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Boil the Lobster Font

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Stephanie Evergreen — 4 Comments ↓

I swear to god, I loved this font in early 2013 and now it is everywhere and I want it to die. The Lobster font is/was wicked cute. It’s got personality. It’s friendly. It reminds me of Pinterest. But that’s the thing about fonts – their personality speaks for whatever it is they have been applied to. Lobster has been spread too thin and as a result has now become a bit generic. Let me show you what I mean. I used Lobster in the 2012 personal annual report I produced January 2013. It’s the font on “Stephanie Evergreen’s” and…

Posted in Communicating Findings, font

Data Nerd Valentine’s Cards

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Stephanie Evergreen — 2 Comments ↓

Is your sweetheart a little on the data nerd side? I mean, aren’t we all? Here’s the perfect way to show your honey how much you appreciate him or her – even when buried in a statistics book. Data Nerd Valentine’s Cards. Like my Data Nerd Holiday Cards, these are available through Red Bubble, who will ship with envelopes and give discounts on bulk orders (though I guess if you need to bulk order for Valentine’s maybe we need to talk). UNLIKE the holidays cards, some of these may be, uh, a little not suitable for work. Click a card…

Tagged with: data nerd, datanerd, statistics humor, valentine's card, valentine's day
Posted in charts

Guest Post: Using Visual Communication to Increase Evaluation Utilization

Posted on January 22, 2014 by Stephanie Evergreen — 3 Comments ↓

Hi! I’m Nate Wilairat with EMI Consulting in Seattle. We work with cities and utilities to evaluate energy programs and policies. I just started a data viz blog called Skopia. This blog post presents a few lessons learned from a successful effort to develop executive summaries for one of our clients. We went from 200-page reports on the shelf to 3-page summaries pinned on the wall. The key? Focus on utilization. Focus on Utilization A utilization-focused executive summary needs to provide the right information to the right decision-maker. Following Michael Quinn Patton’s utilization-focused evaluation process, the first step is to identify…

Posted in charts, Communicating Findings, dashboard

My 2013 Personal Annual Report

Posted on January 8, 2014 by Stephanie Evergreen — 9 Comments ↓

Holy crap, 2013 was a busy year! Look what I’ve been up to – and click around: So, to recap, I’m prrrreeeetttttty sure I don’t have to publish one more thing until 2015. Whew. Some technical notes: Last year I made my annual report in Adobe Illustrator. The year before that, I used Microsoft Word. This year I used PowerPoint – yeah, PowerPoint! I hear of more and more people who can’t or don’t want to pay for access to Adobe and turn to PowerPoint as a layout tool so I thought I’d give it a try. And for sure,…

Before & After: Jody Fitzpatrick’s Presidential Keynote Slides

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Stephanie Evergreen — 4 Comments ↓

I get the lucky privilege of working with the president of the American Evaluation Association on his or her keynote slidedeck. I love this small project each fall for a couple of reasons. Thus far, the presidents I’ve worked with have been wicked smart and eager to see the field grow and working with clients like that rocks. Also, they readily admit they need help with their slides. This year, I collaborated with Jody Fitzpatrick. We were starting from scratch – no existing slide content to have to reshape. So I asked her to rough out her content on each…

Tagged with: makeover, PowerPoint, reboot, slide deck, slides, slideshow
Posted in charts, color, Communicating Findings, Evaluation, font, slideshows

Data Nerd Holiday Cards

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Stephanie Evergreen — 3 Comments ↓

Do you sit around with your data nerd friends and come up with funny statistics- and data visualization-based jokes? No? Maybe it’s just me. But to your benefit! I illustrated those nerd jokes and put them on holiday cards, available on Redbubble. Click the pic to go shopping. Here’s one for your favorite data nerd sweetheart: Here’s one for your dataviz friends (note the acceptable use of a pie chart): And one more for your clients, to remind them that you are not just any nerd, but a humorous and thoughtful one at that: You can order 4″ x 6″…

Tagged with: Christmas, data geek, datanerd, holiday cards, New Year
Posted in charts, Communicating Findings, Evaluation

Slidedeck Planning Sheet

Posted on November 13, 2013 by Stephanie Evergreen — 2 Comments ↓

Holster that mouse! Before you crack open PowerPoint to crank out some slides, take a step back and sketch. Your time in front of the computer will be far more productive (as in, you’ll save hours roaming stock photo sites) if you think through your slides on paper before you design them electronically. I used to just print off a blank slidedeck of six slides on one page from PowerPoint and start my sketching. You’ll see here that I’m not making anything super beautiful or artistic. Those are really crude sketches! They eventually turned into this deck: And the slide…

Guest Post: Word Cloud Dog Vomit, An Illustrated Rant

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Stephanie Evergreen — 10 Comments ↓

My colleague Humphrey Costello delivers the funniest, snarkiest Ignite sessions at the American Evaluation Association’s annual conference. I’m so happy to give him this platform to articulate the answer to one of the questions I am asked the most, about the phenomenon known as word clouds. 1st ingredient: Long ago, I promised Stephanie a blog entry on word clouds. 2nd ingredient: AEA 2013 just happened. 3rd ingredient: It was a thrill to find the latest copy of New Directions on data viz in my mailbox. Congratulations to Tarek, Stephanie, and everyone else involved! Blend: Here is a word cloud of…

Tagged with: dataviz, qualitative data visualization, word cloud, wordle
Posted in charts, color, Communicating Findings, font

Organize your Reporting with a Style Sheet Template

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Stephanie Evergreen — 1 Comment ↓

Dudes, I know report writing is no small task. It takes lots of people working on different parts – sure. But so often I see reports that look like they’ve been Frankensteined: different fonts and colors in each section, barely stitched together into a cohesive whole. One way graphic designers keep a team on the same mental page is through the use of style sheets. Style sheets dictate the way a report will look and feel, by specifying exact colors, fonts, font sizes, logos, etc. The most comprehensive style sheets I’ve seen even detail the type of imagery that will…

Posted in color, Communicating Findings, font

Boil the Lobster Font

Data Nerd Valentine’s Cards

Guest Post: Using Visual Communication to Increase Evaluation Utilization

My 2013 Personal Annual Report

Before & After: Jody Fitzpatrick’s Presidential Keynote Slides

Data Nerd Holiday Cards

Slidedeck Planning Sheet

Guest Post: Word Cloud Dog Vomit, An Illustrated Rant

Organize your Reporting with a Style Sheet Template

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