Data Visualization Tips
- Top Ten Chart Dos and Don’ts by Angela Zoss of Duke University Libraries
- Data Visualization Checklist by Stephanie Evergreen (and check our her Rate your visualization tool)
- Real Chart Rules to Follow from FlowingData
- 7 Basic Rules for Making Charts and Graphs from FlowingData
- Eight Principles of Data Visualization by Ryan Bell
- The Little of Visualization Design (series of short tip articles) by Andy Kirk
- Helpful Articles by DataWrapper's Chartable blog
- Six Principles for Designing Any Chart by Manuel Lima (plus link to full guide)
Designing Data Visualizations
- Data Visualization Principles: Lessons from Tufte by Mike Pantoliano
- A nice, quick summary of some key practice advice from Edward Tufte's seminal book, Visual Display of Qualitative Information
- Principles of Information Display for Visualization Practitioners
- Edward Tufte has written a number of classic books on data visualization and his work is still refered to today. This page from NASA provides a quick overview of his main ideas, which are still relevant and can inform your data visualizations designs.
- Data to ink ratio
- One of Tufte's ideas is data-to-ink ratio, generally stating that when creating a visualization, you should try to maximize the amount of "ink" (physical or digital) used to represent the data, and minimize the amount used to represent everything else not important to understanding. Tufte is a strong advocate of clean, minimal design. This can be a good rule of thumb; however, this InfoViz wiki page provides a bit more discussion around this idea.
- Small Multiples
- Another of Tufte's ideas is small mutliples, where you create a series of smaller graphs to compare similar variables across different categories. It’s a data dense way of allowing your audience to quickly see broad trends
- The "Small Multiples on River Quality" blog post from XLCubed Blog linked above gives you an idea of what this looks like.
- The "How Pew Research Center uses small multiple charts" article discusses different ways they have used small multiples and provides tips for their use.
- Another of Tufte's ideas is small mutliples, where you create a series of smaller graphs to compare similar variables across different categories. It’s a data dense way of allowing your audience to quickly see broad trends
- Planning and Designing Effective Data Visualizations
- Noah Iliinsky presented a 3 hour workshop on designing data visualizations to the European Bioinformatics Institute. Here are notes on the workshop by Francis Rowland, which include links to the slides and notes.
- The Architecture of a Data Visualization by Giorgia Lupi
- If you want to go beyond using a particular template/form of a visualization, but instead want to start designing your own custom visualizations, this article is a great place to start.
- Visualizations That Really Work by Scott Berinato (Harvard Business Review)
- A discussion on visual communication, considering the nature and purpose of your visualization, to make your visualizations more effective
- Learn Data Viz - Reading by UNC Libraries's Lorin Bruckner
- A fantastic guide on data visualization, including this page of recommended books and articles to learn more
General Design Principles
- Gestalt Principles: How are your designs perceived?
- Gestalt principles deal with how people perceive something and how people see more than is there. Considering and applying Gestalt principles will improve your visualizations.
- Clean Up Your Mess: A Guide to Visual Design for Everyone
- By learning about and applying some of these general design principles to visualizations you create, your visualizations will be more understandable and effective.
- Layout and Page Design Fundamentals
- Laying out all the elements of your visualization, including the title, legend, explanatory text, etc. can be a challenge. Understanding some basics around layout and page design can help.
For even more information on data visualization design, check out the Books, Blogs, and More page.