Enriching content through connection. We're going to look at ways that we can make better, more efficient, more effective connection with their audience. The key here is a sophisticated use of contrast. Again, we are working with a framework that helps us answer the question of what is good data visualization? We talked about clear meaning already, now we're on to the second element, this idea of sophisticated use of contrast. And contrast can be used to make quick connections with our audiences. The way our brains operate when contrast is present on a page, it is where our attention goes. Contrast can be introduced in four primary ways. It's the idea of size contrast, color contrast, size, or shape contrast, and then what I would call contrived contrast, or sort of designed contrast size. Contrast is pretty straightforward. It's having elements of two different size, and the difference is striking enough to attract our audience's attention. Color can be used very effectively to make elements of our chart pop. It can also be used if we're designing in a more muted color to send other elements to the background, so that our audience doesn't spend much time looking at them. And we want to do that with distracting, or the unimportant content on our page. Shape contrast is another technique that will communicate meaning effectively. The best way to think of this is through iconography, right? And when an icon takes on a shape to represent something that is different from another icon with another shape, audiences can clearly identify what the differences are there, and we can use those effectively in our presentations. Finally is this idea of contrived contrast, and contrived contrast is planned full application of contrast. I'm talking about pre-attentive attributes like boxes, arrows, those sorts of things that we design into our chart to draw attention to certain elements that we want our audience to see. Let's look at some examples now of these types of contrast. Here is a great example of size contrast. This is David McCandless's fantastic work demonstrating the difference between the amount of time US adults spend watching television every year, 200 billion hours, to the amount of time required to create a wonderful resource like Wikipedia. The difference is startling, right? And this idea of size contrast really does communicate David's intended meaning very effectively. This is an excellent use of size contrast. Color contrast is another very obvious application of contrast, and can be used to draw our audience's attention very quickly. If you think about a muted color, used to kind of create a sea of data, and then one bright vibrant color in an element really making that pop, that is where our audience's attention will be drawn. One word of caution here is to keep in mind that some percentage of our audience could very well suffer from color blindness. And so there are certain color combinations that are difficult for them to draw distinctions to, so we should design with that in mind. It's a large percentage of people in the world who do have this condition, and so color contrast can be a very effective way to draw attention. But we need to take elements like this idea of someone in our audience being colorblind into account, as we do that. A third element of contrast, or application of contrast is the idea of shape contrast. And here again, icons are the best way to present this. These icons all have different meaning. The image represents some concept that I'm trying to communicate. And by changing and using the contrast of those images effectively, I can present different meanings subliminally to my audience. So that helps to reinforce messages, or to get some kind of insight across. The fourth idea is this idea that I'll call contrived contrast. This is a pretty famous data visualization called The Lumascape from Luma, an investment bank that works in the marketing technology space. And what they've done in this famous data visualization is categorized all the companies working in the space through their logo. Now, Luma has also applied an excellent example of contrived contrast. They place boxes around similar companies, or companies operating in the same space. And then they placed arrows around the infographic to show the flow of information, instead of a process. They didn't use any of this, that this infographic would just be a sea of icons, right? And logos, and not really present any kind of meaning. But when you build in these elements, these planful designed elements of contrast in the form here in boxes and arrows, you can introduce meaning. You can introduce differentiation, and start to build that contrast around an image that does communicate a little better. So here are a couple things to think of, as we're talking about enriching our content, by connecting to our audience. Contrast separates the important data from that which is unimportant, right? And we can design data in a muted color to present it as a sea of unimportant data, and use vibrant color to make those things pop, for instance. There are other elements of contrast that we can apply as well. In fact, we talked about four of them. Size is a very effective technique. Color, again, effective technique shape. And then this final idea of contrived contrast as well. Each technique is effective at drawing our audience's attention to different elements. So when we are using contrast, we need to be careful that we are truly pulling out that which is important. We should also seek to be somewhat planful and purposeful in our use of contrast. If we are using contrast on everything on a chart, nothing is going to stand out. So using this element judiciously, and where we really do want to draw our audience's attention is a very important part of this practice.
