1. Bar Chart
This bar chart is effective because it serves to proportionately show the difference between the earnings for graduates of varying levels; it’s a comparison. It also illustrates the nutgraf of the story instead of some barely related facts.
2. Fever Chart
The chart would have been better as a bar chart since there is supposed to be a comparison being made. There’s also little up and down movement of the chart, so a fever-style chart is unnecessary in this instance. Time is along the bottom, but even still. The use of a single letter for each month looks cool, but it might be better to just put an abbreviation for the sake of clarity, since someone would probably write in saying it was unnecessary.
3. Pie Chart
The pie graphs were an all right choice for the voting questions. Like the bar graph above, they show the proportion of each response to one another. Each pie represents a whole: the entire pool that was polled. There are also at least three options for each pie so the info wasn’t necessarily easier to just put into text.
4. Table
The table at the bottom of the page separates each item from one another using tints of blue. None of the info for each item can be confused with info for another. It also kind of has a triadic color scheme with the yellow on the left, the blue in the middle and the red on the substance’s packaging.
5. Timeline
It reads from left to right, which makes it clear that it’s talking about days to come. Having the days aren’t even necessary, to a certain extent. If the readers know the publication lists each item as representative of a single day’s weather, they could still understand it. The illustrations help a lot too for the scanning reader.
6. Locator Map
The map is decently zoomed out; sometimes locator maps are too close to the subject they’re trying to help readers understand the location of. This one works all right, even if it’s just tints of the same color; there are some cooler tints/hues that allow the important parts to stand out. That coloring is indicative of a choropleth map.
7. Statistical Map
This is another graphic that represents an important part of the story it’s paired with adequately. The gas prices are right there with the name of the gas station, so even if the reader doesn’t know which place is where, they can remember the station names that went with lower or higher prices.
8. Active News Map
This graphic could almost be in place of the story itself, at least in place of the lede. It not only gives information about the roads in the area, but it specifically talks about where roads are planned to be placed.
9. Active Diagram
This is a page from an online edition of a magazine. Up in the corner is a diagram for a puzzle game “Portal” and the little man needs to cross a gap. The diagram not only has arrows pointing to where he can use the Portal-making device to warp across, but it animated so that it actually moves through all the steps. It’s super effective!
10. Passive Diagram
Here is a diagram that shows what the new turn-traffic signal looks like. It doesn’t convey movement because it doesn’t have to. It dissects the traffic light and explains its parts below. If the publication had more room, it could have had arrows pointing to the… arrows to make it a little easier to comprehend (since the scanning reader is constantly jumping around the page).
~FIN
