Functional Feng Shui: Creating Context in Your Exhibits

By: A.R. White

The Conundrum

As every litigator is no doubt aware, exhibit design is incredibly tricky.   Case files consist of so many documents and ideas, and each one seems so important.   How do you condense what may be the most significant chapter of a corporation or a person's life into just one board?   What do you define as “critical information?”   If you're like so many people out there, the answer is “all of it.”

But that won't work.   Even with a three-foot by eight-foot exhibit board, you still cannot fit all of the pertinent information.   Couple that problem with the fact that the jurors often sit between eight and ten feet away from your board (and have terrible eyesight), and you'll find that you have little more space than a single legal sheet of paper.   So there is only one recourse- discern your important points and write easy proofs on your exhibit boards.

Given the shortness of juror attention spans, these boards must be simple, with a point that can be understood in mere seconds.   The information must be presented in such a way as to lead the jurors to immediate and easily comprehended conclusions.   Most importantly, the information must all exist within a visual context so that the leap from one fact to the next is rarely a difficult one.

It is no secret that exhibit creation professionals can outperform most litigators in the design department.   Graphic design software is highly complex, and most litigators' schedules are full enough as it stands!   However, these professionals need help to determine the linchpins of your case.   This article is intended to give you a shared design vocabulary, so that you can quickly interface with your designers.   It will examine the various design elements of a board, and what they say to a viewer.

Begin at the Beginning

Of all of the space on your board, there is no more important real estate than the upper-left side, or what I call the “Golden Corner.”   As American society reads top to bottom/right to left, everyone's eyes automatically begin in the same place, no matter who they might be.   This phenomenon gives you one quick edge: everyone who looks at your board will start out looking at it the same way, no matter what.

You must ask yourself: what is the most important piece of information that I need to convey?   Oftentimes, this will be a title, spelling out the primary message of your piece.   However, the title is almost always printed on the board in large, block letters, guaranteeing that the jurors will find it eventually.   Thus, the primary message of the board is not necessarily the most urgent item to place in the Golden Corner.

For example, in a timeline, the most important thing to place in the upper-left is something that will guide the jurors down the rest of the line.   This may be the event that precipitated the wrongdoing in question, or the allegation that led to the trial itself.   Anything that is placed in that space, however, must link back to the main idea of the piece.   It is imperative that no extemporaneous information placed in the Golden Corner.

In the case of an organizational chart, you may want to place the primary subject of your investigations in the Golden Corner.   Even if that subject is at the bottom of the pyramid, it may be worth inverting your chart to get more bang for your buck.

The Shape of Things

Shapes are eloquent indicators of action.   Aside from the standard elements involved in flow charts, there are a few things stated by shapes.   The contexts of shapes change their meanings.   Temporal meanings follow timelines, and often indicate lengths of action.   Organizational meanings follow informational or organizational charts.

Squares and Rectangles:

Squares and rectangles are the vanilla of the shape world.   They're highly useful because they serve to enclose and de-accent an object.   On a timeline, squares and rectangles indicate a discrete event- something that occurs once and has a measurable length of time.   A court filing or an investigational test might be good examples of discrete events.   Organizationally, squares indicate some of the less-important entities- things that must exist on the chart, but aren't meant to draw the most attention.   Longer rectangles can also serve as “visual blockers,” preventing the viewer's eye from passing over them without reading the information contained therein.   Diamonds on flow charts indicate decisions, whereas squares and rectangles indicate solutions.

Arrows:

Arrows are easily one of the most “loaded” shapes.   On a temporal scale, they indicate an ongoing action.   An arrow that trails to the end of a timeline indicates something that is true to this day.   Arrows can also be used to indicate a flow of currency or information between two entities.

Triangles:

Triangles have a variety of meanings, and are a great utility shape for use on boards.   On organizational charts, triangles indicate an intermediary entity, one that brings two companies together.   On informational charts, they can also indicate an exception.   Triangles on timelines serve the same purpose as a yield sign, cautioning the viewer to stop and read their information before continuing forward.

Circles:

Circles are some of the most naturally eye-catching shapes.   They are intended to draw the viewer's eye inward and trap it on a particular piece of information.   From a design perspective, circles often serve as a punctuation, and are best suited at the end of the chart.   Try to consider circles to be synonymous with stop signs, even though the shapes are different.

Stars and Starbursts:

Stars and starbursts have the strongest impact of all of the shapes, and should never be used lightly.   There is always a great risk of constantly distracting the eye when they are placed on a chart, but they do carry a strong message.   Stars and starbursts typically indicate catastrophic events, and can often divide a timeline into two parts when placed in the middle.

The Language of Color

Of equal importance to shape, color has the strongest impact as a design language.   There is a shared understanding amongst all Americans about the nature of each hue, though these sorts of ideas do not pervade every culture.   For example, while most Americans identify black or dark grey with death, the Japanese use the color white for death.   To the Chinese, black may represent money or income.   This section's statements vary highly depending on your location in the world, though it can give you a starting point for your local charts.

Red:

Red stands out on exhibit board like no other color, and carries an obvious meaning of danger.   Red with white text carries a stop sign association, and often is used to indicate the end of danger.   Red with yellow text indicates a potential for hazards, whereas red with black text indicates damage done.

Orange:

Orange precedes red in the “spectrum of danger,” but can also carry a sense of urgency.   Orange is also the corporate color of the modern contemporary design movement because of its unused and highly-contrastive   nature.   Orange with dark green carries an official connotation.

Yellow:

Yellow is the natural caution color, but is most commonly used on exhibit boards as a highlighter.   Yellow on black simply creates a visual pop on the page and draws the eye.

Green:

Green is the official “okay” color, and has many similar meanings.   Green can indicate recent recuperation, or that an entity proceeded with an action.   Green also can indicate an ecological quality.   Under certain circumstances, however, green can mean environmental disaster.   Green and white and green and yellow typically mean money.

Blue:

Blue is a color that often means “full recovery” or medical treatment.   It has a water and sky association and naturally creates a calming effect.   From a simple medical perspective, though, blue can be used to represent a “code blue,” the cessation of breathing or a cardiac arrest.

Purple:

Purple is often used as a regal color, when used in combination with yellow, and can indicate affluence.   Purple and orange are a childlike combination, whereas dark purple often indicates old damage.   Lavender is a calming color, and can often mean that danger has passed.

A Font of Knowledge

Fonts may be the most underplayed element of litigation graphics, but typography has long been a part of graphic design.   There are four major types of fonts: serif, sans-serif, script and blackletter, and each carry associated meanings.

Serif:

Serifs are the tiny accents on the edges of the letters, and are the hallmark of serif fonts.   Serif fonts include things like Garamond and Times New Roman, and often connote an official meaning.   Serif fonts tend to carry Wall Street associations, and are used in logos for some of the oldest financial institutions in the United States.

Sans-Serif:

Examples of sans-serif fonts are things like Arial, Hattenschweiler and Impact.   Obviously, the prime characteristic of these fonts is their lack of serifs.   They represent a neutral design statement, and are thus ideal for raw data presentation.   They also have a unique advantage of looking clean at a distance, which makes them ideal for most applications.

Script & Blackletter:

Script fonts are any font that resembles cursive handwriting, and include fonts like Brush Script and Zapfino.   Blackletter fonts, on the other hand, are similar to those found in Medieval illuminated manuscripts, and include fonts like Lucida Blackletter.   Both fonts, while they carry interesting meanings, are rarely appropriate for exhibit boards because of their low clarity from a distance.   It is recommended that you don't use these for your own projects because jurors will have trouble reading them from their area.

Location, shape, color and font are the four most basic qualities of exhibit design, though they are hardly the only ones.   This article examined only a few of the potential contexts created through the use of these elements, and the combinations are endless.   If you feel that a design “rule” should be broken for greater impact, don't hesitate- often, experiments beget some of the best design.   Though this analysis has hardly been exhaustive, it has perhaps given you a peek into the world of information design.