I recently saw a boring, black and white table as I was scrolling through LinkedIn.

The topic caught my attention—it was about Hispanic adults living with HIV—but the poorly-formatted table wasn’t making the patterns easy to understand.

I had a 30-minute window before I needed to pick up my kids from school, so I dove in!

In this 7-minute summary, you’ll learn:

1. bare-minimum edits for tables (alignment, decluttering, etc.);
2. a few different ideas for visualizing percent changes (checkboxes, slopes, deviation bars, icons); and
3. the winning design.

What’s Inside

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:18 The original table
• 1:06 Remaking the table with the same formatting
• 1:23 Gray horizontal lines
• 1:31 Left-aligned text
• 1:48 Trend lines
• 2:27 Percent changes with deviation bars
• 2:53 How-to tips in Excel (sparklines, data bars, IF statements)
• 3:28 Checkboxes to show increases or decreases
• 3:52 Adding state icons with the StateFace font
• 4:27 Adding arrow icons
• 4:54 Narrowing-down the best ideas
• 5:25 Re-sizing the columns
• 5:40  Not so Debbie-Downery

Download the Spreadsheet

It’s here.

What’s Inside

• 0:00 The 2-pager about NIH grant terminations
• 2:20 Lookup table with Stateface icons
• 2:38 Original table from the policy brief
• 2:47 The dataset
• 2:58 Idea 1: A better table that’s Accessible and accessible
• 3:22 Idea 2: A static graph or map
• 3:40 Idea 3: An interactive visualization
• 3:55 Idea 4: A 2-page infographic
• 4:06 The call-out boxes with icons at the top
• 4:12 The finished map
• 4:30 The finished table
• 4:42 Color-coding by category
• 4:51 Big-picture first, then more detailed, then more detailed
• 5:15 The finished product again
• 5:29 More ideas for the original policy brief
• 6:04 Let’s connect

Download the Spreadsheet

It’s here.

If so, I wrote this article for you!

This is one of mannnny techniques for transforming words into visuals.

Let’s say you’ve got a bullet point list about U.S. states, like this:

This is a good first draft, but let’s keep going. Icons can boost the memorability of our findings. So let’s add icons:

Let’s add more icons—the arrows, which I downloaded here from the Noun Project—to further help our viewers understand that we’re talking about a variable that increased or decreased:

And don’t forget to color-code and bold a few key words to make the remaining text more skimmable:

Want to make something like this? I hope so! It’s easy.

I’m going to show you the magic trick I used to create each of the state icons.

I typed some letters into text boxes on my slide:

And changed the font to StateFace:

StateFace is a magic font that lets you turn regular ol’ letters into state outlines:

How to Install the StateFace Font

Here’s how you download the StateFace font onto your computer.

1. Go to https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/stateface

Font Squirrel is the website where I download lots of my custom fonts. (I also download fonts from www.google.com/fonts.)

2. Click on the Download OTF button

Within a few seconds, a Zip folder will begin downloading onto your computer.

Do you work for a Federal or state government agency? Or an organization with strict downloading rules? This is where you might need to pause and get your IT administrator’s permission. It’s worth the extra paperwork! StateFace is such a versatile font. I use it all the time in my visualizations.

3. Open the Zip folder

Mine ends up in my Downloads folder.

4. Click on the StateFace Regular file and select Install

My Downloads folder has two files in it. Click on the StateFace Regular file. You’ll see a pop-up window, like this one. Click on the Install button.

5. Begin Using StateFace in PowerPoint, Word, Excel, etc.

Your new font will show up in PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and so on.

You’ll want to refer back to the Keyboard Map regularly to figure out which letter produces which state shape. You can view the Keyboard Map here: https://propublica.github.io/stateface/

Within minutes, we’ve transformed our forgettable bullet point list into a straightforward and great-looking visual. We could include this visual in the executive summary of a report or as one of the introductory slides in our presentation.

Your Turn

Have you used the StateFace font in your project? Comment and let me know how you used it! This is just a fictional example, and we’d all benefit from hearing about real-life scenarios where it was helpful.

Bonus: Download My Slides

Want to explore how I created this simple visual? Download my slides and use them however you’d like.

(I’m using custom fonts and colors here–Montserrat and StateFace–so the file will look a little different on your computer.)

Download my slides

Like most of us, they’re inundated with tons of data. My job was to make the data easier to “see” and understand. Rather than expecting them to read a 50+ page report prior to the meeting, we’re going to condense a few key facts into a single handout.

The anonymized data for this blog post:

• These aren’t the exact states.
• These aren’t the exact health indicators.
• These aren’t the exact numbers or percentages.

Pretend that health indicator 1 is something like fertility rate (births per woman). I realize the numbers are too high to represent actual fertility rates. It’s fake data. But you get the gist of what this dataset might show you.

Exploring with Spark Lines

I began exploring the data table with spark lines and spark columns.

Just highlight the row or column you want to visualize (e.g., C3 through M3), and find the icon that says Insert Sparklines.

Exploring with Conditional Formatting

Conditional formatting is the 8th World Wonder.

Rather than color-coding cells by hand, you just highlight a row or column (like B3 through M3), click the Conditional Formatting icon (typically in your Home tab), and start clicking on whatever you feel like. You don’t need to know what you’re doing. You won’t break anything.

In this example, I selected Color Scales. (Data Bars are also a personal favorite–I teach you how to make them here). After creating Color Scales, I adjusted the print settings so that the heat table could serve as a one-page meeting handout in itself. I’ve been using heat tables a lot recently, so I’ll post more examples in future posts.

One Chart, Oops

I tried highlighting the entire table and adding a single chart.

The computer instinctually knows this is a bad idea.

Excel gets confused because we’ve got too many different units: years, and numbers, and percentages, all together.

The messed-up graph looks like this:

Small Multiples

Since we can’t put everything onto one chart, we’ll need small multiples.

The formatted version would look like this. You might recognize the edits:

• Icons for each state (with the StateFace font; see a tutorial here)
• One color for each state (see color-coding blog posts here)

Download the File

These are Excel charts, pasted into PowerPoint for easier arrangement.

Then, I would Save As a PDF and share that PDF with the audience.

Want to explore the file on your own? You can download it here: https://depictdatastudio.ck.page/SmallMultiplesAreaCharts