Learn five basic principles that can help you design more effective and readable tables
by Luigi Canali De Rossi
Creating effective tables is often a highly underestimated task. Many of you have certainly ventured before in trying to accommodate a professionally-looking table into a PowerPoint slide, only to find out that:
a) the information is too much to be readable;
b) it always looks too crowded and busy to make immediate sense to viewers;
c) it is very hard to make ANY table look good, unless you have some specific design experience or design model to work from.
If you identify with any one of the above I have a few simple recommendations to help you design effective tables, that look professional and that are easy to read.
1) Use the rule of seven.
Do not ever use more than six rows or columns in one table.
Research shows that human beings can at most grab six to seven concepts/ideas presented together. Adding more rows and columns also inevitably compromises size of text and consequent readability. More columns and rows demand more space and decrease the white space available for margins and separation among items. The work will then look more crowded and difficult to understand.
2) Use Serif fonts.
Due to the fact that most presentation tables allow only for short, basic caption words or brief phrases, the use of Serif fonts like Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, Univers, lends itself to better readability in most situations. At small sizes Verdana works particularly well as its design offers apparently much bigger-looking characters while using the same point size of other fonts (a small text written at 9pts. will look much bigger and more readable in Verdana than in Arial).
3) Create "breathing" space among all rows and columns.
By possibly utilizing white space or the background color keep always a sensible empty margin between each row and column of your table as to guide the eye in to orderly reading without the unnecessary use of gridlines and borders. Creating a table that can visually stand without the use of any of its initial default border lines it's a major achievement in information design. In the best designed tables graphic lines are only kept to define the title space or the starting and ending area of the table, without becoming too redundant in spelling out the obvious separation of all rows and columns.
4) Format titles for immediacy.
In a table, columns and row titles are essential in the fact that they spell out our initial and immediate understanding of the table contents. By formatting titles with emphasis (bold) and by providing titles that are short and easily understandable one ensures that the first information component that will be read is optimized for immediacy and clarity.
5) Align with precision.
It is essential that all content elements in a table are precisely aligned and that each column appears to the eye by virtue of its perfect alignment with its neighbouring elements and not by need of vertical lines showing where items belong to. If your table cannot survive without gridlines and borders something is wrong with it. Work at improving alignment, spacing and margins until it looks good without any lines. Then add back a few formal lines where emphasis or area definition may be needed.
Think readability and comprehension before "nice-looking" and "cool".
You can read this article in the original issue of MasterView.
