Seth Godin offers some advice on cre­at­ing qual­ity, leg­i­ble, graphs.  Short and sweet.

  • Don’t let pop­u­lar spread­sheets be in charge of the way you look.
  • Tell a story. The only 4 sto­ries permissible:
    • Things are going great, look!
    • Things are a dis­as­ter, help!
    • Noth­ing much is happening.
    • We need to work together to fig­ure out what the data means.
  • Fol­low some sim­ple rules:
    • Time on the bot­tom, from left to right
    • Good results go up on the Y axis.
    • Don’t con­nect unre­lated events.
    • Pie charts are spec­tac­u­larly overrated.
  • Break some other rules (but not too many)

Seth’s writ­ten pre­vi­ously on this topic, specif­i­cally to pro­claim the three laws of great graphs (one story, no bar charts, move­ment) and then later to defend his posi­tion on bar graphs and pie charts.

As Dan says, “It’s not exactly Tufte, but it cov­ers the basics”.