Before you publish and share your data story, here are few design tips to make sure it is looking great.
1. Use Icons to Add Visual Flair
Juicebox lets you select from a massive collection of icons to provide a visual reminder for data ingredients and for your overall story. The icon selector can be found at the top of the Designer view and on the configuration area for individual data ingredients.
An icon acts as a quick visual indicator of the content of the story or the type of data. Consider which of the icons below might help to reenforce the content:
A place/location dimension
A metric about number of users
A data story about rabbits
A dimension related to time
2. Emojis
Want to add a bit more 😄 fun?! While Juicebox doesn't have its own way to insert emojis yet, you can add them yourself if you know how. (Just remember that emojis may display differently on different operating systems -- iOS, Windows, MacOS, Android...)
3. Background Colors
You can choose to apply a separate background color to individual slices and sections (the color of the slice will take precedence over the section color). Background colors can be useful to emphasize content and provide separations between logical breaks in your story.
Coolors is one of many sites that provides color schemes with the associated hexadecimal codes. You can either browse from their collection of color schemes or search for color schemes that include your selected primary color.
One common design pattern for colors is to alternate background colors by sections. This helps your users see the breaks in flow of your data story. For example:
Section 1 (the introduction): Use your primary color to grab attention. If the color is dark, you may need to invert the color of the text like this:
--invert
Title here
Section 2 (the body): No background color so that more complex visualizations and content don't have to compete for visual attention.
Section 3 (the conclusion): A light background color (either grey, complimentary color to your primary color, or a desaturated version of the primary color). This shows a visual break from Section 2.
4. Typography / Fonts
Juicebox includes four typography families to apply across an report.
Each of these choices brings a different style to your report. Try applying the different choices (choose SAVE after selecting the style) to see what feels right for your audience.
5. Titles and Text formatting
Juicebox uses a built-in headline and text formatting system called Markdown. It provides the important benefit of making your text formatting consistent across your entire report -- everything from top level headlines to notes will always look the uniform.
Some text you'll really want to emphasize (titles or key messages). Use # or ## in front of this text to make it big!
If you need a word or phrase to pop-out, You can also simply bold text by putting ** on either side of the bold text.
Other text can be deemphasized so that it doesn't distract from content that needs your users' attention. Use ~~ on either side of text to put it in "notes" format.
6. Images
Embedding images in your data story can be a powerful way to emphasize your message and bring visual diversity to the page.
This article about Title Slices provides a few examples of using images to kick-off your story.
There are a number of websites that provide access to free images for you to use. Some of our favorites include:
If you do use an image that you've found, remember to check the license to ensure it is available to be used and including an attribution is good form even if it is not always required. For example, include a notes-level text such as:
~~Photo courtesy of [Bilal O. via Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/aQmqjzqjAOI)~~