How much of a nerd am I?

I’m such a nerd I watch SportsCenter for the infographics.

[ cue laugh track ]

But have you ever noticed how effective SportsCenter’s Rundown and Bottomline are? Take another look.

SportsCenter's Rundown (left) and Bottomline (bottom) are expertly designed.

Together, these two graphical add-ons convey a large amount of information in a minimal amount of space.

The Bottomline cycles through at-a-glance information about all the games that are currently being played. For a baseball game, for instance, this information includes the teams playing, their respective scores, the inning, the count, and the men on base. The far left portion of the Bottomline tells you which sport you’re seeing scores for (MLB, NCAA, etc.) as well as how many more games there are in this category. In the span of a few minutes you can get a tremendous amount of detailed information about numerous games and all it costs ESPN is a few inches at the bottom of the screen. This is much more effective than the running news ticker most news programs insist on using.

The Rundown on the other hand is equally functional for those flipping over to ESPN for a few minutes while other shows are on commercial. In a few seconds, you can scan the headlines and see not only what is being discussed currently but also the next few topics on the docket, making it easy to decide whether you need to check back again in a few minutes. I wish the regular news had that.

Of course, all of this is in addition to SportsCenter’s usual programming.

These two remarkable examples of information design are inspiring. I wouldn’t recommend you add a live feed of sports scores to your next set of PowerPoint slides but I would encourage you to get the most out of every element you add to your slide. Every part of the Rundown and the Bottomline serves a purpose. Everything extra has been eliminated. The same should be true of great presentation visuals.