Showing how design can improve the display of information is one of the most concrete ways to demonstrate the importance of investing in good design. Because if you want to get your message across, you have to make sure people will take the time to stop, look and comprehend what you are presenting. For example, I created the City of Houston budget infographic above to visually demonstrate the city's priorities. And the graphs provide a quick way for viewers to see the differences in funding between departments.
My role in creating all these infographics and data visualization projects included gathering research, editing content, design and production.
With any data visualization project, my goal is to show why design matters. In my experience, design has been undervalued and too often people think the only purpose is to make it look nice. When in reality, applying good design principles to a project from the beginning can be the difference between a success or a failure.
While the viewer may have no idea, in reality, creating detailed infographics and data visualization projects are extremely time intensive. This is due to the fact that they encompass many different skill sets to get to the final product.
Distilling information into visuals that are easy to read was a great learning process and forced me to flex my creative muscles. I had to figure out how to turn spreadsheets and data into a distinct design that would catch people's attention.
These projects gave me a new understanding of how I could position the value of design to those outside the field. For example, now I can show the City of Houston budget document and my one-page infographic. And then you can let people decide which one is easier to understand.