Watching the winter Olympics this year, I took note of the great use of information overlays by NBC. Overall I have been impressed with their sparing use of graphics to convey the critical information. I hope that this simple elegant design will be the standard rather than the exception in television and web videos that are pushing the limits on pop-ups and unnecessarily heavy overlays. Below is a great example of the biathlon’s simple hit/miss shot penalty information displays:
On the actual broadcast, these small information units of hit/miss were stacked up beside appropriate flags to show multiple competitors at once. Although hard to follow the progression, it was a great way to show a lot of information in very little space and in real-time.