C = Connect: How to merge analytics with design

Today, here are some thoughts about visually communicating from Melanie Stinson, director of Brand Engagements at Stinson Brand Innovation.

If you’re like me, you’re looking for a way to navigate through the swamps of information you encounter every day. Whether you’re analyzing world news, customer profiles, market research, financial reports, or new business leads, it’s still your responsibility to communicate the results in ways that:

• Connect with the audience
• Are Honest in it’s representation of the facts
• Are Easy to understand
• Motivate to action

With “data visualization” you can open your audience up to more visual representations of your information and insights. There is a probably still place for your 75-page paper, but that is not always the best way to effectively communicate complex information or data points.

In The Visual Miscellaneum: A Colorful Guide to the World’s Most Consequential Trivia, David McCandless makes beautiful connections between the information he’s collected and the visuals that represent it.

Some are funny, like the “Timeline of global media scare stories (p 22)” and the “Massive multiplayer online worlds (p 184).” Others are enlightening, like “Yearly manmade vs natural carbon emissions in gigatons (p 102)” and “How people think (p 80).”

The conversation and usage of this method is vast and wide, but accessible. Here are a couple links that I really like:

Visualcomplexity.com/vc/
Flowingdata.com

The merging of analytics with design is stretching our minds and capabilities. As companies and industry offerings begin to overlap, and creative briefs become more similar, it’s the team that most uniquely executes the information that will succeed.