process diagram for the Scottish Government
I was contacted by one of the project leads on Self-directed Support at the Scottish Government with a problem.
The team were about to issue a 2 year plan around making social care work better for families. At the heart of that plan was a single page diagram, which (in their own words) "the standard graphic designers we are supposed to use just have not got to grips with".
It was something I’d not encountered before called a Theory of Change Map. I quickly learned these have a fairly standard columnar format, and the end result needed to be immediately recognisable as a Theory of Change Map to practitioners in the field.
The problem? Where to start! The draft was extraordinarily wordy as the subject is inherently complex. Elements needed to be readily referenced individually without conveying any sense of sequence or hierarchy (ruling out the usual numbers, letters or numerals). The flow between elements needed to be immediately visually clear while not crowding the already complex content. AND while we had the luxury of colour for the published plan, the diagram had to be resilient to being photocopied in black and white.
After some careful editing of the text in collaboration with the client, I applied an unconventional referencing system of dots, clear type, simple colours and shades, dark text on pale backgrounds which copiers rendered as different greys, and with a mix of solid and dashed lines, and fine and strong type differentiating long term and intermediate goals.
The end result was well received and formed the heart of the policy document.
