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For designers Social media design

Overview

We create simple illustrations, charts, quotes and animations to support messaging for the official Office for National Statistics (ONS) social media accounts on:

We also create graphics for our corporate channel, ONS Focus (opens in a new tab) , and our recruitment channel, ONS Jobs (opens in a new tab) 

Writing for social media

Promoting and explaining our statistics on social media helps us to reach a wider audience.

Graphics can support the message, but it is important to think about what information we want to get across through clear, concise text.

Find out how to apply house style, personality and tone of voice to ONS social media content in our guide to writing for social media (opens in a new tab) 

Types of graphics

Our graphics can include:

  • text
  • illustrations
  • charts
  • bespoke animations

We do not use photography on our main channels.

As we publish data on sensitive topics, always consider whether it is appropriate to include illustrations. Sometimes a chart or plain text can convey the message by itself.

For more information on the templates we use, email ons.design@ons.gov.uk (opens in a new tab) 

Example of a social media graphic using white text on a blue background, with an accompanying illustration of a bar and line chart.
Illustration
Example of a social media graphic with a large statistic highlighted in yellow, accompanied by an illustration of a bar and line chart trending upwards.
Big number and illustration
Example of a social media graphic using white text against a blue background, with a large statistic highlighted in yellow.
Big number
Example of a social media graphic using yellow text against a blue background to highlight important statistics.
Important figures
Example of a text-only graphic using white text on a blue background.
Text only
Example of a quote used on a social media graphic in white text on a blue background and the name in yellow.
Quote
Example of a social media graphic using white text against a blue background, with a screenshot of an interactive inflation rate calculator.
Interactive content preview
Example of a social media graphic using a white chart against a blue background, with the highest value highlighted in yellow.
Bespoke chart
Example of a table in a social media graphic showing the difference in statistics from week to week.
Table

Typography

Before adding text to a graphic, check if the message can be simplified to fit the space available.

Text should:

  • be large enough to be easily read on both desktop and mobile screens
  • be left-aligned and not justified, to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1)
  • use Open Sans, our primary brand typeface

Our text styles and sizes have been set in our templates for different graphics. To request a template, email ons.design@ons.gov.uk (opens in a new tab) 

Colours

Our social media graphics primarily use dark background colours with white text, taken from the ONS brand colours.

This is to ensure text colours meet the WCAG 2.1 accessibility guidelines and have a colour contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 (AA standard) against the background.

We also:

  • add depth to illustrations by using tints of our brand colours
  • use specific palette for topic-related graphics to bring familiarity around the topic, for example, yellow, dark grey and shades of teal for COVID-19
  • add bleed to the background colour to avoid white borders when exporting from Adobe Illustrator

Text-only visuals

We often create graphics containing important figures, quotes, or tables, which can be more impactful than leading with an image.

Topics may be too difficult or sensitive to convey in a simple illustration, so text-only graphics can work in these situations.

These should:

  • include the source of the article when quoting statistics, so users can find where the data is from
  • use our templates as a basis, but you may need to adjust type styles to ensure the hierarchy is right for the information being conveyed
  • always include the person’s name, job title and organisation under a quote
Example of a social media graphic using a quite from Darren Morgan, Director of Economic Statistics, using white text on a teal background.
Quote with source
Example of how to use a text table in a social media graphic, using white text on a grey background with yellow text to highlight headings.
Text table
Example of how to compare data in a table for a social media graphic, using different brand colours for each row of the table and icons pointing up or down.
Text table comparing month-to-month changes
Example of how to compare important statistics in a text-only social media graphic, using white text on a bright pink background and separating lines between statistics.
Comparison of important figures
Example of a text-only graphic for social media, using white text on a green background and a large standout figure.
Big number
Example of a text-only social media graphic, using yellow text on a dark grey background.
COVID-19 statistics

Bespoke illustrations

We use simple illustrations to help support our messaging. These are:

We have Adobe Illustrator templates for generic graphics, COVID-19 graphics and regular releases. Keeping these consistent helps build familiarity and awareness of regular content.

Take care when illustrating potentially copyrighted or trademarked content and check with your legal team if needed.

There is more information available on our illustration style.

Example of how to use illustrations in a social media graphic, with an illustration of a trolley loaded with boxes alongside a heading about stockpiling.
Stockpiling illustration
Example of how to use illustrations in a social media graphic, with illustrations of a face mask, a house, a padlock and a virtual phone call alongside a headline about social impacts of coronavirus.
COVID-19 illustrations
Example of how to use illustrations in a social media graphic, including an illustration of a person's CV alongside a headline about finding a job.
Unemployment illustration
Example of how to use illustrations in a social media graphic, showing illustrations along a timeline of points for "life in lockdown".
Diary of a nation timeline
Example of how to use illustrations in a social media graphic, with an illustration of a person sitting at home on their laptop with their cat, alongside a headline about COVID-19 lockdowns.
Lockdown illustration
Example of how to use illustrations in a social media graphic, with an illustration of a bottle of wine alongside a headline about sales of sparkling wine.
Sales by product illustration

Bespoke charts

When using charts on social media, keep the focus on the data, any supporting imagery is secondary. All charts in our social media graphics follow the Government Analysis Function's data visualisation guidance (opens in a new tab) 

Text in charts should:

When designing a chart:

  • keep the area behind it clear from background graphics
  • simplify the axis labels as much as possible by taking out some of the points
  • avoid footnotes where possible, use annotations if extra information is needed
  • include the source of the article, so the user can find the data for further reading
An animated bar chart for a social media graphic, showing kidney cancer net survival rate by stage.
Animated bar chart
A horizontal bar chart for social media showing the most common reasons for negative sentiment, with the highest reason being "I am worried about the side effects".
Rotated bar chart
Example of a slope chart for a social media graphic showing a decrease in COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among younger adults.
Slope chart
Two horizontal bar charts for social media comparing student satisfaction with their academic experience and social experience.
Bar charts comparing month-to-month changes
An animated line chart showing adults who remained out of work from one financial quarter to the next.
Animated line chart
A pie chart in the style of the end of a log to show the breakdown of UK woodlands' asset value.
Pie chart

Bespoke animations

We can animate illustrations, charts and important figures to help increase engagement and bring stories to life. Consider whether the value of creating an animation is proportionate to the effort needed.

Animations should be:

  • used as the first tweet in a thread, otherwise there often is not enough engagement to justify the time spent on it
  • simple, without exaggerated transitions or movements

If you are making a GIF, duplicate the last frame and put at the start with a 0.3 second duration. This means it will still show the figure with a play button at the start, so users can still see the content if they cannot play the GIF.

GIFs should be under 5 megabytes (MB) for social media to post using Hootsuite. GIFs up to 15MB can be posted manually but cannot exceed this file size.

The ONS design team has an After Effects template for creating animations. There are pre-sets for exporting using Media Encoder, to MP4 for Facebook and GIF to take into Photoshop for Twitter. To request this, email ons.design@ons.gov.uk (opens in a new tab) 

For further guidance on creating accessible video and audio content, visit the W3 guidance page on audio and video media accessibility (opens in a new tab) 

An animated social media graphic showing robots on a conveyor belt alongside a headline about automation.
Automation animation
An animated social media graphic encouraging users to complete our social surveys.
Survey animation
An animated graphic counting up to 300, to show the number of COVID-19 releases we had published at that point.
Big number animation
Example social media graphic bespoke animation relationships
Animated line charts
Example social media graphic bespoke animation pandemic
COVID-19 animation
An animated bar chart showing the top 10 UK trade exports.
Animated bar charts

Animating charts in Adobe After Effects

We use Adobe After Effects to create animated charts for social media.

Line chart

To create an animated line chart:

  1. Select "Layer", "New", "Shape Layer".
  2. Open the dropdown menu for the new shape layer and select "Add", then "Path".
  3. Open the dropdown menu for "Path" and select the stopwatch button. Create a line in Illustrator and paste in here.
  4. Select "Add" again and then “Stroke”.
  5. Open the dropdown menu for "Stroke" and set the "Line Cap" and "Line Join" to "Rounded". Change the stroke width to 5px.
  6. Select "Add" and select “Trim Paths”. Open the dropdown to set "End" to 0% and select the stopwatch.
  7. Choose the point you would like the line to stop animating and set the end value to 100%, depending on the direction of your line. You may instead have to set the start to 100% and 0% respectively.

Using branding from other organisations

We do not often include branding from other organisations, but we can use it if appropriate when creating graphics for awareness or topic days.

We can do this by:

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Let us know how we could improve this page, or share your user research findings. Discuss this page on GitHub (opens in a new tab) 

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