Rhiannon's Blog

When I first read the Feltron Annual Reports, I was confused as to what the data was reporting. After looking through a few reports, I realized that they all represented information pertaining to Nicholas Felton (2010 is not actually about him but his dad Gordon Felton). Despite my initial confusion, the reports are fascinating displays of presenting data and really emphasize how presentation is everything. When you look at what exactly Felton is describing through his visual tools, you realize how mundane and insignificant the date can be. For instance, how important to the average person is it to know how many drinks Felton consumed in in 2006 and what type of drinks they were? The pie graphs, bar graphs, colors and enlarged numbers, however, make the information visually pleasing and make the viewer curious as to what they are looking at. If the information was simply written out in paragraph style it is less likely someone would be interested in reading it.

The use of visual aids such as graphs and charts, seem easier for us to digest and comprehend than long passages of text, which seem to require higher concentration. This is why in their powerpoint presentations, teachers typically avoid pasting large amount of text on their slides and prefer the use of pictures, graphs and other visual tools. I think most students would agree that image- heavy presentations are much easier to focus on and keep alert during than presentations boggled down with text. It is important to note though, visual aids should be accompanied by some text in order to relay its message effectively and hinder misinterpretation. For instance, without the legend, the graph on the second page of the Feltron 2006 Annual Report would not make any sense and would just look like a series of numbers some of which are in a box and/or highlighted in yellow. As a result, visual devices can be extremely effective for conveying information in a clear and concise way, which is something we should keep in mind as we research our historical topics. Oftentimes in school, when asked to do research, students immediately look for books, articles and other text-heavy materials to use to make yet another text-based presentation of research. If however, we want to convey our findings in a more attention grabbing way that can be just as accurate, we should look to the use of visual devices in our research projects.

Take this example:

Here is a list of all the different cities that own works by Andy Warhol and how many works the cities own:

Amersterdam 1
Balitmore 2
Basel 3
Boston 1
Budapest 1
Buffalo 1
Chicago 2
Cologne 4
Dayton 1
Detroit 1
Dijon 1
Dunkirk 1
Dusseldorf 1
Fort Worth 2
Frankfurt am Main 2
Houston 6
Kansas City 1
La Jolia 3
London 2
Los Angeles 1
Mainz 1
Minneapolis 1
Monchengladbach 5
Montpellier 1
Montreal 2
Munich 1
New York 27
Paris 3
Princeton 1
Richmond 1
Stockholm 1
Stuttgart 1
Toronto 1
Toulouse 1
Washington DC 3
Zurich 1

Compare that with this bar graph that relies the same information but with the help of a visual tool: