For most of my graphics, I start by writing a goal statement. The goal statement takes two things into consideration:
content (what is the point of the graphic?), and
context (who is the audience and what is the outlet?)
That stated goal is my touchstone. I keep coming back to it, and make design decisions that honor it. It’s also a handy statement to have when communicating with collaborators about the project, to help ensure that intentions are aligned.
Then I move on to additional research before I start sketching. I typically design in space for captions in the sketch stage, and I may write the subheads. But most of the substantive words come later.
But for this project I wrote the captions before I started sketching. I did that in part because this was a web-only graphic, and I knew that the audience would be forced to read things linearly online, as they scrolled down. So I needed to think in steps. But I also did it because I’ve produced enough graphics about the immune system and vaccines to know that it would be way too easy to get caught up in intermediate steps. And I would risk losing the reader in a sea of details they didn’t really need.
Here, the goal was to create a primer for a non-specialist audience on what monoclonal antibody treatments are, and how they work. The goal wasn’t to teach people everything they need to know about the adaptive immune system. But sometimes it’s easy to get sidetracked by all of that context when you start sketching.
So I wrote a step-by-step guide. Starting with this: “To understand how vaccines and monoclonal antibody treatments work, it's helpful to first understand how the body's immune system fights off invading pathogens, such as RSV.”
By starting with the words, I was forced to think things through in a linear flow. And that gave me permission to leave out visual details that weren’t critical in telling this part of the immune system story.
