Present Beyond Measure

22A is for AESTHETICS

“Graphical excellence is that which gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space.”

—Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

One day while working as a digital analyst at my Fortune 500 financial firm, a colleague from product marketing approached me with feverish excitement.

“Lea, Lea, Lea!” he shouted while flagging me down. “We just finished launching a really cool dashboard with these awesome charts. Wanna see? You're going to love it!”

Oh, dear. Anytime someone tells me I'm going to love a “really cool” new data visualization or dashboard, there's a good chance I won't love it. This was no exception. He opened his laptop with flair, and put the dashboard on full, glorious display. I'm hoping I hid my reaction well because I was screaming on the inside.

The data structure was straightforward enough…sort of. It was a vertical column chart, but styled as skyscraper buildings and nestled in a cartoonish cityscape. Each column “building” had a different width, shape, angle, texture, and roof structure. But that's not all.

Fluffy white clouds dotted the pixelated blue-sky background while lazy pigeons perched on said fluffy clouds. I've tried to find something similar to this work of “art” in the graphic in Figure 22.1; the original was much worse.

FIGURE 22.1 Cartoonish ...