Here’s where I would have stopped:
But the author goes on...
If you’re going to write numbers instead of having a Y axis, you might as well just have a bulleted list:
- French fries 607
- Potato chips: 542
- Bacon: 533
- Pizza: 296
- Chili dog: 260
Do the bars start at zero? Is it a linear scale? Removing the Y-axis makes for too many possibilities for deceptive displays.
The animation above males an appearance in a good rant against infographics. Hat tip to Brian R. Pauw for this one.
90% of the infographics out there are baroque, non-selective compositions of facts.
Comic book letterer Todd Klein has created a “Compendium of calligraphic knowledge.” Beautiful, and with good lessons for conference posters, too! It’s a signed, 11 × 17" limited edition print of 300 copies. All for the price of $16 plus shipping. You can buy it here.
A Bit of Behavioural Ecology would like to remind you: Nobody cares about you. (Actually, they might, but they have a point about conference posters: nobody will be as engaged and fascinated with your work as you are.)
Tech In Translation has some musings on the differences between academic conferences and tech conferences.
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1 comment:
I disagree slightly- putting numbers on each bar allows for both qualitative and quantitative comparisons to be made very easily in a way that bulleting does not. (Analogous to Tufte's sparklines).
I agree they could have left the y-axis to show that the scale is linear.
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