Graphic design

Readings

• Chapter 5 in Alberto Cairo, The Truthful Art¹
• Chapter 4 and Chapter 27 in Claus Wilke, Fundamentals of Data Visualization²
• Cédric Scherer, “Colors and emotions in data visualization”
• Lisa Charlotte Muth, “A detailed guide to colors in data vis style guides”. You can skim this—this is a good resource for future you.
• Summary of CRAP graphic design principles from Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen.³ These principles are from Robin Williams’ The Non-Designer’s Design & Type Books,⁴ which you should really get if you’re interested in doing anything design-related ever. Her stuff is life-changing.
• Typography in ten minutes. The rest of the Practical Typography book is phenomenal and you’d be remiss if you didn’t read the whole thing and bookmark it for life, but for now just read this quick summary.
• “What’s the Difference Between JPG, PNG, and GIF?”
• “File formats explained”

Questions to reflect on

(Remember, you don’t need to answer all of these—or even any of them! These are just here to help guide your thinking.)

• Why does graphic design matter when conveying truth?
• What makes something well designed (vs. poorly designed)?

Slides

The slides for today’s lesson are available online as an HTML file. Use the buttons below to open the slides either as an interactive website or as a static PDF (for printing or storing for later). You can also click in the slides below and navigate through them with your left and right arrow keys.

View all slides in new window Download PDF of all slides

• Introduction
• Truth, beauty, stories, design
• Graphic design and CRAP
• Image types

Videos

Videos for each section of the lecture are available at this YouTube playlist.

• Introduction
• Truth, beauty, stories, design
• Graphic design and CRAP
• Image types

You can also watch the playlist (and skip around to different sections) here: