Your Tables in InDesign Don’t Have to Be Boring!

Every time I ask my friend Andrea Späth, a graphic designer from Germany, for samples of great tables in the publications she works on, she sends me pictures of actual tables—coffee tables, dining room tables, end tables. Once we solve the translation problem, she reminds me that her publications involve more furniture than data. Fortunately, other designers I work with have more boring projects that do require tables. And that’s how we all tend to think of tables, right? Boring. As you’ll see here, sometimes the data itself may seem boring, but the design doesn’t need to be. With a combination of tried-and-true graphics principles, coupled with the excitement of you-can-break-the-rules-if-you-know-them techniques, you can design clear, inviting, memorable tables. In this article we’ll be looking at a few before-and-after examples and talk about a couple of principles; along the way, you’ll see some cool table designs that will inspire you.

Alternating Colors, and Other Easy Additions

Sometimes the best solution to the challenge of a mild-mannered, basic table is, quite simply, to make it into a nicer table. In our first example, admittedly dry data in a Word table is transformed into a sophisticated, easy-to-read chart for a stock-photo company (Figure 1). According to Matt Bargell, a design and marketing firm president, “On tables where I have two rows or more, I almost always stagger each row’s background color from white to a screen of a light color to provide a visual guide for the viewer.”

Appeal to Different Senses

Building a better table isn’t always the perfect design solution. Tim Giesen, principal and creative director of Claro Creative Group, transformed a typical top-10 list into what he calls a “charticle” with a loose table format. This three-column, 10-row table (Figure 2) breaks the grid to engage the readers and bring a potentially dry subject to life.

“I am always looking for ways to grab the reader’s attention and provide entry points into the content,” says Giesen. “By breaking the copy into smaller pieces with type elements and smart graphics, we can provide these entry points. And, once engaged by a portion of the content, we find the reader continuing through the balance of the information.”

Please Don’t Run Away—Read Me!

For a medical newsletter, Giesen took detailed information that was provided in paragraph form, organized the details into a table, and highlighted the information with different type colors (Figure 3).

The first column, which shows the topic (such as PSA), features rotated and reversed type. As you can see from the original submission (a Word file), he transformed an intimidating block of text on somewhat stressful subject matter into a welcoming table that seems to say, “Just a few snippets of information. Come on in and take a look.”

Set a Strong Visual Base for Differentiation

The more sections of data your table needs to show, the more you have to make things easy to find and distinguish—which happens to be something that InDesign tables can really help with. In a brochure for a company that provides color proofs, Matt Bargell imported an Excel file and formatted it with InDesign table and cell styles (Figure 4).

Reverse type clearly indicates the table headings, and the generous cell padding throughout makes the small text easy to read. According to Bargell, “As a general rule, I use tables when I have more than six items that I need to show in a matrix. Once you get the hang of it, InDesign’s table features are very flexible for adding rows or columns. I find it totally coolsville that I can simply highlight an entire row (or column) and change text formatting, cell line weights, and color fills.”

Rules Are Made to Be Broken

Now we start to break the rules a little more. Tom Visocchi, the art director of the short-lived Denver Magazine, added interest to typical tables with interesting header rows. In the chart in Figure 5, he staggered the height of the headers to match the text.

In the project shown in Figure 6, he placed reverse type in rounded-corner frames to really call attention to each column head. In both cases, Visocchi favored white horizontal grid lines and dotted vertical grid lines. Here, he incorporated images in cells along with images wrapping around text in cells. Both of these tables are text-heavy—a full page long—so these design elements help break the information down for the reader.

Calendars

Tables are ideal for calendar pages. And as we’ve already seen, InDesign really gives you a lot of room for fun and creativity. In Figure 7, Giesen enlivened the table with both an image and text balloon to really highlight an event on Aug. 1.

Depending on the number of events each month, this newsletter’s calendar is sometimes a simple bulleted list and other times a full-fledged calendar page. The pages often incorporate related graphics from newsletter stories in the issue. The Art of the Chart Even by looking through just the examples in this article, it’s clear we’ve come a long way in the presentation of concentrated information and “small print.” The latitude and power given to us designers in this area means definitely more fun for us, and, I think, a giant leap forward for everyone who has to read charts and tables.