When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you absurdity, make cartoons. Going to be taking a little break from the data design and Canva blog posts for a little while. Not saying I won’t come back to it, but I think the universe is telling me I need to be a cartoonist […]
Building a Remote Worker Community
Back in 2006 I was in grad school. At the time I lived and worked full time in the Maryland suburbs outside of DC. A few times a week, I would take the Metro from the end of the line to downtown DC for evening classes at George Washington University. It was about an hour […]
Canva Free, Canva Pro, or Canva for Teams?
Is it worth upgrading your Canva Free account to Canva Pro? Is Canva for Teams a different thing? Is Canva Pro really free for Nonprofits & Schools? Updated March 10, 2025 So if you read my blog, you probably already know I’m a big fan of Canva. I have posts on creating logic models using […]
Canva Slide Decks and Slide Docs
For the past 5 or so years Canva has been my go to tool for all sorts of everyday designs. This includes the presentations that I used to design in PowerPoint. Why Canva? Because I find the workflow easier. I can quickly adapt my presentations into other formats like videos or infographics. I also have […]
Report Like This, my new FREE masterclass.
I’ve been thinking about writing a new book, but while you wait on that, I created a free masterclass. Modern report design isn’t harder than the old way, it’s just different. In this free masterclass I’ll teach you my approach. The masterclass is short (it’s a single video course that’s under 15 minutes). I also […]
If you must use a PDF, at least make it widescreen.
My first piece of advice, stop using PDFs to share your reports. Now I know that 95% of you will not follow that advice. Even if PDFs are shown to be unfit for human consumption, they are still the status quo reporting tool for most organizations. (For the very few of you who will consider […]
Don’t panic! Just draw more cartoons.
Don’t Panic. When I was a kid, I remember really enjoying The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was my kind of weird and short enough that kid me actually read the whole thing. In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide has already supplanted […]
You should build an audience, before you write your report.
Time for another report design mindset change. At the most basic level successful communication requires a sender, a message, and a receiver. You, as the report designer, are the sender. The report carries the message. So who is the receiver? For a lot of organizations the receiver is hypothetical. At least for those wishing to […]
Stop Creating Spork Reports
What is a spork report? I want you to imagine visiting a nice little cafe for a light lunch. You decide to order a simple salad and a cup of soup. When the meal shows up, what utensils will you use to eat your food? Easy, right? A fork for your salad and a spoon […]
How long does it take to read a report?
Page count is a somewhat useless measure. When I was young, every once and awhile a teacher would allow us to bring in a “cheat sheet” to use when taking a test. I would write in tiny script so that I could fit a ton on that single page. (sidenote: It was definitely a trick, […]
The 5 Stages of Wasted Data
So how do you waste data? I’ve decided to start the year by really digging into my own report design process. My hope is to eventually create a set of tools that can be used to help guide the review of an organization’s reporting strategy. Part of that review will be very user centric. But […]
Because Evidence Matters
I spent a large portion of yesterday writing a blog post that I don’t think I will ever publish. It started with a chat about creative burnout and then kind of went off the rails a bit. Truth is, I’ve been feeling really pessimistic lately. About the current state of society and the actual merits […]