Business Communication: Chapter 12 Designing Visual Communication

1. Discuss six principles of graphic design that help ensure effective visuals

• Like words, visuals often carry connotative or symbolic meanings
• Thanks to advances in technology and changing audience expectations, business communication is becoming more visual.
• Nearly every aspect of visual design is governed by conventions that set audience expectations
• Creating effective visuals requires basic knowledge of the principles of good design.
• Remember that the power to communicate with visuals comes with the responsibility to communicate ethically.

2. Explain how to avoid ethical lapses when using visuals

• The ways in which you aggregate data for display can affect the messages and meaning that your audience extracts from your visuals.
• Consider all possible interpretations-and misinterpretations
• Provide context
• Don’t hide or minimize negative information that runs counter to your argument
• Don’t exaggerate information that supports your argument
• Don’t oversimplify complex situations
• Don’t imply cause-and-effect relationships without providing proof that they exist.
• Avoid emotional manipulation or other forms of coercion
• Be careful with the way you aggregate data.

3. Explain how to chose which points in your message to illustrate.

• Effective visuals are clear, complete, concise, connected, and compelling.

4. Describe the most common options for presenting data in a visual format.

• You have many types of visuals to choose from, and each is best suited to particular communication tasks.
• Printed tables can display extensive amounts of data, but tables for online display and electronic presentations need to be simple.
• Line charts are commonly used to show trends over time or the relationship between two or more variables.
• Your spreadsheet offers ways to predict future values based on past values shown in a line chart.
• You can create bar charts in a wide variety of formats; choose the form that best illustrates the data and relationships in your message.
• Scatter diagrams compare entities against two variables; bubble diagrams compare them against three.
• Readers expect pie charts to show the distribution of parts within a whole.

5. Describe the most common options for presenting information, concepts, and ideas.

• Use organization charts to depict the interrelationships among the parts of a whole.
• Use maps for such tasks as representing statistics by geographic area or showing spatial relationships.
• Use drawings and diagrams to show how something works or how it is made or used; drawings are sometimes better than photographs because they let your focus on the most important details.
• Use photographs for visual appeal and to show exact appearances.

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