Seeing the Pattern Gives Us Closure

In any story we use a process called closure. Closure means recognizing the pattern of information being shown or described to us in bits and pieces, and completing the pattern in our minds.
-- www.storycenter.org/memvoice/pages/cookbook.html

When all is said and done in the production of information graphics, there must be closure or, as they so aptly put it at The Story Center, the recognition of the pattern of information being shown. The graphic must come together in all its parts into a summative picture in the viewer’s mind and a summative point about the story it is telling. Without closure, the graphic leaves ambiguity and confusion in its wake.

However, the challenge to create closure for the viewers begins much closer to the start of the project than the end. What is the closure or conclusion, pattern or moral that you want viewers to take away? What is the point of the graphic? What is the story you are trying to tell? Often it is easy to get wrapped up in depicting the various parts of the idea without having a clear, concise sense of what the idea really is. The end result is an attractive, yet muddled mess that lacks oomph or usefulness – the sine qua non of information graphic design.