Newsletter #5: Visual Thinking
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Barbara Myers is our guest writer this month. She has been active in writing, editing, research, planning and marketing in the architectural sector since 1980. She has written and researched in the areas of energy efficiency, sustainability, high performance buildings, professional practice, request for proposal documents and stakeholder engagement practices. Barbara works with SvN Architects + Planners in Toronto and Wiser Projects in Victoria. She is a Governor of the National Trust for Canada, a Board member of the Council for Canadian Urbanism and the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects Accreditation Council. Barbara is also the past Chair of the Editorial Board of Plan Canada, Canadian Institute of Planners. She can be reached at ashdownplanners@gmail.com.
Newsletter #5: Visual Thinking
BARBARA MYERS on Describing Design
Architects, graphic designers, urban designers, engineers, planners and landscape architects communicate to clients and the public through design drawings. Designs include site plans, building sections and elevations, building renderings, floor plans, aerial views, photography, surveys, models and more. Designers' many years of professional education equips them with a vocabulary and terminology that they instinctively turn to in describing their work.As design professionals, we make assumptions about a client’s understanding of design language and terms. Clients typically look at the utility and function of design and extract their own meaning and understanding. Design professionals often need to assist clients in fully understanding language and terms. Clients will appreciate plain language focused on function, utility and beauty.
A few examples of terms and required interpretation include the following:
ERIN GUTSCHE on 5 Tips for Creating Clear Charts
What’s the best way to describe data and trends?
It depends on your audience, purpose, and medium, but “Show me, don’t tell me,” is the adage that comes to mind.
Here are five tips for creating functional, readable charts.
- Choose the appropriate visual. Pie charts are great for showing a distribution within a population, whereas line charts show trends over time. Column charts help to compare values across different categories or assets. Hint: Hover over the different chart types found on the Insert tab within Excel to see a description of what each chart is used for.
- Ensure the title suits the information being presented. Your reader should be able to quickly understand the purpose of a chart just by reading its title. Titles should be specific and succinct.
- Label your axes. These labels should describe not only what each axis represents but also the appropriate units of measure. By default, axes are often provided in a small font; feel free to make them larger for readability.
- Include a legend. Identify each series with its colour and label, and use distinct, dissimilar colours to avoid confusion. (Hint: Change individual chart element colours by right-clicking on an element, then selecting the desired Fill and Outline colours. Alternatively, you can select a new colour palette for the whole worksheet by clicking on the Colors dropdown found on the Page Layout tab.) You may also need to increase the font size of your legend for readability.
- Use textboxes and callouts to highlight key points. If your data shows an anomaly, consider adding a textbox to explain it. This will help your audience understand the data more easily the first time around.
Charts are a great way to represent distributions, trends, and comparisons. By following the tips above, you’ll be creating clear, effective charts in no time!
LISA ORCHARD on Using Visuals to Explain Planning Concepts
Good design is clear thinking made visible. - Edward Tufte
As urban planners, we can get caught up in our own lingo. This is fine when we’re talking to each other, but when we need to connect with people who aren’t immersed in our ways of seeing and thinking - which is often spatially - we need to make some adjustments in how we write and present.
Writing in plain language makes it possible for people to find, understand, and act on professional expertise. Visuals can complement the effort, and at times can replace text altogether. Graphics, illustrations, maps, diagrams, photos, and the like can keep your reader engaged and help them take in more information. Good places to use them, for example, are:
• Explaining new plans (use illustrations)
• Identifying locations (provide maps)
• Demonstrating procedures and processes (include diagrams).
Sometimes our visual elements try to say too much. Like with your writing, keep it simple and clear. There’s little value for anyone in “chartjunk”: useless, uninformative, or confusing quantitative information. Stay focused on the purpose of your report or presentation, and what the audience needs to know. Think about your readers and how your information would matter to them. Consider factors like literacy, education, experience, level of interest, and their circumstances. Do your visuals help them understand your message?
Imagine you’re at a public meeting and using a term like “placemaking”. It’s a difficult one to explain, because it’s a concept and a process. The idea is that city spaces should be planned for people first (e.g., rather than cars). As a process, it’s about involving communities in creating or redeveloping a place, like a park, street, or campus, and being open to their ideas in a real way.
For someone who doesn’t use the term, placemaking could be interpreted literally, as a dressed-up way of saying “making a place”. They might not fully appreciate why the concept has deep roots in city building. It might even make them feel a bit dumb, like this is something they should know but are confused by. Clouding things even more is that in practice this term is often used by city builders to describe any new development plan where the public is even peripherally consulted.
If you really want people to participate in your project, you need to explain it clearly. Photos, maps, and illustrations can be help do this, but can also inspire new ideas and creativity, a sense of ownership, and community cohesion if they’re produced with the audience in mind (not necessarily what the planners need to see to get approvals). It’s worth giving it a try. If you’re not very visually-minded, work with a graphic designer to help you translate your complex professional ideas into ones that your audience can work with and build on for a more inclusive city.
For help, check out The Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams.
