In last month’s #SWDchallenge, we robbed you of a powerful design tool: the ability to use more than one color in your visuals. Prohibited from using a broad palette to create areas of focus, colorful compositions, or categorical distinctions, would you still be able to create a compelling and informative visualization; and if so, how? This may sound like a daunting task, but 40 different people took it on, and they came through with flying….color.

Without varying hues at their disposal, folks were forced to use different techniques to get an audience’s attention, to create a dramatic or memorable visual, and to emphasize their key points.

Icons and pictures

Some studies have shown that viewers remember the subject of data presented in a graph if there is an associated, related image alongside it. When working under the constraint of using only a single color, that means that your options for including imagery are limited to grayscale or monochromatic pictures, silhouettes, or black-and-white icons. A few of our contributors used this to great effect this week.

Jonathan used a cow to highlight the decline of Wisconsin dairy farms; Jennifer gave us close-ups of ticks in her contribution about Lyme disease; Lance included an image AND an icon of a particular bird in his look at the statistical likelihood that a magpie would swoop down on a person; Adedayo included the Black Lives Matter icon both in the foreground and the background of his visualization about racial discrimination and police violence; and Solomon used an iconic silhouette in his examination of the general public’s ratings of James Bond movies. Robyn went a step further, and included (and iterated on) an entire black-and-white landscape to support her visual about daylight at the solstices.

Composition

Rather than using color to direct attention to pieces of the visual, the lack of color can force us to take in the whole picture as one complete view. Thoughtful decisions about chart type, placement of elements on the screen, use of varying intensities within a single color, and smart (or minimal) use of text can have an interesting effect: like in a Magic Eye poster, rather than intentionally focusing in on a piece of the picture, we relax our eyes, let the whole of the image come to us, and ultimately gain appreciation of the work holistically.

Rob provided us with a panel chart, where each panel is itself a matrix of variously filled-in circles, representing the crime rate by year and offense across the boroughs of London; at a remove, one can see how the boroughs compare over the six-year period; up close, the specific characteristics within a borough come into focus. Cole remade an existing chart from the New York Times about non-working Black and white American men, using the composition to visually support the theme. Adam Green inverted a unit chart for an eye-catching look at a Queen album’s longevity on the music charts.

Titles and typography

Have you ever heard the phrase, “It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it”? Well, guess what: it’s both! The words you use in your visualizations matter: using strong, direct, meaningful titles lets the audience know what to expect and what to look for in the charts and graphs to come. In addition, the typography you choose matters as well; we wouldn’t relay somber news in Comic Sans, and we wouldn’t replace the iconic Candy Land board game’s box design with a sophisticated typeface like Didot.

Using a strong message, large keywords, or distinctive (and appropriate) typography—or, ideally, all three—is a good way to ensure that your key message is seen and remembered. A few of our participants took advantage of these techniques: Simon used an Extra Black typeface with fissures in it when titling his piece about the Strongest 20 Earthquakes in History; Gary made the words “Mom” and “Dad” extra large in the title of his take on Fathers’ Day spending; and Jordan boldfaced “Trust” and “Fear” in his look at Donald Trump’s retweets.

These are only some of the excellent submissions we received this month, and we appreciate the creativity and dedication of everyone who participated. While the monochromatic challenge has closed, the next challenge is already well underway. Browse through all of last month’s submissions, or take on the July challenge to create a diagram that explains a process or a concept of interest to you.