Designing Your Report

Few sponsors of quality information projects are schooled in the art of graphic design, but that shouldn't stop you from developing performance reports that are crisp, clean, and easy to read. This section reviews the following:

• Elements of Good Design.
• Design Guidelines for Performance Reports.

Elements of Good Design

If you are not familiar with the principles and practices of good design, consider doing one or more of the following:

• Get advice or hire the services of skilled publication designers. But recognize that they may not be experienced in working with this kind of comparative information. You should feel comfortable enough with the designer to suggest some guidelines for presenting performance data. Also, remember that designers may be more concerned about aesthetic values than communication values. It's your responsibility to make sure that the design doesn't detract from the information but makes it more compelling and understandable.
• Review some of the many resources on print and, if appropriate, Web design. They will provide you with a foundation for thinking about how you want your report to look and for reacting to proposed designs.
• Collect examples of performance reports that other sponsors have developed. Also, try to review the many examples provided or referred to in this Web site. What do you find appealing? Distracting? Intimidating? Consider conducting a focus group to react to existing reports, or paying an expert in communications to critique them. Most importantly, ask other sponsors about any consumer testing they may have done. What would they change based on what they learned?

The Fundamentals

Whether you hire a professional designer or create the document in-house, you should be mindful of the fundamental rules of good design. They will help to ensure that your audience can find its way through the material and that your message comes across loud and clear. These basic rules apply to both print and electronic formats, although the specific application may vary.

Font Size and Type

• Use a font size and type that are easy to read. Design experts recommend serif fonts for large blocks of text and sans serif fonts for titles and other short items, such as headers and labels. Serif fonts have little strokes at the ends of letters; sans serif fonts do not.
• Try to limit the number of font types in a single document to two or three, although it's okay to use a few different styles within the same font family (e.g., versions of the same font type that are bolder, thinner, or more or less compressed). Choose font types that contrast but still look good together.
• Use bold type for highlighting important words and phrases, but remember that too much bold can be distracting.
• Let your audience tell you what they can read. The size of the font can have a major impact on readability, especially for an older audience. Since the "ideal" size for a font is a function of the font type, the line length, the space between lines, and the visual acuity of readers, the best strategy is to choose a size that seems readable and test it with your audience. Keep in mind that seniors are likely to prefer larger font sizes, probably 13 points or more in printed materials. (To minimize eye strain, font sizes on computer screens tend to be much larger.)

White space is space on the page (or computer screen) that is empty of both text and graphics. It helps the reader get oriented on the page and focus on the information that is important.

Use white space to break up the page and make certain items (such as tables) stand out. The reader shouldn't be confused about where to look or overwhelmed by a wall of text. It is better to have a longer document than a document that has very little unoccupied space.

White space between paragraphs makes it easier for the reader to skim and focus on manageable chunks of information. The space between lines also affects readability: if the space is too narrow, the eye sees only a block of text; if it is too wide, the eye has to work too hard to jump from line to line. 

Page-to-Page Consistency

Although each page in your report may have different content, the basic design should be consistent. Page numbers and section titles, for instance, should always be in the same place on every page. Each style of text you use (e.g., titles, headings, bulleted lists, footnotes) should look the same—in terms of font type, size, and color—throughout the document.

This kind of consistency orients the readers, facilitates skimming, and enables them to navigate easily through the document.

Line Justification

In general, it is easier to read text that is ragged rather than justified on the right. (In justified text, the right margin is a straight edge; ragged means that the right margin is uneven.) Justification can throw off the spacing between words, interfering with the way people read.

Other Choices

You and your designer will have to make many other design decisions, many of which will be driven by personal preferences; design choices often come down to individual tastes, so there is rarely one right answer. Your job is to stay focused on the choices that maximize clarity and make the document as accessible and attractive as possible.

Design Guidelines for Performance Reports

In addition to applying all the fundamentals of good design, consider the following recommendations when designing your report:

• General Guidelines.
• Basic Guidelines for Using Color.
• Basic Guidelines for Chart Design.

General Guidelines

• Keep It Simple.
• Make It Appealing.
• Design Each Page to Stand on Its Own.
• Use Graphics to Support, not Detract from, the Message.

Keep It Simple

The contents of your report are complicated enough for your audience. Don't compound the problem by making the reader deal with a document that is either hard to follow or challenging to read. For instance:

• Avoid complicated folds and pullouts that require too much effort on the part of the reader and make it harder to skim.
• Be wary of overprinting, in which text is printed over pictures or other visuals. Common in magazines, this technique is currently fashionable among graphic designers; however, it is often distracting to the reader and sometimes makes the text very hard to read.

While you want to engage the reader, this is not an opportunity to apply the most creative design and packaging ideas.

Also, a simple approach can make everything more manageable. For example, if you can convey your message on just one page, it will be much easier to produce the document, tailor it to select audiences, and mail it.

Make It Appealing

A simple look and structure can still be attractive and professional looking. Within the constraints of your budget, do what you can to enhance the appearance and "feel" of your report. For example:

• Incorporate photos, drawings, or other graphics that will catch the reader's eye.
• Use "spot color" to brighten up black and white text or graphics.
• Choose heavier, opaque paper (i.e., paper that doesn't feel flimsy or look transparent).
• Invest in artwork and/or good paper stock for the cover.

The value of an appealing look is not only that it captures your audience's attention, but that it creates a perception that the report is something that people should value. This makes it more likely that they will hold on to the materials, remember them, and refer to them later.

Design Each Page to Stand on Its Own

To keep your audience engaged rather than overwhelmed, don't think of your report as a book, which presents a long flow of information that continues from page to page. Since you cannot assume that your audience has the interest or desire to read the material you are presenting, or that they will start at the beginning and read each page consecutively, you have to make each page as self-contained and attractive as possible.

To make each page digestible on its own, limit the amount of text and graphics on a page; this allows the reader to easily take in one (or a few) pages at a time without feeling assaulted by the material. While you may not always be able to deliver a complete message, try to structure each page or so with a beginning, middle, and end so that readers gain something no matter where in the document they start.

Use Graphics to Support, not Detract from, the Message

While charts and other graphics can often communicate information much more effectively than words, use them carefully. Too many graphics can be intimidating, especially to an audience that is unaccustomed to interpreting displays of data. Depending on your audience, it may be better to be selective—displaying a few charts that provide the most important information—than to be comprehensive. You can always made the detail available separately for those who want it.

Also, make sure that the graphics work with the text rather than against it. Designers unfamiliar with the significance of the material may place charts on the page in a way that is visually appealing but not appropriate for the content. They may interrupt the flow of narrative text (e.g., by inserting a chart between related paragraphs) or move charts away from the text that refers to them.

Basic Guidelines for Using Color

Colors are a powerful tool for helping people skim information and pick out important patterns (such as the best and worst performers). You can use color to:

• Attract the reader's attention.
• Highlight patterns in the information.
• Help the reader find specific information.

The Buyers Health Care Action Group (PDF file, 640 KB; HTML)
© Copyright 1999. Buyers Health Care Action Group. All Rights Reserved. Used with Permission.

Tips for Using Color Effectively

Use colors with care.

Because colors are so powerful, you need to be sensitive to their impact and use them sparingly. You will be better able to draw the reader's attention if you use colors purposefully.

Test color choices with consumers.

It is usually advisable to test your color scheme with consumers to ensure that you won't be offending or confusing anyone.

• Confirm that the colors you choose do not have strong negative connotations for any segments of your audience. Certain colors may have meaning for some ethnic or racial groups.
• Be cautious about using dark colors to represent something that is "bad" or "below average."
• Don't combine colors and symbols in a way that may confuse your readers. Consumers may associate a meaning with a color that is at odds with the meaning of a symbol. Testing with your audience will help you see whether the colors in your report are undermining comprehension.

Don't depend on colors to convey a message.

You cannot rely on color alone to convey differences in text or graphics. For example, you would not want to use circles with three different colors unless you are absolutely sure that your audience will perceive the contrast in the colors: yellow, for instance, would appear very light compared to a dark blue. Some readers may be colorblind. Readers may also photocopy your report, so the black and white version has to be as informative as the color version.

Watch your budget.

Although colors don't add costs in a Web environment, they can be expensive in a printed document. To keep costs down, many report designers limit themselves to two colors (usually black or dark blue plus another color). To increase the mileage you get out of those colors, you might want to choose ones that work well in lighter tones and that contrast well against white.

Lighter shades of the same color are useful as a background color in graphics or text boxes. Colors that contrast strongly with white enable you to print titles in white against a colored background.

Basic Guidelines for Chart Design

Here are some basic guidelines for designing clean, readable charts:

• Avoid unnecessary lines and boxes. They clutter up the page and distract the reader's eye.
• Be cautious with shading; it is useful for highlighting differences, but can make text hard to read (especially for older readers and those who are visually impaired).
• Be careful about using alternating colors in bars or tables. Readers often think that the colors mean something, e.g., that rows with a background that is colored rather than white are more important. Also, colored backgrounds can make the same symbol look different.
• Line up titles, headings, and the left edges of graphics to create a clean look.
• Look for opportunities to create "white space" on the page and around graphic elements and text (White space is empty space that contains no graphics or text).
• To make text easier to skim, align the tops of column headings and the left sides of row headings.
• To make groups of symbols easier to read, keep the symbols close together so they create a visual "block". Also, rather than centering the symbols, left-justify them so that it is easy to see which groups are larger than the others (i.e., so that reading the symbol blocks is like reading a bar chart).
• To make the text in the graphic easy to skim, vary font sizes, use bold type, and insert line breaks that separate the main text from subpoints.
• Eliminate distracting details in the text and in the graphics.
• Don't vary the width of related columns (e.g., the columns for each health plan) even if some have more text than others.