I love the use of panel charts (also called small multiples), but something did seem fishy about this NY Times chart showing that millennials seem less interested in democracy these days.
Fortunately, The Washington Post checked the Gray Lady in a great analysis which included this much more truthful chart that is still a panel chart.
The Data Visualization Catalogue is an interesting new in-progress website attempting to catalog various types of data and information visualizations. Useful as a first step if you’re looking for ideas or other options.
H/T to Stephy Lewis.
There are many data visualization sins, but the one that makes my blood boil is manipulating the Y-axis. Fox News is the master at this, so often just deleting the Y-axis entirely to invent the data story that syncs with the network’s political narratives.
While Fox News generally is creating a story that isn’t there, usually when I see Y-axis shenanigans, it is to exaggerate a legitimate story. And generally, the story is a good one to begin with that doesn’t need exaggeration.
I was not been a big fan of the Consumer Reports redesign from a graphic design perspective, but it has slowly gotten a bit better. But the really need a stronger editor (and backbone) when it comes to data visualization. Your data tells a good story to begin with—there is no need to visually lie to your readers, as they did recently with these charts showing secondary market ticket prices. Because the length of the bars indicate value, distorting them is essentially telling an untruth to your audiences. (No, $22.58 is not one quarter as much as $36…)
Just being visually truthful doesn’t make your story less impactful. And if it does, then you need to get a better story! This would be a far more truthful design:
Or, since it is a trend, I would probably suggest a line chart:
A Russian poster advising against dangerous selfie-taking.
I couldn’t find the source of this data from Oxfam, but I love the simplicity of adding a visual to the numbers on this line graph.
I came across a simple, but excellent example of process graphics in Michael Bierut’s new book, How To. Above are two pages from the printed brand guidelines for the design of United Airline’s once low cost sub-brand called TED.
As part of the design and branding work, Michael’s firm Pentagram wanted to show how the different divisions of United Airlines all fit together. Instead of a single visual (“process graphic”), they created two: one for internal audiences (on the left) and one for external audiences (on the right.)
This is a great reminder for me that one story does not always mean one single graphic. Think about your audience, think about their level of knowledge, think about what you want them to take away from your graphic.
Below is the full page from Michael’s new book.
My fellow PowerPoint MVP, Glenna Shaw has written a great tutorial on how to create Excel table heat maps.
Generally, we think of “heat maps” as geographical, shading in countries, states or other regions to indicate relative values. But heat maps can actually much more easily be applied to Excel tables through conditional formatting—rendering a “referanceable” table into a “glanceable” visualization.
When bad slides leak and become news, presentation designers can’t help themselves from redesigning them. And that’s a good thing.
My friends at SlideRabbit took on Sony’s recently leaked slides.
