محمد شاكر
← The Designing Eye
01

Graphical Excellence

"Graphical excellence is that which gives to the viewer the greatest number • of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space." • — Edward Tufte, *The Visual Display of Quantitative Information*

What I see and like

A train timetable drawn as a diagram of slanted lines: stations down the side, time across the top, every train a single diagonal. You read speed as slope, stops as kinks, delays as gaps. One picture answers a hundred questions. That is graphical excellence: the design disappears and the data speaks.

The standard

Excellence is not decoration. It is the well-designed presentation of interesting data — a matter of substance, of statistics, and of design, working together. The test is brutally simple: ideas-per-ink, ideas-per-second, ideas-per-square-inch.

   POOR                            EXCELLENT
   ----                            ---------
   +----------------+              ideas
   |  ###  chartjunk |               ^
   |  ### decoration |               |        *  more ideas
   |  ###  3 numbers |               |     *     per drop of ink
   +----------------+               |  *
     much ink, few ideas            +-----------> ink

The three questions

Hold every graphic up to the light and ask:

QuestionWhat it tests
What is the data?Is the content worth showing at all?
What is the ink doing?Does every mark carry information?
What can the eye compare?Are the right comparisons made easy?

Escaping flatland

Paper and screens are two-dimensional, but the world is not. Excellence often means smuggling more dimensions onto the flat surface — time, magnitude, category, place — without confusing the reader.

        flatland (2D page)
   +-----------------------------+
   |   x  -------------------->   |   we get 2 free dimensions
   |   |                         |   and must encode the rest:
   |   y                         |     color, size, slope, order,
   |   |                         |     small multiples, layering
   +-----------------------------+

Key takeaways

  • Excellence = substance + statistics + design, never decoration.
  • Maximize ideas per unit of ink, time, and space.
  • The page is flatland; good design escapes it honestly.

Checklist

  • [ ] I can state the single idea this graphic must deliver
  • [ ] Every element earns its place by carrying data
  • [ ] The comparison the reader needs is the easiest one to make