Every year, I wonder: Do we still need to be concerned about black and white viewing for our data viz and designs?

I mean, isn’t everyone consuming everything on their phone now??

Maybe we should strike this guideline from the Data Visualization Checklist.

And then I reported to Precinct 27 to work the polls (my chairperson hates it when I say that) and I issued ballots to voters on a brick of a computer that isn’t connected to the internet, for security purposes. Ballots were on paper, black and white. The ticker tape coming out of the tabulator at the end of the night… black and white, duplicated six times.

That’s when I realized that, yeah, we still have to be concerned about designing for black and white environments.

The higher the security, the more likely your data will be printed out in black and white.

I still know of non-profit and philanthropic boards who get physical board books full of reports. The cheaper the budget, the more likely your data will be printed out in black and white.

I’m thinking of community spaces like my chiropractor’s office and my taekwondo dojo, where everything is still handled on paper (I swear the receptionist at my dr office has a typewriter somewhere). I’m thinking of my grandpa, who just recently figured out emojis. And how the older your population, the more likely your data will be printed in black and white.

My colleagues who work in global epidemiology, traveling to places you don’t want to go in order to keep diseases from spreading – they know that while everyone might have a phone, in developing countries they aren’t all walking around with the latest iPhone model in their back pocket. Getting your data out there will mean printing in black and white.

So while, yes, we need to be thinking about designing for mobile, we also have to stretch our arms wide enough to design for a black and white environment as well.

Instead of design like this:

A better alternative is to plan for reading in a black and white environment. Use direct labeling.

If you need to pop out a certain line, use a dark color or even black to distinguish it. It still isn’t a graphic designer’s dream, but it retain the ability for your audience to read your data and that’s the point.

You can check how your graphs look when rendered in black and white by going to print preview and selecting black and white in your printer settings.

We’ll also show you how it looks when you get to the black and white guideline in the Data Visualization Checklist.