How to Make a Timeline in Word. 9+ Timeline Templates for Kids – Free Sample, Example, Format. How to Create a Storyboard in Microsoft Word? Make a Timeline in Microsoft Word from scratch or with a free template. Or, save time by creating a timeline in Smartsheet. Timelines were technically some of the, telling the story of powerful empires and great people throughout time. And there is a reason that they have survived into this era. They make complex information and stories easier to understand based solely on their linear structure. Timelines are an extremely flexible medium as well. They can be used in almost industry or situation you throw at them. Want to show the history of your company? Bam, timeline. What about onboarding a new employee? Or showing a client your sales and design process? Easy, with timelines. They really can adapt to anything! Although, lately I have seen that some timeline infographics have turned into oversized word documents. Instead, there is an abundance of filler text that does not tell a great story. I think that problem stems from not having a plan or guide when starting out. Which leads to frustrated designers. But fear not! In this article, I will teach you how to create a timeline plan AND put that plan into action. Yes, we will show you how to create one of our, from scratch. Just like I had to do. Let’s get into it! Create A Plan Before designing any new infographic, I like to start with a simple plan that will help guide me through the whole process. This is extremely useful when you are trying to, because of all of the parts that have to come together. Here are the steps that I use to create that plan: 1. First I like to establish what the timeline will be used for in its final form. Or even what you are trying to achieve with the timeline format. Ask the following: • Who is this for? Where will this be published? • Is this a story? A history lesson? Or a comparison? • Will it be shared without any other text or content? • Could it be used to support some sort of written content you have produced? • Or are you going to print the timeline out and hang it up somewhere? Simple questions like that in the planning stage will help determine what format and approach you take in the design stage. And knowing these from the start will make the whole process a lot easier. As an example, take a look at this In the Google IO timeline, we wanted to show the evolution of product announcements at the conference. And it was created for other techies like us, to be displayed in a blog post online. Boom, answered all of the questions! Now it is time to make the plan a little more concrete. In this stage, you will need to determine how many points, dates or sections you will like to cover. I like to create a rough outline of all the things I would like to cover in a simple document. Like this plan we used for the Google I/O timeline: This MUST be completed before any design choices are made so that you know that the template you select will actually work for your topic. There is a HUGE difference in creating a timeline with only eight points compared to another with 15 or more. Use some of the answers from the previous section to help you figure this out. For example, the infographic below on the right can stand on its own without any written content, and it has over 90 individual points. / In contrast, there are only about 20 points in the timeline on the left, and the format is noticeably different. It would most likely be used to visualize or summarize some information from a larger article. Planning things out like this that may seem trivial, but it will save you a ton of extra time later on. Next, using the answers from the sections above, you should figure out if you would like this timeline to be text or image-heavy. Just be sure to pick one or the other; no one wants to read something that is longer than a novel. For example, the timeline infographic below on the right uses mostly icons but the one on the left uses a ton of text. / After you figure out what the focal point on your timeline will be, it is time to set a text limit. This may sound a little daunting, but it can be as simple as saying each point can only have 3 lines of text or a maximum of 30 words. With that limit in mind, you should use the questions from above to help summarize each point. Returning to the Google I/O timeline, each point had a rather large paragraph of text in the original outline.
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May 2018
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