figurative meaning

example: hair salon advertisement,"suki's"
source: the georgia straight; september 23-30/2010, pg 79

analysis:
having numerical data displayed in a graphical manner provides a shortcut to the intended message, promoting visual processing and bypassing the need to make numerical computations.

this advertised upscale hair salon was voted the top hair salon in vancouver by georgia straight readers for the 15th year in a row. this is quite a remarkable feat, considering the high volume of ritzy hair salons and fantastic hair stylists in vancouver, with that number compounding every year. in addition to outright stating their proud accomplishment near the bottom of the ad, they also stacked all 15 years in oversized numbers to visually draw emphasis to just how long 15 years really is.

this struck me as a simple, but extremely effective graphical technique, and caught my eye right away.