Module 3 - Visualization Quality and Graphic Design

Overview and Deliverables

• 9/14: Attend the course meetup at 8:00PM Eastern
• Story 2 is assigned this week and due Sunday 9/27 (end of week 4)

This week we will focus on distinguishing the bad and the ugly from a high quality data visualization. We will also learn some basic graphic design principles and learn about the differences between different image formats.

Readings

1. Wilke - Chapters 17-26 - there will be some reinforcement of the research principles we discussed last week
2. Storytelling with Data Chapter 3: Clutter is your enemy!
3. Guide to File Formats
4. Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity - Chapter 6 of Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds Optional, if you want more graphic design practice

Meetup

Slides: Meetup 3 - Visualization Quality and Graphic Design

In this meetup we go into a bit of detail on several principles that Edward Tufte articulated and discuss how to implement them in real visualizations. We talk about the principle of proportional ink and the data-ink ratio, and why minimalist graphs don’t always work.