Lessons from Edward Tufte

Instead of giving each its own unique attributes, create classes of information: Captions, legends, and labels can share a text style, for example.

relative simplicity—how little you can show and still convey your idea clearly.

You may have seen or used a chart cheat sheet like Andrew Abela’s.

What about confusing clutter? Information overload? Doesn't data have to be "boiled down" and "simplified"? These common questions miss the point, for the quantity of detail is an issue completely separate from the difficulty of reading.  Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information .