Storytelling With Data

White space can be used strategically to draw attention to the parts of the page that are not white space.

3-minute story

The second way to persuade, according to McKee, is through story. Stories unite an idea with an emotion, arousing the audience’s attention and energy. Because it requires creativity, telling a compelling story is harder than conventional rhetoric. But delving into your creative recesses is worth it because story allows you to engage your audience o

The rest of the data is preserved for context, but pushed to the background so it doesn’t compete for attention. Slightly different shades of grey were used so you can still focus on one or the other series of data at a time, but it doesn’t distract from the clear emphasis on the red series.

varying saturation of a single color is used. Note that our perception is more limited when it comes to relative saturation, but one benefit we get is that it does carry with it some quantitative assumptions (that more heavily saturated represents greater value than less or vice versa—

While tables interact with our verbal system, graphs interact with our visual system, which is faster at processing information.

What background information is relevant or essential? Who is the audience or decision maker? What do we know about them? What biases does our audience have that might make them supportive of or resistant to our message? What data is available that would strengthen our case? Is our audience familiar with this data, or is it new? Where are the risks:

Short-term memory

I almost always use dark grey for the graph title. This ensures that it stands out, but without the sharp contrast you get from pure black on white (rather, I preserve the use of black for a standout color when I’m not using any other colors).