THE VISUALISTTHE VISUALIST

LET’S BRING YOUR STORYTO LIFE

MARKETPLACE.VISUAL.LY

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needs, guarantee timely delivery at a fixed price,

and provide premium support and seamless

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Content is still king

For more than a century, marketers have built brands by aligning themselves with compelling and relevant content. From soap operas -- the first form of “branded content” —to sponsorships, from commercials to advertorials, brands have long understood content’s value in creating consumer connections.

Brand as Publisher

The world has changed. Today’s marketers are increasingly publishers in their own right, creating content to help tell their stories, cultivate audiences, and increase their businesses’ bottom lines. According to eMarketer, content marketing is now the #1 focus for marketers, ahead of email marketing, SEO, and even social media. Nearly half (48%)

BRANDS HAVE LONG UNDER-STOOD CONTENT’S VALUE IN CREATING CONSUMER CONNECTIONS.

by Kristin Kovner

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of marketers devote at least 10% of their budgets to content creation; 19% devote 25% or more. In total, marketers spent a whopping $43.9 billion on custom content production and distribution in 2013, according to the Custom Content Council: up 9.2% from 2012.

This huge investment in content spans a variety of formats: print, blogs, email, infographics, video, virtual events, webinars, whitepapers, podcasts, interactives, e-zines. The use of infographics and video, in particular, is accelerating, but the unifying theme among all these growing content formats is their emphasis on visual storytelling.

The Power of Visual

Storytelling

Marketers are turning their focus toward visually-driven content formats because they work.

With the average brand now posting 1.3X daily to websites, blogs, and social channels like Facebook and Twitter, according to Hubspot, content creation has become a necessary part of every marketer’s strategy.

Brands are increasingly turning to partners – like Visually - to help generate this content. The Content Marketing Institute recently found that the majority of marketers (62%) currently outsource content creation to partners – a trend that increases with company size and is especially true for video production.

Best Practices for

Content Marketing

At Visually, we work with the world’s leading brands every day to help them tell their stories effectively. We fuel their content marketing strategies by employing a world-class team of graphic designers, data journalists,

writers, developers, editors, animators, and producers across a variety of disci-plines, including infograph-ics, interactives, and videos.

In the pages that follow, you’ll find rules for creating videos and insights into the new, marketplace-driven economy, along with tips and tricks for telling your brand stories in innovative ways. Please share your thoughts with us @visually and #contentisking, and find inspiration for your own content marketing efforts at marketplace.visual.ly.

Visual formats:

Grab and hold consumers’ attention, a key benefit for marketers in an age of clutter, noise, and short attention spans.

Invite engagement, driving greater brand recall and consumer impact than text alone – as Edgar Dale famously conceptualized in his Cone of Learning, we remember only 10% of what we read, but 50% of what we hear or see.

Drive social distribution, generating earned media impressions and delivering greater audience reach. In fact, we have found that posts with visual content generate 30X more pageviews than posts with text alone.

ORIGINS OF COMMON UI SYMBOLSThey are road signs for your daily rituals—the instantly recognized symbols and icons you press, click and ogle countless times a

day when you interact with your computer. But how much do you know about their origins?

SOURCE: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/08/computer-symbols-history/all

This terror is known by many names: the hypnowheel of doom, the spinning pizza, the pinwheel of death, the SBBOD (spinning beach ball of death). Apple officially calls it “spinning wait cursor,” but most Mac users hail it with a simple expletive. It first appeared in Apple’s OSX and continues to indicate that an application is not responding to system events. As many have noted, the SBBOD is actually an evolution of the wristwatch “wait” cursor that the company first used in early versions of the Mac OS. While its design origins remainremain mysterious, Apple likely dropped the watch as it reminded users of the time passing as the program remained perpetually hung up. Despite this, the modern iteration has proved only one thing though: it’s entirely possible to despise a pretty, hypnotic spinning wheel.

⌘What do Swedish campgrounds and overuse of the Apple logo have in common? A lot, according to Andy Hertzfeld of the original Mac development team. While working with other team members to translate menu commands directly to the keyboard, Hertzfeld and his team decided to add a special function key. The idea was simple: when pressed in combination with other keys, this “Apple key” would select the corresponding menu command. Jobs hated it—or more precisely the symbol used to represent the button—which waswas yet another picture of the Apple logo. Hertzfeld recalls his reaction: “There are too many Apples on the screen! It’s ridiculous! We’re taking the Apple logo in vain!” A hasty redesign followed, in which bitmap artist Susan Kare pored through an international symbol dictionary and settled on one floral symbol that, in Sweden, indicated a noteworthy attraction in a campground. Alternately known as the Gorgon loop, the splat, the infinite loop, and, in the Unicode standard, a “place of interest sign,” the command symbol has remained a mainhas remained a mainstay on Apple keyboards to this day.

Ah @, the only symbol on the list to earn a spot in the MoMa’s architecture and design collection. How has this fetishized symbol become so potent over the years? It probably has something to do with the net-ruling rune’s deep and mysterious origins. It has been known by many names: the snail (France and Italy), the little mouse (China), the monkey’s tail (Germany). In 1971, a Bolt, Beranek & Newman programmer Raymond Tomlinson decided to insert the symbol between computer network addresses to separate the user from the terminal.terminal. Prior to Tomlinson’s use, the @ also graced the keyboard of the American Underwood in 1885 as an accounting shorthand symbol meaning “at the rate of.” Go back even further and things start to get hazy. Some suggest that @ has its origins in the sixth century, when monks adopted it as a better way of writing the word ad—Latin for “at” or “toward”—that was not so easily confused with A.D., the designation for Anno Domini, or the the years after the death of Christ.

@

Back in 1995, a small group at Apple—the main developer of FireWire—set about designing a symbol that could accurately reflect the new technology they were working on. Originally intended as serial alternative to SCSI, FireWire’s main allure was that it promised high-speed connectivity for digital audio and video equipment. So designers opted for a symbol with three prongs, representing video, audio and data. Initially, the symbol was red, but was later altered to yellow for unknown reasons.

People were confused by “the standby state.” It seemed counter-intuitive for an electronic device to be neither on nor off. So, after the IEEE nicked the ICE’s standby button (remember?), it decided some rechristening was in order. The governing body renamed standby mode “sleep,” to invoke the state where humans are neither on nor off. Today, a crescent moon is the de facto sleep state symbol on devices in the United States and Europe. Its metaphorical power is undeniable! Travel to Japan, though, and you’ll probably see the occasionaoccasional “zzz” button.

Created as part of the USB 1.0 spec, the USB icon was drawn to resemble Neptune’s Trident, the mighty Dreizack. (But that doesn’t mean you should go around stabbing people or trying to domesticate dolphins with your flash drive.) In lieu of the pointed triangles at the tip of the three-pronged spear, the USB promoters decided to alter the shapes to a triangle, square and circle. This was done to signify all the different peripherals that could be attached using the standard.

While the play/pause symbols aren’t native to computers, they’ve made their way onto keyboards, media players (real and virtual), and every other device capable of playing audio or video. Unfortunately, neither the right-pointing triangle nor the double pause bars seem to have a definitive origin. They first appeared as tape transport symbols on reel-to-reel tape decks during the mid-1960s. In some cases, they were accompanied by the (double triangle) rewind and fast forward symbols. The direction of the play ararrow indicated the direction the tape would move. Easy.

As far as the pause symbol goes, many have noted it resembles the notation for an open connection on an electrical schematic. Some say it is simply a stop symbol with a chunk carved out of its center. We’d put our money on a more classical origin: In musical notation, the caesura indicates a—wait for it—pause.

You’ve probably heard the story of 10th-century Danish King, Harald Blåtand, as it relates to Bluetooth, right? He was renowned connoisseur of blueberries; at least one of this teeth was permanently stained blue; yadda yadda yadda. What you might not know is that the Bluetooth symbol is actually a combination of the two runes that represent Harald’s initials. It just so happens the first Bluetooth receptor also had a “teeth-like” shape, and was—you guessed it—blue. But the symbolic interplay doesn’t end there. As the Bluetooth SIG notes, Blåtand “was ininstrumental in uniting warring factions in parts of what are now Norway, Sweden, and Denmark—just as Bluetooth technology is designed to allow collaboration between differing industries such as the computing, mobile phone and automotive markets.

Despite being “invented” many years prior, the thing we now recognize as the Ethernet port symbol was actually designed by IBM’s David Hill. According to Hill, the symbol was part of a set of symbols that were all meant to depict the various local area network connections available at the time. The array of blocks, which are purposefully non-hierarchical, each represent computers/terminals. While Hill makes no specific mention of Bob Metcalfe’s earliest Ethernet sketches, the modern symbol uses them for inspiration.

It’s plastered on T-shirts; it tells you which button will start your Prius; it’s even been used on NYC condom wrappers. As far back back as World War II engineers used the binary system to label individual power buttons, toggles and rotary switches: a 1 meant “on,” and a 0 meant off. In 1973, the International Electrotechnical Commission vaguely codified a broken circle with a line inside it as “standby power state,” and sticks to that story even now. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, however, decided that waswas too vague, and altered the definition to simply mean power. Hell yeah, IEEE. Way to take a stand.

They are road signs for your daily rituals—the instantly recognized symbols and icons you press, click and ogle countless times a day when you interact with your computer. But how

much do you know about their origins?

http://visual.ly/origins-common-ui-symbols

SHARING ECONOMY?IS YOUR BUSINESS READY FOR THE

From finding places to stay

with Airbnb to snagging a ride

with Uber, the collaborative

economy model has so far

focused primarily on consumers.

Yet the industry, estimated to

be valued at over $26 billion, is

already challenging standard

notions of business. While most

assume that big companies will

find the collaborative economy

too risky, too unstable, or too

unorthodox, that hasn’t stopped

companies in fields like graphic

design, software development,

and even outsourced back-office

ACCESS TO MORE OPTIONS

One of the biggest strains on

productivity and customer

satisfaction in any market is a

lack of access to the full range of

available options. Be it choosing

the best advertising firm, finding

a web designer, or identifying the

perfect creative talent for a new

infographic, the selection process

is often so limited by geography

and awareness that the match is

less about finding the perfect fit,

and more about making the best

of what’s available.

The collaborative economy and

the marketplaces through which

it runs help solve this problem

by aggregating thousands of

potential matches in one central

online location. Working online

eliminates geographic concerns

and places the emphasis squarely

on achieving the ideal fit.

Marketplaces employ advanced

algorithms to help filter vast

amounts of information so each

individual can find the best match

possible, regardless of how much

they know about the market.

The chances of finding the talent

you need to complete a task

are much higher than if you just

consulted your address book,

asked for recommendations, or

relied on an agency. And a true

marketplace goes both ways.

Take Uber, which insists that both

drivers and passengers rate each

other before they can complete

a transaction. In this way people

are rewarded for a job well done,

providing a natural performance

incentive that raises the quality of

the marketplace.

services from shattering these

preconceptions and proving

the viability of the model for

the world’s largest and most

influential brands.

So why are companies like Visa

and Microsoft turning to the

collaborative economy? Simply put,

in many cases the collaborative

economy model produces the

highest-quality results while

cutting down on turnaround time

and cost. Here are three reasons

why the collaborative economy has

had a pull on top-tier brands:

BY STEW LANGILLE

THE MODEL IS FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGING THE WAY BUSINESSES WORK.

ARE YOU IN?

2

The decentralized nature of the collaborative economy leads to exciting collaborations.

THE PROCESS IS MORE

NIMBLE AND COSTS ARE

GUARANTEED

In a standard search, once a

marketing manager has selected

an agency or freelancer, starting

over if difficulties arise can be a

long, arduous process. At best,

the marketing team needs to find

another designer or agency, wasting

valuable time, money and effort.

Collaborative marketplaces already

help mitigate this result with their

smart matching capabilities, but the

guarantees some of them offer - like

switching designers at no additional

cost - can provide peace of mind

and willingness to consider new and

innovative ideas. In fact, the ability

to offer specialists, where one might

have settled for a generalist in the

past, is one way the collaborative

economy is able to deliver higher

value to those that participate in it.

For the talent, too, it’s attractive.

Creatives want to work on

interesting projects with top

brands. The decentralized nature

of the collaborative economy makes

this possible and leads to exciting

collaborations where talent is the

only true cost of entry.

Many marketplaces also provide

cost guarantees that reduce one

of the primary pain points of

interacting with a freelancer or

agency--price. Because prices are

set in advance, both sides have a

preexisting understanding that

helps brands and designers avoid

surprises and allows clients to focus

exclusively on the project.

IT’S MORE EFFICIENT

For a brand looking to outsource

a project, two key factors are how

much it will cost and how quickly

it will get done. One of the biggest

costs for any design agency or

freelancer is the time and effort

necessary to seek out and identify

new clients.

Marketplaces give designers the

ability to focus on designing, which

means they can do more projects at

a faster rate, with a lower cost. This

filters directly back to the brand, who

pays less for the project while also

cutting down dramatically on their

search time.

However, the benefits go far beyond

lowering costs for designers and

taps directly into the value of a wide

marketplace. Because brands have

access to far more creative talent,

they are exponentially more likely to

have a great fit for the job, available

to complete the job under any time

constraint. Whether it be two weeks,

two days, or 24 hours, tight deadlines

are more easily met with a wider

talent pool.

The value of the collaborative

economy is that it places an emphasis

on maximizing value. Resources--be

it unused apartments, hotel rooms,

cars, or creative freelancers--are

often wasted as their availability goes

unseen by those who could potentially

utilize them. The Internet provides

the ideal means of overcoming this

obstacle by aggregating vast amounts

of data in central locations. Now,

information is readily accessible, and

with the rise of mobile devices, it is

accessible at all times of day.

Marketplaces all but eliminate risk

for those that participate in them by

making sure the talent is suited for

the task and by keeping the supply

and demand sides honest through

an ongoing process of evaluation and

feedback. Marketplaces add value

for both, which is the secret to their

scalability. Consumers get it already.

It won’t be long before the enterprise

catches up.

Stew Langille is the CEO of Visually. Follow him on Twitter at @slangille

pic of Stew?

THE COLLABORATIVE ECONOMY IS NIMBLE. WITH ITS GREATER SUPPLY, A MARKETPLACE CAN PROVIDE CREATIVES WITH EXTREMELY SPECIALIZED SKILLS.

3

Visually connects the world’s leading brands with seasoned creative professionals to create amazing visual content.

The world’s best creative talent

designers animators journalists developers

Find out more and join us at visual.ly

The script – or the story – of a video is the gold. “Story?”

you ask, “How can I tell a story in sixty seconds? Don’t

people just want to see a bunch of flashy, cartoony

images?”

Think of what grabs you right in the beginning of a video.

It’s the promise that you’ll be taken on an informational

journey involving something you can relate to, or want to

relate to, in an entertaining manner.

A big part of this can be achieved by developing the

script from the core of what your product or company

stands for, as opposed to stringing together buzzwords.

The language should naturally unfold from the heart of

the video.

Our advice: Don’t write the script yourself, at least not

entirely. You’re too close to the fire. Too attached to your

product. Give a professional writer an outline of what

you’re looking for and let them do what they do best!

Cramming ten years of your company’s history into

your video won’t work. It’ll likely be visually crowded

and overwhelming. The only way to stuff that much

information into a reasonable running time is to speed

up the video, but that would make the information flow

too fast for any of it to sink in.

Our advice: A calculated rundown of your company’s

history won’t get people hooked. What will do that is a

story about the product or idea you’re presenting. So ask

yourself: what’s most relevant to the story I want to tell?

You could spend hours presenting either side of the

immigration debate, for example — yet a video Paragon

Design Group created for the George W. Bush Center

through the Visual.ly Marketplace presents engaging

data on the issue, without overwhelming the viewer:

On a good day, most people’s attention span for online

videos is about 90 seconds. A thought-out and well

paced visual-story balance can get all of your points

across in that time or less. Well rounded is better than

longer.

Our advice: Resist the temptation to keep extending

the running time and try refocusing on boiling down the

main elements that you want in your video.

Here is a video that walks us through decades of history

– in just 80 seconds:

Music should be an accent to any video, not something

that takes the audience’s attention away from the

visuals. It should enhance the subtle emotional beats

that drive the story forward and support keeping the

audience engaged.

The images seem to hang too long up against the

voiceover that’s relaying twice as much information.

This is usually a budget issue, but better to wait until you

have a bigger budget than not enough animation. Or…

too much animation.

Our advice: You don’t want your video to be Cars 3.

You want it to be visually exciting, but you don’t want

to blast potential clients away with so much action that

they forget what they’re watching. The pacing of the

animation should flow naturally with the voice over

and/or the music.

7 Mistakes

That Could Turn Your Video

into a Disaster

It’s every marketer’s dream: producing a company video

that goes viral or gets nominated for an Emmy Award.

A video should, at the very least, engage its target

audience, while getting a brand’s key message across.

There’s no lack of articles offering advice on how to do

just that. Yet, many marketing professionals get it wrong.

Let’s take a look at seven common mistakes that, if avoided,

can help you shape your video into a captivating, and even

inspiring, advertising tool.

BY tasha hardy

2. OVERLOADING THE VIDEO

WITH INFORMATION.

4. CHOOSING MUSIC THAT

STANDS OUT TOO MUCH.

5. MAKING THE ANIMATION

TOO FAST- OR SLOW-PACED.

3. MAKING IT TOO LONG.

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1. OVERLOOKING THE

IMPORTANCE OF THE SCRIPT.

http://vimeo.com/70493105

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXXAUqilOaw

There needs to be a flow to the script that explains your

company and/or what you have to offer. This seems

obvious, but a lot of videos provide only disjointed

company information and don’t have a clear intention.

Our advice: You want to engage your audience right

off the bat, take them on a little journey that shows the

richness of your products and services and leave them

wanting more.

Voice overs can be pricey. Depending on the length of

the voice over, amount of re-records and language, you

can expect to pay anywhere from $200 to $450.

Sound like a lot? Contemplating having your Aunt Mary

take a crack at it? Think twice. A voice over can make or

break a video.

Voice over artists are professional actors, trained in

using their voice as a tool to sell – your product. They

know where to “punch” a point in the script to get your

viewers’ attention, but also where to soften up the mood

to induce certain emotions, like trust (in your company

or product). They also have state of the art equipment

that makes for a crisp, clear read, whereas standard

computer microphones often come off staticky or

muffled.

Our advice: Animators generally have their favorite

sources for voice overs and it’s best to trust their

judgement. But you have a hand in it, as well. Have the

voice-over actor submit a few recordings to you after

giving them direction, or direct them live and have them

play the recordings back.

Tasha Hardy is the Video Marketplace Manager at Visually. Connect with her on Twitter: @londonfogger.

7. USING VOICE OVER READ BY

A NON-PROFESSIONAL.

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6. NOT HAVING A CLEAR GOAL

IN THE FIRST PLACE.

CONTENT IS KING

now devote at least

has

and

to content creation

49%

O

F M A R K E T ERS

10% of their budget

are the fastest-growing

content marketingtactic among

infographics

marketers*

#1

B2B

DID YOU KNOW?

30MILLION

visitors to date

= 2 MILLION

largest database

data visualizations of designers

65K

of marketers62%

now use video in theircontent marketing

with and

PUBLISHERVisually

CEOStew Langille (stew@visual.ly)

CCOLee Sherman (lee@visual.ly)

CMO Tal Siach (tal@visual.ly)

EDITORAleksandra Todorova (aleks@visual.ly)

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jared Fanning (jared@visual.ly)

DESIGNSofya Yampolsky (sofya@visual.ly)

Contact Us(855) 968-3282sales@visual.ly

Visual content can be a powerful thing. Infographics,

interactive visualizations, presentations, videos: when

done well, they can get your company name or product

out there, build trust among customers, help create or

establish a powerful brand or message.

Visual content can inform, entertain, impress. But to do

all that, it needs to be done well.

Too often, brands focus on results, but sidestep the

key ingredients of a successful visualization that would

actually bring those results. They want a viral visual.

They want pageviews, media pickups, social media

shares, conversion rates.

But viral doesn’t always equal good in a more

conservative sense: a solid, informative, ethical piece

that is beautifully designed and flawlessly executed.

At Visually, we start each project trying to achieve just

that. Unfortunately, some projects get hijacked by rigid

corporate branding demands or unrealistic expectations

on part of the commissioner or designer… or both!

Others succeed. From our most successful projects --

and the experience of going through not-so-successful

ones -- here are the five key ingredients of visual content

we can all share with pride.

Aleksandra Todorova is the Editorial Director at Visually. Follow her on Twitter: @Aleks_Todorova.

X

by Aleksandra Todorova

THE FIVE KEY INGREDIENTS

GREAT VISUAL CONTENTof

http://visual.ly/search-sweet-death http://visual.ly/sugargram

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5

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Successful projects start with a great idea. To come up with one of those, it helps to think like a journalist. Journalists, unless they are covering breaking news, usually work with cycles. Take the personal finance space: in November and December, everyone writes about holiday spending and saving. In January, it’s credit card debt hangover. February: love and money. March: taxes. And so on. Every year, the stories are similar, if not the same. So everyone looks for new angles or interesting ways to tell those stories. Some succeed, many get lost in the noise.

It’s the same with visual content: chances are, your idea has already been done. Can you tell it in a new, more interesting way? Can you tie it into a recent event or interesting trend? Can you find a useful and informative angle that will really benefit your target audience? If not, you will only be putting your name and company logo on a piece that will become one of many — but not one that stands out.

A GREAT IDEA

Too often, we end up with more data than is needed to make a single infographic, video or interactive. And that’s perfectly fine — as long as you’re OK with excluding some (or a lot!) of it from the piece we’re working on. Trying to say everything with one piece almost always results in something no one finds interesting or sharable. It either has too much information in it and it becomes overwhelming, or lacks an actual story.

If you find it impossible to cut data out, get a fresh set of eyes. Here, your designer can be incredibly helpful: ask them what they would leave out if they were confined within certain print dimensions. What is the most interesting story that they see?

WILLINGNESS TO LET THINGS GO

Think your company’s new product or factory is interesting enough to showcase? Unless your new product is the cure for cancer or your new factory was built on the Moon… chances are most people won’t care. Blatant self-promotion will also make it very difficult, if not impossible, to garner interest and pickup — not to mention, respect — from mainstream media and large websites. Even if you do have super interesting, never-before-released data, try to present it the way a respected publisher would: focus on the data and the story, not on the brand. If the story is good, the brand will get noticed. Trust us.

HONESTY AND HUMILITY

Speaking of trust: it’s imperative. Your researcher and/ or editor know best how to find and tell a good story. Your data analyst knows best what your data says. Your designer knows best how to design. Trust those people—your creative team—to do the best job they can, because you can be sure that they are trying. Being too controlling as a client or showing in any way that you do not trust the team will only alienate them. You will lose their trust, but worse, you will lose their creativity and eagerness to produce something that they, too, would showcase with pride.

TRUST

Many data visualization professionals, especially in the academic community, start with a data set and dig for stories in it. That is a great way to find new and interesting stories — provided you’ve got a good data set to work with. But in business, many commissioners are unwilling to take on the risk that their data will tell a story they (or their CMO) will not like.

So projects often start with an idea, followed by chasing after the data to support it. If the idea is flexible (i.e. we can change things if the data we find points us in a different or more interesting direction): great! If not, however, finding the data to support and visualize it is often a wild goose chase. Those are usually the cases where you must resort to questionable sources or even tweak data points in order to tell the story you are set on telling. And that’s just wrong.

THE RIGHT DATA

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MORE THAN HALF WAY

TO CREATE GREAT STORIES,DATA JOURNALISTS NEED TO MEET DESIGNERS

Data journalism is a relatively new (at

least in name) field of reporting. The

amount of data created in our lives

and work is increasing exponentially,

so it makes sense to have journalists

dedicated to making sense of it all.

But a journalist and data together do

not necessarily make data journalism.

Great data journalists have another

essential quality: a sense of design.

At Visually, we pair data journalists

with data designers to get projects

done. Most of our journalists meet

the designer halfway, by handing off a

text-based outline. This usually results

in good projects, but not necessarily

great projects.

A great data journalist, on the other hand,

can elevate the outcome to greatness

by meeting the designer more than half

way — even if the designer is mediocre.

The first step to being a great data

journalist is becoming familiar with

the wide array of data visualization

styles that do NOT come out of Excel.

They often have strange names like

choropleth, sankey, treemaps, and

parallel coordinates.

But don’t let the names scare you. At

some point, all of these only existed in the

mind of some creative individual.

Data visualization is a rapidly changing field with plenty

of unexplored territory. The below visualization doesn’t

have an official name... so let’s call it “The Hairball.”

The chart below is one of the holiest relics of data

visualization. It was published in 1869, well before any

of the modern visualization tools we use today — like

Tableau, Processing, R, or Excel — existed.

So don’t let tools hold you back, either. All you need to

get started in visualizing data is paper and a pen, and

maybe a ruler. The tools will help you deliver something

end-to-end — that is, from data to design — but if you are

working with a designer, let them do the final stretch.

Once you have familiarized yourself with these design

techniques you have to learn to see them in the data

you are researching. This futuristic ability comes

with practice.

You, the journalist, are the closest person to the data.

You have the widest view and can spot the unseen

angles and can capture the tone. If all you are presenting

to the designer is some bullet points and summarized

articles, then that myopic view is all the designer has to

work with. A great designer may be able to make some

magic with that but great data designers are just as

rare as great data journalists.

When you are doing your research and looking

at a spreadsheet, try to think of possible visuali

-zation methods.

As an exercise, try to avoid using bar and pie charts.

These are the tourist traps of data visualization and

will distract you from the real wonders down the road.

Sometimes the data may fit well into a sankey diagram,

or perhaps it’s a tree map, or stream graph. All of these

types can convey a ton of information and carry a story,

and if you are not looking for them, you will miss the

opportunity for telling a great story with data.

Journalists are not designers, so they’re not expected

to start pushing pixels or vectors around. This is the

designer’s job and what they are good at. But meeting

the designer more than half way means providing some

visual structure -- something as simple as a sketch in

a notebook -- that the design can then run with and

create something great.

Jess Bachman is a Creative Director at Visually. Follow him on Twitter: @mibi.

by Jess Bachman

YOU, THE JOURNALIST, ARE THE CLOSEST PERSON TO THE DATA.

http://visual.ly/tech-patent-wars

http://visual.ly/napoleons-march-moscow-war-1812

See no data, design no data