9MayTips for creating polished diagrams

We’ve said it many times that a picture is worth a thousand words. And in the information world, diagrams are king when it comes to portraying information. Visual interest, simplicity and well laid out elements will create a powerful invitation for users to take a closer look. Here then are a few tips on creating polished diagrams.

Eliminate the bends-whenever possible, strive to connect diagram elements with straight lines with as few bends as possible. If bends are required, complete the whole diagram, then come back in a second pass and rearrange elements to try and eliminate bends. In particular, look for elements which have many connections running to them, and make them more centric within their dependencies. If there still appears to be too many lines or bends, consider simplifying the diagram and breaking it up into separate diagrams which “drill down” on information.

Watch for hidden bends-tools like Visio make it easy to connect objects, but can also introduce tiny hidden bends in lines when elements don’t line up. These bends can show up in the diagram’s final rendering as jagged lines. In baked out formats like image files you may luck out if the bends are small enough to be interpolated as straight lines when the image is being generated. However you may not be so lucky when exporting to PDF where the output is a graphics primitive which is dynamically rendered based on the user’s zoom level.

Line things up-the human eye prefers well organized elements, so use your software package’s alignment tools to line up boxes both vertically and horizontally. This may also require that you resize elements so that their sizes match both in width and height. This is another technique for pleasing the eye and will help eliminate hidden bends.

Use consistent line lengths- if you have a diagram with 5 interconnected boxes stretching from left to right, use the same line length for each. If an element is added or removed, take the time to readjust all elements so that their connectors are once again the same lengths. This creates a balance and harmony between objects which also pleases the eye.

Drop shadows- drop shadows are basically shadows behind elements which make them appear as if they are jumping off the page. Be sure to set the light direction to the same angle for each element. Also consider adding drop shadows to lines so that they too will jump off the page. Generally very subtle drop shadows work best and will avoid introducing distraction.

Colour scheme-be sure to choose a consistent color scheme which will tie all of the elements together. Also, boxes filled with colour generally look more polished when a border is applied using a darker shade of the fill color as opposed to plain black lines. Choosing a dark gray instead of black for connectors can also help to soften, polish and unify diagrams, even if it’s only a few shades lighter than black.

Gradients-gradients are basically shape fills which blend between two or more colours to add visual interest to shapes like boxes. Generally in diagrams you should try to keep the colours used in a gradient from the same colour band with a relatively small difference in shades. When applying gradients, you may also have to revisit the shape’s border color and either eliminate the border or choose a colour with a happy medium to those used in the gradient blend.

Icons-Where possible, try to replace boxes with text in them with an icon followed by a simple description. The icon will instantly tell the story of what that element represents and the eye will be drawn to it.