General Design for Communication

With the basic understanding of visual perception ,we can build a set of visual design principles, beginning with those that apply to table and graphs. Our primary visual design objectives will be to present content  to the readers in a manner that highlights what`s important , arranges it for clarity , and leads them through it in the sequence that tells the 

Story best.

We use visual designer to communicate .There are stories in the numbers that will be perceived and acted upon or will go unnoticed and be ignored , depending on our knowledge of visual design and our ability to apply that knowledge to the important task of communication .

Communication -oriented  design support two fundamental objectives:

• Highlight
• Organize

Highlight

We Highlight  important information to give it a voice that comes through loudly and clearly , without distraction . We organize information to lead readers through it in a manner that promotes optimal understanding and use .

Edwards Tufte: "Above all else show the data "

Data-Ink Ratio : It is an amount of ink that presents information compare to the total amount of ink .

The objective is to reduce the non-data ink to more than what `s necessary to make the data ink understandable.

We highlight data through a design process that involves activities of two types :

1. Reducing the non-data ink .
2. Enhancing the data ink 

Reducing the non-data ink

The process of reducing the non-data ink involve two steps:

Subtract unnecessary non-data ink = Resist the temptation to keep the things just because they are cute or because you worked hard to create them .You must carefully select the content that is essential to the message and trim all else away .

De-emphasize and regularize the remaining non-data ink = Once non data ink is reduced , you should push the non-data ink that remains far enough into the background to enable the data to stand out clearly in the foreground .this can be reduced by visual prominence of the non-ink data components. Non-data items consistent with their supporting role, should stand out just enough from the background to serve their purpose but not so much that they drew attention to themselves.

Enhancing the data ink

You can enhance the data ink through a process that consists of two steps:

Subtract unnecessary data ink = Not all information are equally important .Don`t remove anything that`s important , but be sure to remove all that is peripheral to the interests and purposes of your readers .

Emphasize the most important data ink= Each step in the process of highlighting data results in simplicity. In the Communication of Quantitative information , Simplicity of design is the essence of elegance . Your message might be complex , but its design - the form in which you present it - should be so simple that to your readers it is nearly invisible.

Organize

When your readers looks at a page or screen of information . They immediately begin to organize what they see in an effort  to make sense of it .As a designer of communication it is our job to organize the information for them in a manner  that tells the story as clearly as possible . The page and screen that serves as your medium of communication will often contains more than  a single table or graph . Your message ,may require multiple tables, multiple graphs , or a combination of both , along with the additional text in the form of annotations , sentences or even whole paragraphs. When you arrange the information on the page , you must consciously do so to tell a story . What should I say first ? What should I save for the last ? What should I emphasize more than the rest ? The answer to these question take on the form of visual attributes designed to accomplish the following :

• Group (i.e., segment information into meaningful sections).The Gestalt principles of visual perception reveal a number of techniques that can be used to group information meaningfully. The simplest approach - proximity - is often the best . Table primarily use Gestalt principles of proximity and continuity to organize the different categories into columns  and rows .Graphs use many techniques , such as principle of similarity  and connection.
• Prioritize (i.e., rank information by importance).
• Sequence (i.e., Provide direction for the order in which information should be read )