This week’s recommendation is a book I’m in the process of reading through a second time: Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals.
As someone who ~5 years ago would have described themselves as “not graphically talented,” it has been an area I have focused on and developed due to the importance of presenting data in a straightforward but impactful way to clients.
This book has ideas you can immediately implement to significantly change your visualizations. From simple concepts like editing colors on a graph to grey out/minimize less important data and using a single color on the most critical data to linking colors on an image to the words in an action title on a slide, every page has ideas that can be used to improve presentation or reports.
The concepts seem pretty simple when reading, but the overall packaging and mindset in the book are helpful to improve your approach. Having read it, I would then see visualizations from others in presentations, social media, and publications and see how a few minor tweaks would improve their impact.
On my second read, I’m thinking back to some of my projects from last year to think about where I missed opportunities to try an idea or where I implemented an idea that didn’t resonate as well with the audience as I had hoped. Experimentation is the name of the game, but also keeping in mind different people interpret information in various ways!
I hope it is a useful read, and let me know if you put to use any of the ideas.