Visually Telling a Story…

29
Oct

Visually Telling a Story…

By Jon Kulok on October 29, 2014

Visually telling a story…

When my career was just starting, my former boss encouraged me to attend a seminar by Edward Tufte. He is best known for his book the “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte

He spent half of his talk discussing his favorite chart ever created which shows seven different aspects of Napoleon’s attack and retreat in 1812. As he writes,“probably the best statistical graphic ever drawn, this map by Charles Joseph Minard portrays the losses suffered by Napoleon’s army in the Russian campaign of 1812. Beginning at the Polish-Russian border, the thick band shows the size of the army at each position. The path of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow in the bitterly cold winter is depicted by the dark lower band, which is tied to temperature and time scales.”

Ever since the talk, graphical displays that tell stories fascinate me. The best ones impress both for the narrative and the authors’ graphical execution. The following post at “Wait But Why” exemplifies this perfectly. http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html I encourage everyone to read the entire post before continuing with me. It’s that good.

I’ve read that post a number of times since I first saw it a few months ago. Since then I’ve tried my best to avoid what the authors dub “neither weeks.” According to their hypothesis, which I wholeheartedly agree with, our best weeks are those that we either enjoy or are working to improve our lives or the lives of others. Those that accomplish neither of those goals are appropriately called “neither weeks.” And as their graphs show, we have a lot less time on this planet than we think – so make your weeks count.

I have produced thousands of reports over the years; I would like to think that more good than bad but that’s for our clients to decide. We are paid, in part, to produce data driven graphical stories. And, just as I know that the “Wait But Why” post effectively communicated its thesis, in part, due to the lack of pie and bar charts (sometimes known as the curse of PowerPoint), our industry’s reports would be better served if we eschewed the standard graphical template for something that better engages with the audience. Edge Research continues to move in this direction, but if this story told me anything, it’s that we must pick up the pace.

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