1. Apictureiswortha
thousandwordsNumbers
MathildaEloff
2012
I’m a quali-
fied graphic
designer and
was initially
employed at
a research
agency for the
pure purpose
of formatting
PowerPoint
presentations. In the five years that I’ve
worked with researchers, I’ve developed
a huge interest and passion for market
research. I’ve started exploring different
ways to deliver data to clients so that the
numbers make more sense to marketers.
Up to now, research agencies haven’t
seen the purpose of having an internal
graphic design department, but facing
technological challenges, maybe it should
be considered.
This paper looks into the way we current-
ly communicate research and questions
the method of current communication.
It challenges the industry to think more
creatively about the research and pack-
age research to speak the language of
the client and the marketer. If you are ex-
pecting an academically precise research
paper, don’t, because that’s the point. I’m
not a researcher; I’m a creative thinker,
so sit up and listen to what I’ve got to say.
“Thetruthisn’tthetruthuntilpeople
believeyou,andtheycan’tbelieve
youiftheydon’tknowwhatyou’re
saying,andtheycan’tknowwhat
you’resayingiftheydon’tlistento
you,andtheywon’tlistentoyouif
you’renotinteresting,andyouwon’t
beinterestingunlessyousaythingsimaginatively,originally,
freshly.”
BillBernbach(Sullivan,1998)
We devote a lot of time, effort, money and thinking to making our
research absolutely perfect. From the proposal to the analysis, every-
thing is precisely planned. Once the fieldwork is complete, we spend
a lot of time making sure all the numbers are valid and correct. Once
complete, the analysis is done and we’re ready to present the re-
sults to our clients. But... Will your client understand you? Will your
audience know what you’re saying? Will you be interesting? Will the
data turn into insights? Will your client action your insights? Can the
results be easily integrated into their business?
We live in a digital age where technology is making it very fast and
easy to get hold of data or information about what people think.
Almost anyone can post a question on the web, and you would
almost instantly find a response. It’s great for saving time and
money, but if it’s this easy, how valuable will the work of the research
industry become? With this in mind, the industry is facing the
challenge of proving to marketers the value of investing in a

2. research partner. We need to grab marketers’ atten-
tion and keep them interested by making sure that
the research is valuable and will contribute to the
growth of their brand or business.
Technology is also exposing us to an influx of in-
formation that causes us to become more impatient
and time-starved, which leaves us with a very short
attention span (Catone, 2008). There is so much
information available these days that if something
doesn’t grab our attention in the first 10 seconds, we
just look for something else (BBC, 2002). This forces
the media to communicate in a different way, espe-
cially consumed media such as print. Information is
becoming faster; articles have short, attention-grab-
bing headlines with pictures and graphs to keep the
reader interested. In a world full of noise, how do you
get people to actually read what you write? It takes
more than good content. The most important part of
writing an article is the headline; don’t publish until
you’ve got a catchy headline. Concentrate on this,
and you’ll get more readers, more buzz, and more
love. (Goins, 2011)
Whatisdataor
informationdelivery?
Data or information delivery can be described as the
final output that the client gets from a research study.
Basically, it is our final product deliverable. Accord-
ing to Neil Higgs, the definition of data delivery in the
industry has developed and changed so much over
time.
Neil Higgs said: In the 60s and 70s, data delivery was
a deck of tables, which was delivered to the client’s
doorstep. The client then had to take the tables and
filter through all the numbers, make their own as-
sumptions and then find their own insights to make
business decisions. Later, in the 70s to 80s, data
delivery became information delivery and we moved
from delivering only the tables to giving the infor-
mation behind the numbers and helping the client
understand the story behind the numbers. After
the 80s, information delivery evolved into insights
delivery; we then delivered the story behind the story.
From then on, we gave the client the numbers and
told them the story behind the numbers, but we also
told them the insights behind the story.
Today, technology is making it so much easier and
cheaper to get hold of the numbers and is forcing
us to add more value to our work. We are entering a
new era of insights delivery where our insights need
to become business implications to gear our clients
for the future growth of their businesses.
I spoke to a number of clients from global organisa-
tions to hear what they had to say about how they
receive their data delivery and where it ends up. I
found that each client was very unique in what they
are looking for and what they need from research-
ers. This is a learning in itself, quite obvious actually,
but are we doing it? In most cases, the direct clients
form part of an internal research team. These teams
operate differently and use the research differently.
Some teams want all the information just for archiv-
ing purposes and others take our information to even
deeper analysis. Another type of client is directly the
marketing team who are only interested in the an-
swers. All the clients that I’ve spoken to like to have
the tables for reference and archiving purposes, but
everyone agreed on some aspects. One fact that eve-
ryone agreed on was that the research needs to make
sense, be easy to understand and be interesting;
again, sounds completely obvious, but do we do it?
“I have to work through the data books and eventu-
ally have to summarise only the most important
information in maximum six slides which get shared
with the business. My worst presentation was an
automated data presentation of 140 slides. Nobody
wants to trawl through hundreds of slides to get to
the point of the story.” (Client)
“You get two kinds of researchers, the kinds that do
the questionnaire, get the data and then transport the
data into a charted PowerPoint presentation. In this
case, the deliverable tends to be a typical data dump.
The other kind of researcher thinks about the data
and delivers a creative story, but in most cases the
quant thinkers don’t think like this.” (Client)
“Currently, what we get is a deck of charts with
analysis, and it looks shocking. I want the researcher
to think more creatively about the data and go back
to the business objective to tell me what is really
important. I want to see that you really thought about
my category, I want the researcher to look beyond
the research.” (Client)
We have to keep in mind that every data book or
presentation is archived with clients and

3. they refer back to the research all the time. If that
client leaves the company, they have to hand over
these documents to another person who will need
to make sense out of the research without knowing
anything about the study. We need to work with tech-
nology to keep the scientific purity of our thinking,
but modernising it in the way we communicate it to
our clients. Graphics can be a vehicle to support the
insights to make it obvious to the client and transport
the insights from data to actionable business implica-
tions.
Howdopeople
processinformation?
When we look at delivering our data in order for our
client to be able to turn our work into actionable busi-
ness decisions, we need to get our clients to listen to
us, understand us and believe us.
“Researchers are often the ones creating in the
boredom in presentations. The audience in presenta-
tions is hardly ever researchers; most of the time, the
audience is the marketing department. That type of
audience is not interested in knowing all the informa-
tion about skews and top two boxes. They just want
the answers to the questions.” (Client)
On the other hand, not all our deliverables are pre-
sented in this live presentation format. Sometimes
it is just a report that is emailed or delivered on CD
or as in most cases, the presentation is the report
as well. Whether we present information or write a
report, how do we get an audience to pay attention
to the story? Here are some interesting facts on how
people process information.
Thepresentation
Sandra Schrift, professional speaker coach,
describes audience members in four different
ways: visual, auditory, auditory digital, and
kinaesthetic. She says that while all members of
the audience will process information utilising all four
of these approaches at different times,
each audience member will individually tend to rely
on one of these approaches more than
the other three.
• The Visual members memorise and learn by
seeing pictures; they often have difficulty remem-
bering and are bored by long, verbal and number
intense presentations.
• The Auditory members learn by listening; your
vocal tone and vocal quality will be very impor-
tant to these people.
• Auditory Digital audience members spend a fair
amount of time in their heads talking to them-
selves; they memorise and learn by steps,
procedures, and sequences.
• The Kinaesthetic audience members are much
more oriented towards their feelings than peo-
ple in the other three categories. They learn by
actively doing something and getting the actual
feeling of it.
Approximately 40% of the population are primarily
visual, approximately 40% are primarily kinaesthetic,
and the remaining 20% are primarily auditory and
auditory digital in how they process information
(Schrift, 2010).
People are much more likely to find a presentation
interesting and memorable if they experience what’s
being presented rather than just listening to a per-
son’s voice or just simply getting a bunch of facts
on a screen. People are visualisers and sensorial;
we demand to see the visual aspect of information.
“People like visualisation, but a good presentation
has a good balance of data, analysis and visualisa-
tion. Visualisation should not happen at the cost of
the data.” (Client)
Thereport
In presentations, we can use video, sound and a lot
of activities to keep our audience interested, but in
writing only, we don’t have the options of using all
these kinds of media. When we write a report, we
need to rely a lot on our writing technique to bring
the research alive and get the story across. When
writing research reports, we need to think like maga-
zine editors. “A presentation or report needs to be
easy to understand. Only put the most important in-
formation in a presentation, allow yourself more time

4. for analysis. Research studies need at least three
levels of analysis to filter out only the most important
information.” (Client)
Imagine your favourite magazine, with the same front
cover every single month, only different inside info
snippets. Inside the magazine, there are no pictures,
no catchy headlines or titles, only subtitles and text.
The information might be interesting, but the ques-
tion is, would it sell? Editors and authors have to rely
on creative writing and visuals to bring their stories
to people and bring their stories to life. If they don’t,
will the story be interesting? Will people read it? Will
they believe it? Will they buy it?
“I’m in favour of headlines in my presentations and
every headline should lead into each other so that
the story starts broad and become more focused
towards the end of the presentation.” (Client)
Researchers are journalists in their own right. We get
a brief, we structure the questions, we gather the in-
formation, we find the evidence and we communicate
the story to our clients. For our clients to believe us
and listen to us, we need to write like Bernbach says,
“imaginatively, originally, freshly”. We should adapt
our thinking, writing and delivery to speak the cli-
ent’s language. Our reports should look and feel like
magazine articles. Not only will clients enjoy reading
it, they will actually want to distribute it within their
businesses and it would make archiving easier.
Marryingtwo
completelydifferent
languages
Researchers are highly intelligent people; they think
about data in a very scientific way and get very easily
absorbed by a world of numbers which drives the
research to lose its human touch. Every number and
skew is a piece of a puzzle that fits together to build
a story. Too many presentations or data deliverables
are lacking the story behind the numbers.
Researchers need to think more creatively in
order to deliver better, useful information to
their clients instead of just delivering num-
bers. “Keep the presentation as short as pos-
sible without compromising the data.” (Client)
I’ve learnt from speaking to clients that researchers
tend to write and present in a research language.
I’ve also learnt that the marketers who attend the
presentations don’t understand that language and
are very easily bored with presentations that contain
just a bunch of facts and numbers on a screen. “I
can never just take out certain information from any
research presentation and send that off to market-
ing, the research presentations are in research
language so I need to read through the presentation
and then translate it into marketers’ language.”
(Client)
The industry needs a bridge between these two
languages. When researchers get so absorbed by
the numbers and analysis, they need to get out of
that very scientific culture into a relaxed free-spirited
environment which will inspire them to think more
open-mindedly about the numbers. A creative de-
partment or graphics team can be this exact envi-
ronment that researchers need to snap out of that
world of numbers.
Always remember, creative thinking is not neces-
sarily drawing pictures or designing structures.
Creative thinking might involve problem-solving and
we need to recognise that this new era of research
delivery is pressurising researchers to become crea-
tive problem solvers.

5. Howdowegetthe
creativejuices
flowing?
I often find myself unable to create data visualisations
from the research, because the research is so com-
plicated. For designers to be able to draw up a story,
they need to get a very clear picture of what the story
is about. With some research teams, it’s very quick, the
brainstorming takes ten minutes and you’ve got a clear
picture of what’s going on. With the highly scientific
thinkers, it takes quite a lot longer. In John Lehrer’s book
on how creativity works, he looks at how Steve Jobs
redesigned the Pixar studios to maximise collaboration
and creativity.
“The original design for the Pixar studios consisted
of three separate buildings, where they’d put the
computer scientists in one building, and the ani-
mators in a second building and the third building
would contain everybody else: the directors, the edi-
tors and so on. Steve realized that that was a terrible
idea; that the real challenge of Pixar was getting
people from these different cultures — these com-
puter scientists and these cartoonists — to work
together, to really collaborate. And so he insisted
that Pixar studios just be one vast, cavernous
space.”
On forcing people to meet and mingle ... even if it’s
in the bathroom “[Jobs] insisted there be only two
bathrooms in the entire Pixar studios, and that these
would be in the central space. And of course this
is very inconvenient. No one wants to have to walk 15
minutes to go to the bathroom. And yet Steve insisted
that this is the one place everyone has to go every
day. And now you can talk to people at Pixar and they
all have their ‘bathroom story’. They all talk about the
great conversation they had while washing their hands.
“ ... He wanted there to be mixing. He knew that the
human friction makes the sparks, and that when you’re
talking about a creative endeavour that requires people
from different cultures to come together, you have to
force them to mix; that our natural tendency is to stay
isolated, to talk to people who are just like us, who
speak our private languages, who understand our
problems. But that’s a big mistake. And so his design
was to force people to come together even if it was just
going to be in the bathroom.” (Lehrer, 2012)

6. To get researchers to think more creatively, we need
them to engage with people other than researchers.
“Researchers have to find their creativity by expos-
ing themselves to a creative environment.” (Client)
People get inspiration from other people, but
currently, research teams work within the same
teams every day and if they don’t work within those
teams, they work with other researchers. Creativity
needs a few nutrients to keep it alive.
Freshideasdon’tlikerepetition
John Hunt describes it this way. “We are creatures
of habit. And habit can serve its purpose. It’s great
not to have to stop and think every morning whether
your underpants go on before or after your trousers.
But habit can also become so deeply ingrained, it
produces a mental gridlock. If something new can-
not be processed through pre-existing channels, it
is rejected.
It’s very difficult to get a fresh idea through those
addicted to routine. Their thinking grooves have
become ruts. They don’t see doing the same thing
over and over again for a long period of time as
habit. They prefer words like consistency and conti-
nuity. They aren’t just comfortable with year-on-year
sameness, they’re proud of it.” (Hunt, 2009)
Creativityneedsfreedom
“Ideas don’t happen in a vacuum. They’re sensi-
tive to the environment and often take their cues
from the prevailing mood. If you have a room full of
scared people, they will tend to give you stiff, small
ideas. Fear might be a strong catalyst for entrench-
ing obedience, but it’s a lousy motivator for fresh
thinking.” (Hunt, 2009)
Creativethinkingispositive
When finding a fresh idea, don’t think of the how.
First find your idea, then find a way to make it hap-
pen. Constantly asking how is a sign of fear to try
something new. “An idea can’t be bossed into exist-
ence. It has to be coaxed into light. In my experi-
ence, that’s more likely to happen if the atmosphere
is easy and a few smiles are scattered around the
room. It’s an enigma, but many great ideas happen
when you’re not trying too hard.” (Hunt, 2009)
Creativitydoesnothavehierarchy
Inspiration comes from everywhere and anywhere.
“Anyone can have an idea. If we are all supposed
to be equal before the law, we are even more equal
before the idea.” (Hunt, 2009)
Creativitycomesfromtruepassion
People perform better in something they’re passion-
ate about and it is the same with designers. I’ve often
found that if designers aren’t passionate or interested
about a subject, the design outputs are dull.
Graham Sweet writes on how Brand Union as a
creative company is working on becoming a greater
company:
“Build a culture, not a company. Your biggest assets
are your people, so rather than focusing on build-
ing a company, shift your gaze to your culture. Your
culture will define your company and have a domino
effect on your most valuable assets. Solve problems,
not briefs. This is easier said than done, your clients
will fight you, internally it might even cause some
discomfort and that’s all good. Don’t fight the friction,
use it.
Collaborate. Sure you can sell anything but we’ve
come to realise that working with other creative spe-
cialists challenges us, delivers a better solution and
saves us all some frustration. Hire thinkers: Inter-
esting people that are willing to challenge and push
past normality are the lifeblood of creativity. They are
hard to find, so keep pushing until you find them and
maybe even look outside of the industry.
Don’t charge for things that don’t matter. When you
charge for something you add value to it. We don’t
believe that a beautiful logo will solve a business
problem so we’ve stopped charging for it. ‘Greater
than’ will come from adding the right elements to the
equation. It’s time. The longer we all sit around talk-
ing about everything that is changing, the greater the
chance that nothing will change.” (Sweet, 2012)
Not all researchers have the ability to think creatively;
this is why it is so important for research agencies
to pull in creative thinkers to stimulate and inspire
other researchers to think differently. Why should we
package insights or data?

7. Whyshouldwepackage
insightsordata?
EASIER.
2.
it
distribution
must make
INFORM.
1.
thepackaging
needsto
EASY.
3.
orarchiving
Warehousing
should be
SELL.
4.
needs to
it
“Never underestimate the importance of packaging.
Marketers often measure consumer brand perceptions
and ignore the pack. Yet we know from the way that
consumers react to unbranded products that packaging
plays a huge role in reinforcing consumer perceptions.
Packaging helps to drive the way consumers experi-
ence a product. Yet, we spend little time researching
the connections between packaging and the direct
experience of the product.” (Rice & Hofmeyr, 2000)
This is what we tell our clients, but are we practising
what we preach with our own products? If we are, why
and how are we doing it?
Soroka describes packaging as the science, art and
technology of enclosing or protecting products for dis-
tribution, storage, sale and use. Packaging also refers
to the process of design, evaluation, and production
of packages. Packaging can be described as a coor-
dinated system of preparing goods for transport,
warehousing, logistics, sale and end use. Pack-
aging contains, protects, preserves, transports,
informs and sells (Soroka, 2002).
We’ve proven over and over that products that
are packaged in an appealing and wellbranded
way sell better. We need to package our product
or output so that it appeals to the client, speaks
their language and, most importantly, brings the
research alive so that the client can understand it
correctly and will be able to apply it to their busi-
ness. When looking at packaging design, it’s also
very important to keep in mind the purpose of the
product and choose the right container. Imagine
using your shampoo from a plastic bag. But we
don’t sell shampoo or
computers. Our products are the stories we tell:
we need to package our research for the end use
purpose:
We only need to give
our client the absolute
necessary information
to be able to use. “It
must be easy to under-
stand.” (Client)
Our clients still have to
filter through our work
to be able to distrib-
ute it. This needs to
change.
Ask yourself: “Will any-
one be able to read this
presentation five years
from now and still be
able to understand
what the story is?”
By packaging our research
to suit our clients’ needs,
we’ll make their lives easier
and present our work more
professionally. Not only will
we add more value to our
work, but we’ll be able to
make research more appeal-
ing and interesting to the
marketer, who surely will
come back for more.

8. Take Caxton for example, a huge publishing house
with a number of different magazines on shop
shelves. Customers might not even know that
they’re buying two completely different magazines
from the same publishing house. Caxton under-
stands their readers and has found that they need
to brand and write completely differently to their
different target markets.
We can compare our clients to this: each and every
client is unique with their own business issues and
their own culture. To be a better research partner,
we need to understand the client’s business thor-
oughly and customise our thinking and writing
method as well as our packaging so that it suits
the client’s style. “I want my research partner to
become proactive in my business. If the research
agency gets a better understanding of our day-to-
day business issue, they’ll be able to deliver what
are the most important business factors to dis-
cuss.” (Client)
Howdowepackage
insights?
Currently, we are all used to delivering our presen-
tations and reports in PowerPoint or sometimes in
Word document format. These contain all the data
which is shown in graphs as well as key analysis
and summaries. Why are we doing it this way? Can
we add value to our packaging? Is there a gap for
change?
The invention of PowerPoint was a major break-
through in data delivery and is a very cost- effective
and easy-to-use tool to package data, but it can also
easily take us back to the 60s era of data delivery.
PowerPoint is a great tool for data delivery, but re-
searchers should be careful that it’s used effectively
to communicate the research and that the delivery
doesn’t end up being a data dump.
In my experience in working with researchers, I’ve
found that very often, charting time is crunch time
in all projects. We only have about a week to get
all data analysed and packaged to be delivered to
clients. So, when we get the tables, we try and get
it into PowerPoint as fast as possible. Do not be
mistaken and throw PowerPoint out of the window,
it is a very powerful tool. We just have to get back to
the basics of analysing the numbers before we even
start charting to be able to communicate the research
effectively. We need to start acting like journalists and
editors; we need to find a story, look for the support-
ing evidence in the data set as well as secondary data
sources and deliver meaningful business stories to
our clients. “Ask yourself: If I was the client, what
would I want to know from this study?” (Client). In
this new era of data delivery, we need to be very care-
ful of what they call “death by PowerPoint”.
“The main goal of data visualization is its ability to
visualize data, communicating information clearly
and effectively. It doesn’t mean that data visualization
needs to look boring to be functional or extremely
sophisticated to look beautiful. To convey ideas ef-
fectively, both aesthetic form and functionality need
to go hand in hand, providing insights into a rather
sparse and complex data set by communicating
its key aspects in a more intuitive way” (Friedman,
2008). Data visualisation is one way of packaging
data that is becoming more popular within the re-
search industry. Researchers often misinterpret the
term “data visualisation”. When we package data,
there’s a clear difference between inserting pictures
into a presentation and making the presentation
visual.
Here’s a good example. I worked on a presentation
recently, which mainly consisted of tables. It was the
correct information for a researcher to understand,
but the audience didn’t consist of researchers, it was
the brand team. The client felt that the brand team
would be bored with the presentation and requested
the presentation to be more visual. The research team
added some pictures, because to them the numbers
were visual enough. Researchers are used to looking
at those numbers, they can visualise what they mean,
but the brand team can’t. This is when the graphics
team had to jump in by listening to the story and step
by step unravelling the story behind each number.
Only then could we visualise the story and paint the
pictures to help tell the story. The presenter’s re-
sponse: “I’m actually excited to present this now!”
Data visualisation is not inserting pictures in a pres-
entation. It is rather taking the numbers, transporting
them into a written or spoken story and only then
finding very relevant images to support that story.
How about trying something new, why always Pow-
erPoint? Up to now, the research industry hasn’t
explored any different way of packaging insights.

9. It’s always a charted presentation or report. How
about packaging a proposal on a cereal box or
delivering a presentation as a game? It sounds
crazy, but it’s possible. Your audience get the op-
portunity to interact and experience the presenta-
tion. If you’re only delivering a proposal or tender
and you aren’t presenting it, the packaging is your
most powerful communication tool. You have to
rely on your product delivery for your client to
experience the category way before the research
process even starts. Our clients want the assur-
ance that we care about their business as much
as we care about our own and by packaging their
information in such a way, we show them that we
really care.
Takingacloserlook
behindthepictures
When we package information, especially when
working with research, there are some key facts to
consider in being able to communicate the story
effectively. By making use of all design elements
in a good balance, we’ll be able to succeed in
making data visual without compromising the
numbers. The key fact which we always need to
keep in mind is that we need to tell a story.
Colour
Currently, we are used to charting in our branded
templates or clients’ branded templates, which
have been set up with the company’s pre-ap-
proved colours. Colours are psychological; every
colour has a different personality which makes
it an extremely powerful design element to get
messages across. Data visualisation cannot be
restricted to a certain set of colours. By knowing
the physiological and cultural meaning of different
colours, we can use them to tell more powerful
stories. We need to think like journalists. Our story
and the way we tell it, will become our branding. If
we want to succeed in this new data visualisation
era, we need to explore all different tools that we
can use to make it work, and we cannot be hand-
cuffed to so many rules and restrictions.
Colourpsychology
David Johnson summarises different meanings for dif-
ferent colours and what they actually mean as found by
US researchers:
“Blackis the colour of authority and power,
but it also implies submission. Priests wear
black to signify submission to God.
Whitesymbolises innocence and purity.
Doctors and nurses wear white to imply sterility.
Redis the most emotionally intense colour, it
stimulates a faster heartbeat and breathing. Red
is a very extreme colour and attracts a lot of
attention. It’s the colour of love.
Pinkis the most romantic colour. Sports teams
sometimes paint the locker rooms used by the
opposing teams bright pink so their opponents
will lose energy.
Bluehas the exact opposite effect to red; it’s
the colour of the sky and ocean. Peaceful,
tranquil blue causes the body to produce
calming chemicals.
Greenis the easiest colour on the eye, and
symbolises nature. People waiting to appear on
TV sit in ’green rooms’ to relax.
Yellowis very cheerful, it’s the most difficult
colour for the eye to take in and can be very
overpowering if over-used. People lose their
tempers more often in yellow rooms.
Purpleis the colour of royalty, luxury and
wealth.
Brownis the colour of earth and is abundant in
nature. Light brown implies genuineness while
dark brown is similar to wood or leather. It can
also be sad and wistful.”
(Johnson, 2007)

10. When charting, it’s always good to be aware if you will have people in your audience who might be
colour blind. In this case, you’ll need to be very careful of how you place your colours. You might see your
graph as yellow, orange and red whereas a colour-blind person would only be able to see red. In this case, dif-
ferent shades of one colour might work more effectively with graphs.
Colours also have different meaning in different cultures. Jennifer Kyrnin summarised it for us:
PINK
WHITE
BLACK
PURPLE
BLUE
GREEN
YELLOW
ORANGE
RED
Roses: Appreciation, gratitude
Western: Love, Female babies babies
Eastern: Marriage
Korea: Trust
Western:Love,Christmas,Passion
Australianaboriginals:land,earth
China:Goodluck,Celebration
Celtic:Death,Afterlife
Hebrew: Sacrifice, sin
Roses:Love,Respect
Ireland:Religious
Roses:Enthusiasm,desireWestern:Halloween,autumn
Roses:Sociability,Friendship
Cherokee: Trouble, Srtife
Apache: East (sunrise)
Japan: Courage
Egypt: Mourning
Apache: South
Idia: Islam
Eastern: Health, Prosperity, Peace
Western: Spring, Saint Patrick’s Day
Cherokee: Defeat, Trouble
China: Immortality
Iran: Mourning
W
estern: Sadness, Corporate, Conservative
Thailand:Mourning,W
idows
Eastern:Wealth
Western:Royalty
Chrokee: Peace, Happiness
China: Death and mourning
India: Unhappiness
Western: Angels, Brides, Doctors, Peace
Western:Death,Funerals
Apache:West(Sunset)
Cherokee:Problems,Death
Thailand: Bad
luck, Devil
Figure 8.1 (Kyrnin, 2012)
Colour can help us with communication and make a huge contribution to charting, but it should be used
effectively to get your message across without making your presentation look like a complete mess. We need
to use a whole spectrum of colour and keep our work professional. Here are a few examples of how colour is
used to communicate different things.

11. Figure 8.2 – Male versus female
Have you noticed that in Figure 8.2,
nowhere on the slide have I used the
word male or female? Always
remember to keep a good balance;
too many colours can become
confusing. We can also make use
of warm and cold colours to show
contrasts as in the following
example.
Figure 8.3 – Likes versus dislikes
Layout
McClurg-Genevese explains layout
as the placement of text, colour,
images and graphics on a page
to portray a specific message to
the reader or audience. Layout is
used to capture viewers’ atten-
tion and keep them focused on the
message. “When I look at a slide,
I want to be able to know what is
going on in the first five seconds.”
(Client)
We can split a slide layout into dif-
ferent sections, the title, the body
text, the graphics and then the
source info. Currently, we’re used
to these types of slide layout:
Figure 8.4 – Slide layouts from current

12. Clients want the research to be to the point and
easy to understand. Think of a newspaper article.
The headline will dictate if you would want to read
the rest. “A headline is meant to generate reader-
ship and pull people into the copy. It’s the first
thing that people see. Just like front-page head-
lines of a newspaper are meant to sell the paper,
the copy’s headline is meant to sell people on the
copy.” (Fortin, 2011) This is exactly what we want
to achieve when we’re presenting. A headline
should capture the story in one short sentence, it
should stand out, and it should be easy and fast
to read. The headline of each slide is what catches
the eye; therefore, we should really think about
the words that we choose to use in slide titles
since that will keep the reader interested. “I’m in
favour of headlines.” (Client)
We can make use of different page layouts to
lead the audience’s eyes to different messages at
different times, but it’s very important to keep bal-
ance in mind. McClurg-Genevese explains balance
as an equilibrium that results from looking at im-
ages and judging them against our ideas of physi-
cal structure (such as mass, gravity or the sides
of a page). It is the arrangement of the objects in
a given design as it relates to their visual weight
within a composition. Balance can be symmetrical
or asymmetrical. (McClurg-Genevese, 2005) Have
a look at each image below, feel the mass in each
object and how the balance in the layout works.
Figure 8.5 – Balance in layout design (McClurg-
Genevese, 2005)
We also need to consider the direction of the page,
whether it’s landscape or portrait. Imagine this exact
document that you’re reading in landscape. It will be
rather difficult to read such long lines. Balance in slide
layouts creates a flow and help our eyes move through
a page. We need to make it look more interesting and at
the same time keep a good balance between information
and relevant graphics. See in the example overleaf how
white space and the complete layout of the page keep
your eyes interested in the story.
Figure 8.6 – Research slide layouts designed by a
graphic designer
Fonts
Typography has been part of us since the beginning of
time and still today it has so many different characteris-
tics, meanings and cultures all over the world. Think of
the hieroglyphics as the oldest form of writing as well as
Chinese calligraphy and the Greek symbols. These are
all different typefaces with their own unique culture and
meanings.
Fonts also have culture; take graffiti for example versus
a calligraphic font. Look at the following words and think
of a movie that relates to each.
See in figure 8.7 how one word can instantly have two
completely different concepts by making use of fonts?
Our minds rely on the fonts to help create the story.

13. Typography is a very powerful tool
to get messages across and works
very effectively with especially quali-
tative research. Qualitative research
is almost spiritual. The researcher
needs almost to feel the story,
analyse it and then communicate
it correctly to the marketer. Fonts
communicate feelings and can be a
very powerful tool to achieve this.
Figure 8.7 – One word, two different concepts.
Images
Take a look the figure below:
Figure 8.8a – Jackson, C. (2012)

14. Now, take a look at it again.
Figure 8.8b – Jackson, C. (2012)
Now, take a look at it again.
Figure 8.8c – Jackson, C. (2012)

15. See how important it is to choose the correct
supporting image with what you are trying to say
and how your mind connects the word, the image
and the story? What if we didn’t know the story:
would “Snow White” together with an apple make
any sense? The truth is, our clients don’t know
our stories until we tell them the stories. Now it
becomes a bit trickier to find the correct image to
bring the story to life, but once a client is familiar
with the story, the image will stick to it and the
story will be more memorable. I remember when I
was little, my mom took me to my very first movie
at the cinema. We went to see The Little Mermaid.
Being Afrikaans-speaking, I didn’t understand one
word, but I knew exactly what was happening. I
didn’t know the name of the movie, but I remem-
bered that we watched the fish girl and her friends.
“Qualitative research in the industry is a major prob-
lem. I received a qualitative presentation the other
day which did not even have one single picture in.
Qual needs to be visualised, I want to see what my
target consumer looks like. I want to know exactly
what his or her lifestyle looks like.” (Client)
When we’re working with research, we have to keep
in mind that our work is archived and used over and
over again. It is very important that there’s a good
balance between pictures and information and that
the pictures don’t replace information. Some might
argue and say that images are a distraction from what
is being presented, but we’re living in a century where
information needs to happen faster and by making
use of the correct images, we will be able to achieve
this. It is up to us to use the right images with the
right information. Pictures do not always equal im-
ages.
Symbols
The use of symbols is becoming a very popular trend and a very easy to use design element in communicating
concepts. Since symbols are so easy to understand and to get hold of as well as to create, we should be mak-
ing full use of them. Here is an example of many diagnostic questions in a concept test summary and how you
can make use of symbols, layout and colour to centralise a lot of information in one slide.

16. Graphs
Graphs (aka, researchers’ happy place) are our main communication tool when charting presentations. We are
all very familiar with graphs and how to use them and we do so quite effectively as all data outputs are charted
presentations. Be careful of graphs. PowerPoint makes it very easy to produce graphs and therefore drives us
into a habit of only producing graphs, which leads to data dumping and very old school research output. If we
are going to drop all our data into graphs, we might as well just deliver the tables in data books.
Proportion is a very effective design element to communicate comparison of size and volume, which research
is all about. PowerPoint graphs have a most effective and accurate tool to create the correct variance between
shape sizes and should be used for that purpose. On a research level, it would seem quite obvious when to
use what graph types, but in my experience, I’ve found that it is not always the case. Quite often, I find that
a certain graph - type a bar graph, for example - is being charted because it seems obvious, but that specific
graph type may not communicate the information as effectively as another graph type might have done. It’s
very important to choose the correct graph type for the message you want to communicate.
Look at the example below.
Figure 8.10a – Tracking the sale of three different milkshake flavours over four quarters
shown in a column or a bar graph
Figure 8.10b – Tracking the sale of three different milkshake flavours over four quarters
shown in a line graph
We can now easily see the performance patterns of the different flavour milkshakes, by simply changing a bar
chart to a line graph. PowerPoint graphs are already a huge step towards data visualisation; it’s just a matter
of how you use it to communicate the correct message.
So let’s take all these design principles and put them all together in a research context.

18. Inconclusion
The days when research was all about delivering
data, finding the numbers and skews, are long
gone. The research agency has become a “must
have” business partner to every single company
who wants to survive these days. We need to get
inside our client’s business to be able to under-
stand their needs thoroughly. By doing that, we’ll
be able to deliver much more than just numbers
and facts.
Research agencies can benefit from a visual design
team which allows researchers more time to un-
derstand the research in the context of the client’s
business and enables them to tell more powerful,
business-related stories. Being a very underdevel-
oped area within the research industry, the other
challenge that we’re facing is that graphic design-
ers do not get any training in research. This means
that the design team needs to get a fair amount
of training to be able to understand the research
language before they can assist the research team
to think more creatively. “I want my presentations
to be visual; the more visual the better, just don’t
lose the important message.” (Client)
The research industry needs to innovate towards
this new era of data delivery. “Researchers need
to allow themselves more time to go through three
levels of analysis to get the most important facts
out of the data” (Client). Time is always an issue,
but it also causes us to lose value and that is one
thing we shouldn’t compromise on. The analysis
stage is where the most important story lies.
“I only want to see the most important informa-
tion. If something is not important, don’t show it
to me.” (Client)
I’ve put together a few pointers that I’ve learned from
clients as well as research teams:
1. Take the time to analyse the data and find the
story before you run to PowerPoint. Pictures
are a distraction when you don’t have your story
straight. Leave the pictures to the pros and take
the time to find your story. “I don’t mind pic-
tures, but they shouldn’t be gap-fillers. Then they
start to be a distraction from what’s going on in
the slide.” (Client)
2. Tell your story to someone who’s not a
researcher.
3. Can’t get to the bottom of the story? Get up and
out of your number environment and move into
a creative space, then go back to the numbers.
Think of Jobs’ experiment with the Pixar bath-
rooms.
4. Don’t present facts and figures, tell a story. Pres-
entation audiences are visualisers, they want to
experience a presentation. Entertain and engage
with your audience.
5. Package your product for its purpose and al-
ways be relevant. Would you package cereal in a
shampoo bottle? Our product is our story; pack-
age it to tell that story.
As Albert Einstein said: “Insanity: doing the same
thing over and over again and expecting different re-
sults”. Nothing will change if we don’t try new things.
It will just drive us to habit. Our habits are our com-
fort zones, we need to step out of that to achieve new
things, and remember Bernbach.
“Thetruthisn’tthetruthuntilpeoplebelieveyou,andtheycan’tbelieveyouif
theydon’tknowwhatyou’resaying,andtheycan’tknowwhatyou’resayingif
theydon’tlistentoyou,andtheywon’tlistentoyouifyou’renotinteresting,
andyouwon’tbeinterestingunlessyousaythingsimaginatively,originally,
freshly.”
BillBernbach(Sullivan,1998)

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