Sublime

They disguise something to draw our attention to something about it, whether or not they know what that is.

viewers will often find it more appealing and persuasive.9

Don’t expect that people will necessarily pay attention to information you provide.

Communicating the idea that “The price of gold is going down” probably doesn’t need detailed stratification on the y-axis. But if you’re hoping to have a conversation about monthly gold price trends, more reference points may be helpful.

Don’t undercut your own hard work. Let the chart do what it was built to do.

Keep explanations of forms brief, clear, and general, not specific to the data encoded in your chart.

it skews the visual perception of the numbers.

When used sparingly, color is one of the most powerful tools you have for drawing your audience’s attention. Resist the urge to use color for the sake of being colorful; instead, leverage color selectively as a strategic tool to highlight the important parts of your visual.

For example, a graph titled “Monthly Sales ($USD Millions)” with y-axis labels of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. I find this confusing. Including the “$” sign with each number eases the interpretation of the figures. Your audience doesn’t have to remember they are looking at dollars because they are labeled explicitly.