If you can get away with it, why not try a little flair in your graphics and your points will be more memorable.
A good model in many cases is the newspaper USA Today, which sports some of the liveliest graphics in the country.
It regularly publishes charts with such sexy facts as amount expected to go for health care in 1990 or the percentage of women who received haircuts and other beauty-shop treatments in 1983.
To jazz up the chart titled “Only Their Hairdressers Know,” an artist drew the face of a woman with her hair blowing out. The lengths of the bunched-up strands varied according to the percentages of women receiving different kinds of treatments. “Haircut” (76 percent) was three times longer than “Coloring” (a mere 24 percent). Today the average micro user may not be able to produce such “hairy” graphics, but the future may be different.
Snazzy graphics is like colorful writing. Humanize your work. The “Only Their Hairdressers Know” chart wasn’t in the fanciest of color—just black and white and blue—but it was more eye-catching than most eight-color ones might have been.
And if you yourself can’t draw too well even with a computer? Well, what a chance to liven up the workday of a young, talented aide who’d like a break from the typewriter, er, word processor!
Besides, on occasion, you can at least do what an editor may have done with the hairdresser chart—think up the basic idea.
KEEP THOSE CAPTIONS LIVELY, TOO
Imagine you’re writing captions for a hybrid of the New York Times and The National Enquirer.
Try to be accurate, clear, and interesting.