Planning a visual

Most weak visuals go wrong before anyone opens a charting tool. Settle three things first:

  1. The brief: who is it for, what is the one message, and what data supports it?
  2. The audience and their attention: will they give it 3 seconds, 30 or 300?
  3. The format: is a big number, a chart, a map or a table the best fit?

Explanatory visuals only. Everything in this guide is about visuals that communicate a defined message to a specific audience. Exploratory charts, which you make for yourself to find patterns, can be as messy as you like. Dashboards sit in between: they are explanatory, but they show data that keeps changing, and their page covers what that changes.

Table of contents