I recently saw people praising this chart from The European Correspondent on social media:
While it's certainly creative, when I tried to actually read the chart and spot the insights that were in the callouts, I had to work pretty hard, and some insights were difficult—or even impossible—to spot:
In the spirit of pointing out solutions and not just problems, I redesigned the chart to make it easier to read, and to make the key takeaways in the callouts more obvious:
While perhaps less visually engaging than the original, my guess is that, ultimately, a chart like this might generate more engagement because it's so much easier to read and it makes the key insights in the callouts so much more obvious.
I'd also argue that this makeover is actually somewhat creative, as well. The stacks of country names act like bars in a bar chart (taller stacks of names are like taller bars, i.e., more countries in a group), which wasn't an obvious design choice. The most obvious (and, therefore, least creative) design would have been a bar chart like the one below, but it wouldn't have made the key insights as clear and would be more visually busy than the "more creative" makeover:
What does this mean when creating your own charts? A few things, I think:
Creativity is important in data visualization and should be encouraged, but...
...creative design choices should make key insights easier to see, not harder, and...
...they shouldn’t impose excessive cognitive effort on the reader, or they might skip reading the chart altogether.
Making charts that are visually engaging in order to grab attention is perfectly justifiable in many situations, but...
...there’s no point in getting readers’ attention if, once you have their attention, they fail to grasp key takeaways because of attention-grabby design choices.
Note that none of this applies of you’re creating data art, which serves a very different purpose.
BTW…
I'll be delivering my Practical Charts and Practical Dashboards courses in person in London, U.K. from Nov. 5 to 8! Learn more or register here, but note that early-bird prices end Sept. 14. I hope to meet you there IRL!
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