Visualizing data
Your task is to find something generally, not just personally, newsworthy — and there are plenty of candidates for this — from among the collection of numbers below. You may focus on any or all of the groups or categories listed. Just because you have data for something doesn't mean you have to use that information. The one thing you can't do is add other data to these, although you may — and probably will have to — do mathematical processing to the data you have. If you have questions, ask the instructor via the message board. Do not just plow ahead or try to get an answer on your own.
You probably will need to analyze, condense or combine the data in some way (calculating such things as percentages instead of raw numbers) and provide context by doing such things as comparing one group to another, the latest data to previous data, etc.
You undoubtedly will not use all the data provided, just parts of it. Which part or parts you choose are up to you, provided you produce engaging, accurate coverage. A lot of important stories can be told from these numbers. Then again, some of the data isn't interesting at all. You have to find the wheat among the chaff. Just make sure the data you select tell a story, with a newsworthy and timely main point, a richness of secondary details about trends, and lots of supporting details — all in the form of charted data, not just tables of numbers or ranked lists.
The data aren't designed to "go with" some story. They are supposed to tell a story — or, at least, some significant element of the story — all by themselves. Imagine that, if this were a real assignment, you also would be told to do reporting based on this information and create a textual story. We won't actually create the text, but imagine that this graphic would accompany such text if we did.
It is important that the story you tell be newsworthy — in other words, have some current importance. We don't talk about "olds"; we talk about "news." Make sure whatever you present is of timely, not just historical, interest. Also be careful of jumping to conclusions you cannot support with the data at hand. It's important to have a theory as to why something might be changing, but in most cases you can't prove actual causation, only a correlation between some event happening and data immediately beginning to behave a certain way.
Here are the data. Click anywhere within the table to download it in the form of an Excel spreadsheet.
Do your graphic in style
After you've analyzed the data, try to produce an infographic from it. And try to follow these set of style rules.
Every publication has a style. The one we've chosen for use this semester is, like most, somewhat arbitrary. However, it represents the type of limits you'd have to deal with in working in The Real World. It is reflected in several built-in In Design styles: Object style Infographic and Paragraph styles Infographic/Infographic headline, chatter, credit, etc.
In Illustrator, similar styles have been created in a template you may download by right-clicking or control-clicking on this link and selecting Save link as. . . .
- Box — The first thing to do, before you begin creating type, is to shrink your graphic down to a column size and surround it with a 0.25-point rule box. Nearly all graphics are one column. In our standard page size, a one-column box is 112 points (9p4.333 or 1.5602 in) wide. If you have tons of information that justify a larger box, two-column measure is 235 points. Remember: All graphics must fit an exact column measure and must allow approximately 11 points of space (an inset) between the edge of your box and the beginning of the type inside it. Don't cram everything right up against the border. In our Illustrator template, graphic style Graphic accomplishes these settings, and Window / Workspace / BMDC Standard makes that panel visible. The eyedropper tool also may be used to copy these settings from the sample graphic on the template.
- Headline — Usually two lines for one-column graphics, rarely one or three, the headline should hierarchically tell exactly what the main point of the graphic is. It does not merely state in categorical terms what the graphic is about. Use paragraph style Headline in the Illustrator template, which will produce a headline in 18 point Myriad Pro, Bold Condensed, with 110% (in this case, 19.8-point) leading, 85% horizontal scaling, -3% letterspacing and 100% word spacing. Use normal sentence case. Don't hyphenate at line's end. Avoid splitting phrases between lines. Use present tense. In other words, write it like a normal headline. (For two-column graphics, a one-line head is standard.)
- Pointer box — Highlight the key bar, pie slice or other main point in 100 percent black (graphic style Key data ) and practice dual coding by telling, as well as showing, us what it says. Don't create confusion by citing in the pointer box something other than the specific quantity being pointed to. Create the one-piece pointer box with a rectangular information area and triangular pointer "tail," formed by adding points to the box with the "addition" pen tool. The box and the tail should be the same shade (white or black, not gray), without a line between them. Use paragraph style Blurb in the InDesign template — 12 Myriad Pro, Bold Condensed, with other values similar to those above — to highlight the main point.
- Chatter — We're now getting into the secondary points of the graphic, so point sizes and weight decline. They still need to appear to be at least as large as the body type in the page surrounding, so use paragraph style Chatter in the Illustrator template — 9 Myriad Pro, Regular (not bolded or condensed), with 95% scaling, +3% letterspacing and 105% word spacing. Typically, this part of the graphic is a terse dual coding of the secondary rather than main points of the graphic, which are told visually by gray, secondary bars or pie slices. It also can provide essential background information about the newsworthiness of the material or the data presented, even if that information is not charted. It should not overwhelm the rest of the graphic in length, nor should it be a "lead" or information without which the rest of the graphic cannot be understood. Use standard AP style in writing this, but remember that it will be read after the headline, pointer box and key bar/slice/data point. Typically it is read at about the same time as secondary bars/slices/data points.
- Scales — Since you won't, for ethical reasons, elide the scale so that it starts at anuything other than zero unless you are dealing with something like temperatures, you typically need not label the zero point. You do, however, have to provide grayed, 0.25-point grid lines for at least two evenly spaced divisions between zero and a rounded number (50 and 100, for example; not 33, 66 and 99) immediately below the maximum data point. You typically need not provide any above the maximum point. Label the grayed out lines (graphic style Grid ) with paragraph style Scale — 8 point Myriad Pro, Condensed, with other values similar to those above — a smaller size in recognition of the fact that we are now down to the tertiary or "supporting details" are of the graphic. The same rule applies to pies. If a key slice represents the number of students wanting to kill the instructor, "Want to kill" would be the data label, in a point size similar to a pointer box. The exact number would be a supporting detail, in a point size similar to a scale. You may abbreviate scale items but should not resort to using scientific notation. Use "$1 million," maybe with "million" on a second line, but not "$1" with a note somewhat else saying "figures in millions." This is akin to using a key, and keys, as the book explains, are typically counter-productive.
- Source and credit — Use paragraph style Credit — 7 Myriad Pro, Condensed, with other values similar to those above. Phrase them: "Source:" followed by the tersest, simplest version possible of the agency from which the information came, and "Graphic by" followed by your name. Place these within the box, at the very bottom. These items, unlike any other, may break into the margin of whitespace typically left between the elements within the graphic and its border. The stylesheet provides enough spacing (two points) for the type to be placed flush to the border.
Here's what a simple, sample graphic should look like in both 2-D and 3-D, but please note the explanation on the template of when 3-D is appropriate. Right-click or control-click the image and select Save link as. . . to download the template.
