Venn Diagrams, SmartArt, and A Call for Graphic Excellence

Two unrelated items converged for me today:

• Recent failure of the Romney campaign to create a valid Venn diagram. (Ezra Klein reviewed on the Rachel Maddow show July 3rd, referencing fantastic post on Upworthy.) 
• Proliferation of meaningless “SmartArt” diagrams and bad charts in files that come through my inbox. (SmartArt: neither smart nor art.) 

Both represent a bad and growing habit in business, politics, and culture that involves “spicing up your text” without the requisite critical thinking about why and how to do it. It’s part of a broader trend that I call the template culture that confuses actual design skill with the ability to use hackneyed software features and bright colors to create something ”that really pops.“

Unfortunately for all of us, cardboard cutout designers get it wrong. Frequently.

It’s bad for their clients and customers, it’s bad for the design profession, and it’s bad for civil society at large when flash and bullshit take the place of good design – the kind of design that helps clarify and reveal ideas instead of clouding and concealing them. At best, this kind of graphic nonsense is an amusing and colorful waste of space, but at worst it can actually do harm. It can misrepresent ideas and facts, confuse audiences, and generally muddy any topic.

Edward Tufte, the patron saint of information graphics, used the term Graphical Integrity to describe a sort of Hippocratic oath for designing charts and diagrams. It’s pretty simple: don’t lie. Of course, to not lie, one first has to think about and understand some things before jumping into Powerpoint world, such as:

• What does the data mean (if you don’t have data, this could be an issue)? 
• Who is the audience? 
• What is the goal of the overall piece, the goal of the graphic? 
• What s the most effective way to present that information graphically to help clarify an idea? 

Sadly, none of these questions can be answered with the SmartArt selector (or similar tools in Keynote, Prezi, etc.). It’s not Microsoft’s fault, they do a great job – and have gotten much better – at trying to embed some of this thinking into their products. But templates, no matter how well-designed, aren’t a substitute for a critical-thinking person, like an experienced graphic designer.

Marketing person, graphic artist, business person, journalist, educator – I’m talking to you. Here’s a challenge:

• If you don’t know who Edward Tufte is, you should. Look it up, read one of his books, take his class. Dan Roam is a good substitute (less theory, more humor). 
• If you’ve used SmartArt in any Microsoft product without first sketching something by hand, stop. Draw your next idea by hand first (a whiteboard is fine). 
• If you have ever used the phrase “punchy” or “really pop“ when describing the need for a graphic, please avoid these and other similar phrases for the next six months. Instead, try this one: “what is the purpose of this chart or diagram?” 
• If you don’t know how to edit every part of a Microsoft chart, including what to take out, please learn this skill and, more importantly, why you might want to do that. 
• If you use charts and diagrams in your work, and you don’t know a genuine graphic designer, you should get to know one. They will help you succeed. (Hint: they often refer to what they do as “problem solving” and rarely lead with a list of software mastery or use terms like “innovative solutions.”) 

Let’s start a movement for graphic excellence. Everyone wins.

(I also discussed diagrams without meaning 18 months ago.)

Google News: design for democracy

Bruce Tognazzini has a great post on the bad redesign of Google News. He raises lots of good points on both the interface (which has gone very much backward) and the process (which seems to have ignored all sorts of user feedback and UI design theory), but his number one reason that the new Google News sucks is the one I find most interesting: political drift introduced.

He suggests that Google News has (prior to the redesign) helped Americans find the political center of any story because it has presented so many different sources in a reasonably un-biased way. He also points out something I have long believed: that while customizing news is seductive, it ultimately hurts one’s perspective by presenting narrower and narrower viewpoints.

It is disappointing that a company that has gotten so many design things right over the years got this one so, so wrong.

More on Minard

A few other thoughts came to mind after my last post.

I didn’t know Chuck Minard, but I speculate that if he were alive today and wanted to use Powerpoint to speak to large groups, he might look to Garr Reynolds or Duarte Design for some ideas on making the presentation experience meaningful and memorable (see Al Gore). If he was speaking to a small group or even a single person, he might follow some of Andrew Arbela's advice on conference room style presentations.

As it is, I don’t think he was doing either.

Charles Joseph Minard lived in a very different time than we do. Isn’t it a little silly to comment on a graphic dawn almost 150 years ago using today’s context where we use tools like Powerpoint and Adobe Illustrator and where every speech assumes a projected slide show?

I mean – really?

If Minard were alive today, maybe he would be making a movie about the senseless waste of 412,000 lives in 1812, or self-publish a book, or write a blog – who knows? Point is that we can’t really understand Minard’s 19th century world using our 21st century reference points.

Still, compare it to some other 1861 graphics to see how very good this was then, and how very relevant the lessons are for modern information design. Minard’s graphic is still a better image for conference room style presentations than much of what is produced today, and remains a useful model for a single image that could be spoken to and left behind – tangible evidence of a good story told in a small group.

Ok, enough of that. I’ll now let Minard rest in peace.

Mr. Tufte goes to Washington

From the BusinessWeek Innovation and Design blog:

President Obama Appoints Edward Tufte – Big Victory for Data Visualization And Transparent Government

For those unfamiliar with Mr. Tufte, he has written a few seminal books on presenting information and is one of the strongest advocates for clarity and purpose in all sorts of information and presentation design. He also teaches an excellent one-day course on presenting data (highly recommended).

His appointment to the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel is a good thing for more transparency and usefulness in government.

Congratulations Edward.

Climate Change and Information Design

A great entry on RealClimate, titled Curve Manipulation Lesson 2, shows the importance of proper charting techniques. I particularly like the postscript:

p.s. Beck appeared on German TV last Monday, after the “Swindle” film was shown, and he is announced to appear on the program “Report München” in the first channel of public German TV next Monday (18 June), to educate the viewers about another of his fantasy graphs, namely his CO2 curve. It promises to be a must-see for friends of the unintentionally farcical.

Edward Tufte refers to this as “graphical integrity” and it is one of the basics in his classic The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. I share ET’s passion for getting this stuff right because it matters and:

• Done right, it can illuminate information and greatly improve communication by making complex ideas clear
• Done wrong, it can obfuscate data and confuse or alienate people from otherwise good ideas

Good data display counts.