Advice on Keeping an Open Mind When Starting on a Design Project

Good design has the power to communicate a wide variety of ideas, with many options to choose from, depending on the project and its goal.

But sometimes people make design decisions based solely on what everybody else is doing or what’s new. Deciding on the design before looking at all the possibilities can lead to a final product that fails to get the best results.

It’s challenging to picture how design can be used for communication outside of what is already familiar, but the unfamiliar is often where the most effective and engaging communications happen.

First of all, it’s important to understand what types of stories work best with what kinds of designs. For example, an organization might use an infographic to quickly explain a complex mission or activity without dumbing it down.

Take Architecture for Humanity, for example. With its activities often confused with Habitat for Humanity, Architecture for Humanity asked us to create an infographic showcasing what it does at a glance.

However, not all content calls for an infographic. Some has too much information and some has too little.

When Volunteer Match approached us about putting together an infographic for its annual report, we found a way to organize the large amount of information into a scene that made it easy to digest. However, if the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had tried to create its annual letter as an infographic, there would have been too much information for this format.

The reverse can be the case as well, when an organization has a single chart or graph and a paragraph of text that it is trying to stretch into an infographic.

Tradition can be as much of an obstacle as trendiness.

Nonprofits have used print reports for a long time, but they don’t always know if people read them. FSG, the nonprofit consulting firm, recently produced a 50-plus page report on the future of international nongovernmental organizations. Knowing that the report is likely to be too long for even some very interested readers, we worked with FSG to create a site summarizing the key points. For viewers who want to read the entire report, a PDF is available.

The same can occur with a website. Many nonprofit websites follow a familiar structure with some combination of home, contact, about us, program, and donate pages. Many have a single large image at the top explaining the mission or asking for money and two to three featured items directly below it. But it’s important to consider whether that’s the most effective approach.

Design decisions should be driven by a clear understanding of the goals of both the organization creating the site and its audience. When the Foundation Center created a site dedicated to collecting and sharing examples of Black Male Achievement, dynamic and frequently updated content was placed front and center. Information on the project is available, but viewers are directed to the content first, promoting the strategic objective of sharing success stories.

Even internal communications can benefit from great design. Training, reports, guidelines, and strategic plans all have the potential to be communicated more effectively if they’re designed well. A recent data visualization we created internally documents the results of a personality test our employees took at a company retreat. The visualization has allowed us to make better use of the test results, increasing the likelihood that we will incorporate what we learned into our organizational strategy. Rather than forgetting the results within weeks or months, showcasing this piece in our conference room reminds us to integrate its insights into our daily habits.

Design can take many forms. Figuring out the strategic goals before selecting what the final product should look like greatly increases the odds that communications will be successful.