What element should you use? Don’t take our word for it! The Sunlight Foundation has a guide to their data visualization process that provides a pretty good, structured starting point and a handy quality benchmark (if you agree with us that the Sunlight Foundation is pretty great at what they do).
Our favorite tips:
Use pie charts sparingly, and only if you want to compare 2-3 things. It’s hard to judge the size of circle segments. lf you have a series of things you want to compare, a bar chart probably works better
Line graphs are what you need when you have one variable you want to show over time, or when you want to compare more than one variable over time.
While it’s tempting to use maps as often as possible, they’re only the right choice if the primary component of your story is geographical. If you’re only interested in one variable, a bar chart might actually be easier to read.
What’s also useful about the guide is that they include design tips about title size and placement, gridlines, and spacing, as well as color hierarchies. These are things you’ll already know if you’re a designer, but if you’re just a data geek trying to tell a good story, it’s helpful in all kinds of ways.
You can download the guide here http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/03/12/datavizguide/
Our favorite tips:
Use pie charts sparingly, and only if you want to compare 2-3 things. It’s hard to judge the size of circle segments. lf you have a series of things you want to compare, a bar chart probably works better
Line graphs are what you need when you have one variable you want to show over time, or when you want to compare more than one variable over time.
While it’s tempting to use maps as often as possible, they’re only the right choice if the primary component of your story is geographical. If you’re only interested in one variable, a bar chart might actually be easier to read.
What’s also useful about the guide is that they include design tips about title size and placement, gridlines, and spacing, as well as color hierarchies. These are things you’ll already know if you’re a designer, but if you’re just a data geek trying to tell a good story, it’s helpful in all kinds of ways.
You can download the guide here http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/03/12/datavizguide/