A Practical Guide to Designing with Data

In recent years, the terms Visualization, Infographic and others have been bantered around with almost no regard to their use or meaning. There is a new vernacular emerging in the realms of data representations, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore the much simpler origins and best practices of charts and graphs.

Brian Suda takes you on a journey through the basics and makes it easy to produce beautiful looking, accurate representations of data. He’ll walk you through how to visualize and design data in such a way that it engages the reader and tells a story rather than just being flashy, cluttered and confusing.

Table of Contents

Part 1: The visual language of data
Chapter 1: Graph genesis
Chapter 2: Chart literacy
Chapter 3: Dynamic and static charts
Chapter 4: Does this make me look fat?
Chapter 5: Chart junk

Part 2: Colour and ink
Chapter 6: Data to pixel ratio
Chapter 7: How to draw attention to the data
Chapter 8: Rasterization ainʼt got those curves
Chapter 9: Just a splash of colour
Chapter 10: In Rainbows

Part 3: How to deceive with data
Chaper 11: Trompe lʼoeil (trick the eye)
Chapter 12: Relative versus absolute
Chapter 13: Sins of omission
Chapter 14: Caught red-handed: the problem offalse positives
Chapter 15: Fudge factor

Part 4: Common typesof charts
Chapter 16: Line graphs
Chapter 17: Bar charts
Chapter 18: Area graphs and charts
Chapter 19: Pie charts
Chapter 20: Scatter plots

Part 5: Not so common charts
Chapter 21: Maps, choropleths and cartograms
Chapter 22: Radar plots
Chapter 23: Gauges and thermometers
Chapter 24: Sound
Chapter 25: Everything and the kitchen sink