I wrote a book!

I wrote a book! And don't worry there are a lot of pictures 😂

After over a year of writing, illustrating and editing my book, How to Visually Communicate Your Ideas More Effectively, it’s here! You can learn more about it on my website, and shop the physical and digital versions here. But here, I want to talk about the creation process.

After a few years of professional work and teaching, I realized there were a few fundamental issues that came up over and over in graphics. Maybe there were too many fonts used in a report and that became distracting. Maybe the graphic lacked contrast, and a crappy projector or old printer made the information practically illegible. Maybe each slide was a wall of text that struggled to engage the audience.

Whatever it was, it stopped important information from being absorbed by the viewers. And it didn’t need to.

I started writing down principles of graphic design and data visualization as I came across them in my work. The tips I’d learned, the important questions that I asked myself while working through a project.

I created a presentation about the material and presented at a few webinars and conferences to test it. Each time, adding more detail to answer questions that came up.

It was a slow iterative process. I wrote and edited copy on airplanes.

Quietly, in between projects I worked on creating this book. After a few rounds of editing, a curated list of examples, and some lovely friends who reviewed drafts, it was finished!

Writing this blog post still feels a bit surreal. If you know anything about me, you know that writing is not my strong suit. I’ve made a career of graphic design and data visualization for a reason. But when I realized how many people were a few small tweaks away from great communication, I wanted to be the one to help them improve.

This book is available as an E-Book or physical copy through Lulu Press. I chose Lulu Press because it’s a certified B-Corp and a print-on-demand publisher. It’s self-published (because duh) and perhaps the first of many future education resources from Schenker Creative Co.

I hope that you will enjoy reading it!