The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics: The Dos and Don'ts of Presenting Data, Facts, and Figures

Flipping through any social media from Instagram to youtube to daily memes and you will find yourself barraged by Infographics, go into any medical office, waiting room, even a hotel or restaurant lounge, more Infographics, same with retail shops, circulars from everything from window replacement and siding to pet grooming services, more Infographics. At some point in the last decade (?) the visual language that we receive is in Infographics, the upscale cousin of what used to be Basic Visual Charts found among the financial pages and on our school reports. Yea, not anymore. I myself need to add a few of these 'infographics' to work I am currently doing and I literally had no idea where to begin, the pie charts I remembered from high school won't cut it anymore, right? Scrolling through Amazon's endless choices only made my head spin, googling "infographics" looking for examples made it worse. There must be a better answer than turning to GROK for every little thing, right? And so I found Ms Wong, and devoured her book in one night, highlighted dozens of pages, made notes, and while she is definitely 'old school' (no wild eyed radical here!) before I was 20 pages in I had the same feeling I get when I return to that essential book by Rowena Reed Kostellow, The Elements of Design, the absolute purity of simplicity. With my own research will need to adjust to the 'rules' (and there are rules to creating legible, functioning charts) but all of her advice, examples and counsel is sound. I even had a series of 'aha' moments, finally understanding why bar charts (horizontal or vertical) and pie charts follow specific layouts and 'formulas, but what they do is exceptionally well suited to their required tasks. When I find that there have been 'innovations' made for them (and Wong does address these, such as 'segmented' pie charts, which I see everywhere now, she offers a completely suitable and far more workable alternatives (pp. 78-9). I suspect that she is well aware of the excesses in charting, the inroads made with infographics, etc, this was published in 2010, so not the Stone Age, and for myself the material is particularly helpful in areas of structure, the mechanics of a chart, ie. "Frame the reference" (p.24) data samples, the many variations of bar graphs (each has unique qualifiers), there is not a wasted page in the entire book. Her section on math (Ch.3, Ready Reference) was also -for me - worthwhile in that it clearly defined a number of terms (mean, median, mode, standard deviation, percentage change, re-indexing to 100 or 0 and so on) none of which I will use as I intend to avoid math (aside from percentages) in my charts but for other readers this extensive chapter is well worthwhile to read. Her last chapter on "Tricky Situations" covers a host of problems that I will encounter, as will anyone interested in this subject (for me, the dilemma of missing data points, p.124; or how graphics can create contrast and highlight, a continuation of her section on Color pp.36-47) and presented with the same witty, clear 'voice' that could be from a favorite design professor who gives sound advice but with encouragement. This was the greatest surprise, I had expected something entirely different, rather pedantic and decades out of date, instead Ms Wong is refreshing and timely.

This short easy read is a beautiful introduction to how to make professional graphics. Because the WSJ is featured in the title, I was a bit nervous that the entire book would be focused on visualizing financial data but it has great advice for anyone who needs to visualize numeric data. I really enjoyed it because there is unique advice that adds to other practical books on visualization like Creating More Effective Graphs , and it nicely complements or leads into classics like The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition or Visualizing Data . The first chapter covers basic issues like how many colors, what colors, how many lines, etc.. The second, which is the bulk of the book, contrasts effective and poor graphics on side by side pages. There is concise useful advice on truncating ranges, breaking axes, using broken bar graphs, how many pie pieces, etc. The advice is beyond simple do or do not break a bar, it discusses how much of a discrepancy in the height of a bar chart merits a break. While other books have advice that ends with "do or do not use some graphics" (like pie charts), this one has great advice on when it makes sense to do things like break graphics into sets of pictures, use broken bars in bar charts, how and when to set scales (so that graphics afford meaningful comparisons) and how to make the best use of pie charts. There is a short section on descriptive statistics, when to use means, medians, plotting percentages vs actual changes, etc. and there is a surprisingly nice section on the algebra for setting axes which I have never seen written up. The final two chapters deal with specialize topics like plotting financial matters or plotting time series and relations among groups. The only real down side is there is no discussion of what tools to use to make the graphics or how the graphics in this book were rendered. Despite this, the book is superb because it covers the material in adequate detail and it gives insights that are either not covered at all or are scattered across many sources.

As the Managing Director of an organisatioon that creates high end presentations for clients, as well as train them in the same, we are constantly wrestling with creating infographics that are clear, concise and communicate their message effectively. So, it was with eager anticiaption that I awaited the arrival of Dona Wong's "The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics" and I must say I was delighted after perusing its content. Rarely do your read a book that crystalises all that can be said in an area of communication in a way that Dona Wong has done in this book. Written with a style and clarity that reflects her approach to infographics, it provides an outstanding guide to creating visuals that are clear and to the point. The book is itself an example of communicating without excess whilst delivering a message effectively. (If you have every read Edwarde Tufte's seminal books you will appreciate Dona's clarity) I whole-heartedly recommend this book to anyone who needs to create charts, tables or other figures and believe that Dona Wong takes over from where Tufte finished.

Ich habe bereits viele Bücher über Datengrafiken gelesen, dieses ist hervorragend strukturiert, anschaulich, gut zu lesen und - da keine technischen Umsetzungsthemen behandelt werden - als Grundlagenwerk langfristig nutzbar. Die Kunst guter Grafiken besteht in der Reduktion auf das wesentliche. Die notwendigen Informationen und die Kunst des Weglassens werden in überschaubaren Einzellektionen behandelt und mit konkreten Beispielen (was soll man tun, was eher nicht) verdeutlicht. Ich bin begeistert und kann das Buch uneingeschränkt empfehlen.

A great little book, highly recommeded for people who need to make effective charts with their data, be it in presentations or in documents. Pictures show good vs. bad graphs, so it's very easy to follow and grasp the concepts. I had been meaning to buy this for a while, and I am very glad I finally decided to purchase it. I am sure I will refer to it many times.

Ce livre est une mine d'informations pratiques sur la visualisation de données par les outils graphiques les plus courants. Basé sur des exemples concrets et abondamment illustré, il expose de manière pratique comment présenter efficacement tout type de données, en montrant les bonnes et les mauvaises pratiques, et en expliquant pourquoi. Il est en anglais, mais facile à traduire car surtout basé sur des éléments visuels.

Good

Today I got my book and I could not stop reading it. When I opened the book, I told myself, oh I know most of the topics that the book is covering but after few pages, I changed my mind. I only knew a few things!!! Great book for any person in any occupation working with data. Just apply the recommendation to your chart. It is working.