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River Cty, also known as Peoria, Ill., scored above national average in an economic report released Thursday. The story by staff writer Steve Tarter provides some details on the scope of the report, such as comparison cities in the Midwest.
The story gets more mileage with that fantastic scorecard display that shows how Peoria compares to other cities in the report.
Naturally I go straight to the charted scores for the selected cities. I was a little confused by the terms used as grades for cities in each category, which show, for Peoria, 1B, K, 2B, K and 1B. At first I thought they were some code that was part of the report. Nope. The number and letters are baseball terms, K - strikeout, 1B - Single, 2B - Double, 3B - Triple, HR - Home run. The baseball wasn't clear to me until I saw the legend at the bottom of the package.
With so much data and color and visual elements, the legend is buried down there at the bottom. A better position for that legend would be somewhere near the chart, perhaps just below it so readers instantly see the meaning of the codes to apprehension is maximized.
I love how different elements are incorporated here — the "grand slam" piece and other blurbs that give readers good nuggets of information that can be found in the report.
The rest of the package is cleanly presented and includes a nice breakout box at the bottom.
If you're a fan of publication design, you should check out the report. It's colorful and very well designed, just like this page.
Joe Greco is corporate design director for GateHouse Media.
Contact him at jgreco@gatehousemedia.com.
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