicolor map into small multiples?! Get in touch when you apply this technique to your own projects.

In this blog post, you’ll learn from Elizabeth Dove. Elizabeth is a professor at the University of Montana who teaches art and design. She also co-directs the Innovation Factory (IF). Thanks for sharing, Elizabeth! –Ann

—–

I teach art and design at the University of Montana, and completed Ann’s Powerful Presentations course during Spring 2021.

I registered for the course because although I have advanced graphic design skills, I still thought I could make more effective presentations by working through the course’s sequential lessons of message, design and delivery.

The course was great, and I’d like to share some of what I learned! So here is one trick, one tip, and one thing to try.

Presentations Trick: Adding Perfect Shapes

Sooner rather than later you’ll need to insert a shape into your slide, and often you’ll want that shape to be a perfect circle or square.

You might have figured out how to enter height and width dimensions to get a perfect square for instance in PowerPoint:

• Insert
• Shape
• Draw a squareish shape
• Shape Format
• Enter 2.00” for height and 2.00” for width to make a perfect 2” square

But a faster way is to:

• Hold down the SHIFT key as you drag out a shape, and it makes it symmetrical in height and width, so you’ll get a perfect circle, square, or triangle, or star every time.

Hold down the shift key whenever you resize as it will keep whatever proportions intact for every shape, just identically scaling it larger or smaller.

I first learned this trick using Adobe software and was pleased it works in the Office suite too, so try it in whatever design software you use frequently if you haven’t already!

Presentations Tip: Monochromatic Tints of Brand Colors

In the Powerful Presentations course, we learned how to set-up brand colors, brand fonts, and save them as a custom theme.

This is a time-saver and adds a sense of visual cohesion to any presentation.

Using PowerPoint, I further figured out an easy approach to making title slides where you can quickly switch between colors to tint a photograph, illustration or graphic to match your branded palette. It’s a snap.

I started with this design, a grid of 12 circles, each with a different image. My design uses four colors from the brand palette of my university, which are I already setup in PowerPoint as custom colors.

I am developing a new course called “Data Arts,” which introduces basic data visualization techniques as well as the work of contemporary data artists. While I like this design for the course’s promotional material, I found it’s a little too busy and colorful to use as a background for my presentation’s title slides.

But check out this easy alternative:

Double Click or Right Click>Format Picture to bring up the Format Picture menu.

Select the Landscape Picture icon>Picture Color>Presets.

Pick from options using your brand colors. I prefer the bottom row of options, which adds a monochromatic tint of color over the image while maintaining contrast and brightness.

With one click, change to try another color.

Save and close your file as normal.

Good news – when you return to work on it days later all these choices remain, including just reverting back to your original. This is referred to as “non-destructive” editing in the digital imaging world, and it is such a great feature for experimentation and creativity, because you risk nothing!

Creating Cohesive Title Slides

I quickly created a title slide for use on all my course presentations with the same image as a background, as I think this communicates cohesion and familiarity to my students.

But each time we switch to a new section of the course, the title slides also switch to a new brand color that corresponds to that section, as follows:

This color tinting technique can be applied to apply to many image types, including screenshots and photographs, giving you a quick win for design cohesion and unity.

For additional control over the intensity of the image, try adjusting Picture Transparency in the same PowerPoint Picture Format menu.

Thing to Try

Early in the Powerful Presentations course we had a lesson on Creating a Visual Framework.

In short, the visual framework is a design element – like an icon – that is symbolic of the organizational approach taken within the presentation.

For example, a simple Venn diagram with two parts could be your visual framework, and it would be communicating that two things are being discussed as well as their critical overlapping region.

Using this icon early in your presentation and returning to it throughout the talk or the project helps your audience know where they are in the process, and lets them absorb a lot of information without feeling overwhelmed.

It helps you – the presenter – organize and clarify your thoughts since they fit this visual model.

Simple enough, right?

Well….. kind of.

It’s simple and apparent once you pick your visual framework. But that selection is critical, and I don’t think it’s easy, but I still recommend wrestling with this task.

It is important because it’s making us think visually, so that we can then effectively communicate visually. We have to tap into the most creative part of our brains and pick a visual metaphor.

This metaphor, or framework, is an iconic shape or diagram that will resonate with your audience: maybe a pyramid, a cycle, or a ladder.

Although it is a simple shape it operates symbolically to represent the strategy and approach you are taking with the presentation as a whole. It is making the abstract concrete, its art and its design, and that is tough!

Ann coached us to dive into this territory, while acknowledging its tough. We thought broadly about our topic and what we wanted to communicate and achieve in our presentation. Are we discussing a project that is likely to cycle through sequential steps, looping to renew and begin again? Then maybe something like this circular diagram.

Are you working on a project where disparate entities are operating in tandem, but directly not partnering or collaborating while working towards a shared goal? Then maybe something like these parallel arrows each making progress left to right.

Does your presentation start with a shared premise and set of conditions, but is expected to branch out in unexpected or experimental ways, somewhat unevenly? Then maybe this is network icon could be the visual framework.

Does your project start with a set of broad foundational skills, that act as a layer to support successive steps, which each get more important and also more refined as you go? Then maybe a pyramid is the right visual metaphor.

Hopefully you get the idea!

Simple iconic shapes like interlocking puzzle pieces, nested concentric circles, segmented donut shapes or hive-like hexagonal structures are all possible solutions – but each of these visual metaphors communicates a very different approach, strategy or experience to a viewer.

To get started, check out the free resources and download designs to get preliminary ideas from: https://diagrammer.duarte.com/.

How to Use a Visual Framework

Once you do the hard work to pick your visual framework, how do you use it?

Ann suggested four main opportunities, as follows:

1. Providing an Overview in the Slidedeck
2. Introducing Sections in the Slidedeck
3. Reinforcing Sections in the Slidedeck (helps the audience oriented to where they are in the presentation)
4. Consistency Across the Slidedoc (for branding and polish)

I applied my visual framework in each of those four categories, and appreciated the icon’s value in helping me organize and improve the visual cohesion of my presentations.

But I see the significance of designing a visual framework as so much more. The effort to pick the right visual metaphor transformed the way I understood my own content and how I should be teaching it.

By thinking through the symbolism of hierarchies, nested shapes, steps or cycles I found myself inspecting the content of my course in important, deep, and insightful ways.

By asking myself to design a visual analogy – this simple icon/diagram – I had to address the themes and intentions of my projects and my approach to communication early in my process.

Vital work! Try it!

Connect with Elizabeth

LinkedIn: @elizabeth-dove-406

Website: www.elizabethdove.com

My graph looks great on screen, but not when printed.

The grays blend together and I can’t tell which color is which.

Why We Should Care About Grayscale Printing

It’s easy to brush off this problem—“Just print everything in color!”

Or, “Why are you printing at all? Just tell people that your document can only be read on-screen!”

Color Printing is Expensive

First, color printing is expensive–$13 to $75 per ounce, the cost of fine champagne or perfume.

If you work for a billionaire, go for it.

The rest of us can think of better ways to spend our money.

Printing is Great! Someone Thought Your Data Visualization Was Worthy of Being Shared

Second, you should be patting yourself on the back every time your work gets printed.

Printing is a great sign!

It means someone found value in your graph and they can’t wait to print off a few copies to share with everyone else at your next meeting.

We need to anticipate that our graphs might be printed in grayscale and applaud ourselves when that happens.

How to Check Whether Your Graphs are Grayscale-Friendly

Here’s how to check whether your graphs are grayscale-friendly (without wasting ink by printing drafts on paper) and how to fix them when they’re not.

Step 1. Build Your Graph in the Software Program of Your Choosing

Make your graph.

Here’s a regular ol’ stacked column chart that uses one of my client’s color schemes (this exact purple and green) and their fonts (Corbel).

I made this graph in Excel and pasted it into PowerPoint.

You can apply the same process in Word, too—make your graph in Excel and paste it into Word. You just need a software program that lets you adjust your picture’s colors (from color to grayscale).

I don’t care which software program you use to design your graph. Nobody cares what type of quill Thomas Jefferson used.

Step 2. Save Your (Draft) Graph as an Image File

Save your graph as an image file.

I often paste living, breathing graphs from Excel into PowerPoint as Microsoft Objects.

But for this grayscale-testing technique, we need to convert our graphs into image files, like a PNG or JPEG file.

In my example, I went to Save As in PowerPoint.

Then, under Save as Type, I selected a JPEG file.

It doesn’t matter which type of image file you select from this list; the graph or slide just needs to be an image.

Step 3. Insert Your Image File into a Blank Slide in PowerPoint or a Blank Page in Word

Add a new, blank slide:

Insert that image file you created a second ago.

I went to Insert, clicked on the Pictures icon, and opened the folder where I had saved my graph as an image file.

Now, the first slide is the original graph and the second slide is the image of that slide.

Step 4. Re-Color the Image in Grayscale

We’re going to re-format the image file a bit. Let’s see how the image would look in grayscale.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Click on the image file to activate it.
2. Then, go to the Format tab.
3. Select the Color icon.
4. Choose the Grayscale option. There are a few grayish options. Just hover your cursor over the options until you see the one named Grayscale. 

This menu is available in both PowerPoint and Word. It’s probably in non-Microsoft programs, too, but the vast majority of my clients use PowerPoint and Word, so these are the programs I need to use most often for them.

Step 5. Preview Your Graph in Grayscale: Is it Legible?

Congrats, you’ve got a sneak peek at what your graph would look like when photocopied!

Unfortunately, it’s not entirely grayscale-friendly.

I can tell that there’s a dark and a lighter segment, but I can’t tell which one is Females and which one is Males.

The legend is too hard to decipher in grayscale.

Step 6. Edit Your Graph and Increase Accessibility

There are two strategies for making your graphs more grayscale-friendly.

Direct Labels Make Graphs More Grayscale-Friendly

Remove the legend and place your labels as close to the data as possible, which is called direct labeling.

In this scenario, the Total, Females, and Males labels go directly on top of the columns.

Notice how I only labeled the first column for Q1. That was intentional. I teach my viewers how to interpret the graph on the left side and then they’re free to read it by themselves. Labeling every single column would add unnecessary clutter.

White Outlines Around Shapes Make Graphs More Grayscale-Friendly

I outlined the purple and green rectangles in white.

This will make it easier to distinguish between the shades of gray.

In pies, you would outline each slice in white. In waffles, you would outline each square in white. And so on.

Step 7. Test Your New Graph Again

Save your edited graph as an image file. Click on the image file to activate it. Then, go to the Format tab, select the Color icon, and choose the Grayscale option.

Here’s how my new and improved chart would fare in grayscale.

Can you see how the direct labels and white outlines make a difference?

Your Turn

Do you have additional secrets for assessing whether your graphs are grayscale-friendly?

I taught myself these tricks through a lot of trial and error (and wasted money on printing out drafts on paper).

Comment below with your own tips.

Bonus: Download the Materials

Want to explore these graphs in more detail? Download the slides used in this blog post.

Download the Slides