Pie charts = organized information
In persuading an audience, clarity is crucial. Shorten audience’s comprehension process by simplifying your information in visual display. By displaying versus describing your persuasive data, meaning is obvious. Persuasiveness needn’t any silver-tongued tricks.
Charles Kostelnick, author of the professional article, “The Visual Rhetoric of Data Displays: The Conundrum of Clarity”, suggests that straight-foward, visual displays of complex information contain an inherent obviousness. Audiences needn’t tumble through the symbolic, associative jungle of language in text form in order to find clarity. And the less obvious your convincing data appears, the more resistant audiences will be to accepting your message.
“Who would dare context such timeless, universal, and self-evident maxims that coalesce around the gold standard of data design–clarity? What reader would expect anything less?”
This obviousness is clarity, and Kostelnick observes the “mutability” of clarity in our world of an increasingly finial diversity of interpretation and meaning. If basic rhetorical principles include “knowing your audience,” this grows increasingly difficult with globalization and digitalization of our world. Vloggers don’t know who’s trolling their YouTube channel. Academics are increasing presenting research to wider sectors of the public. In these occasions, data display is crucial. Diminish the complexity of your argument by assigning a platform of clarity to your data.
Profoundly effective examples of making convincing arguments out of complex data is rampant on TED.com (especially in playlists curated by guys notoriously adept at understanding complex information–i.e. Bill Gates.)
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So clarity is crucial. This makes intuitive sense. Rhetoric is a craft, where a fusion of persuasive elements (i.e. logos, ethos, pathos) demonstrate an argument’s validity. Not only for argument, but when expounding an important message, clarity is crucial. Visuals chase away any interpretive fog between rhetorician and audience to hack through.