We printed the book four weeks ago. Here I watch out. That everything works fine.

Source: Wall Street Journal Europe, 2009–12–28, p. 14.

Look at the skyscrapers. Work great, too. Manhattan? Funny: The Skyscrapers are not in the same street. Where are they? That’s confusing. Is the fourth half the size of the second one? Could be. 17 and 34. Somehow looks different. Because of the perspective. We should compare the lengths of the edges. One edge is enough for that. Here we have eight too much.

Besides, it looks like a timeline. But isn’t one.

Picture and figure may be bad. The nice guy could also work for Ford, or Mercedes, or, or, or.

Picture without a figure may be good. Aha. That’s a typical hacker’s place. Didn’t know that. Never been there.

Picture without a figure may be embarrassing. Below the picture it reads: Budweiser wants to sell more. A Barman pours a beer. In Brussels. So what?

Source: WSJ Europe, 2009–11–13, p.W9, p.2, p.14, p.8.

Source: Wall Street Journal Europe, 2009–11–13, p. 26.

You have to add up the overlaps to get the point. The colors are no better. You have to learn: Samsung is always on top. But has changing colors. The same as the competitor. But that is patterned. The competitors’ bars are pale at the end. Anyway, you have to add that. Ok, than I just read the numbers. Now my eyes go left-right, left-right, left-right, left-right.
The designer deserves the same. Once left, once right. Vigorously.

Source: Handelsblatt, 2009–04–30, No. 83, p. 1, original copy this time.
Trucks (Straßengüterverkehr), trains (Eisenbahnen), ships (Binnenschifffahrt).

You think: Truck is faster growing than train. Train is only growing little. Ships hardly at all. But that’s not true. You can’t compare developments for values on different levels. Logarithmical helps.

Now you see: Rail is growing faster than truck. 70 percent to 56 percent. Ship even dropped in between. All in all it grew 3 percent.

Logarithmic doesn’t always work. But more often.

Source: Handelsblatt, April 30th 2009, no. 83, p. 1, redesign by me. Click for original. Graphic displays increase of highway transportation in billions of ton-kilometers (1997 to 2008).

Many will say: left is correctly scaled. They believe: Null value must be shown. Regardless of line or column – never cut.

But: The null value is not sea level. On the right the full space is utilized to display changes. That’s important, often. All other scales more or less steepen the slope. They show more or less details. That the variation is bigger than 50 %: neither visible on the right nor the left. Better write that down.

Anyway: To cut lines’ feet is not forbidden. Snip snap.

If slides look like this: trash them.

Many just read off their notes. More slowly than people could read themselves. Because reading is faster than hearing. You pray for the next slide. Which ideally is the last one.

Notes are for the pocket. Only in case of need you pull them out. Never show them to anybody. And for sure: Don´t show them to everybody. Slides which look like notes: trash them.

Instead: make eyes like that.

Source: Welt am Sonntag (WAMS), No. 43, 2009–10–25, p.24
Motivations of Germans for vacation, East (”Ost”) vs. West Germany, from top: new impressions, experience, being on travel, to indulge in something, relaxation, reactivation of memories.

Closeness connects: The headline connects with all first bars. It becomes graphical itself. But shouldn’t. It’s for all four bars.

Time is horizontal: We had that before. Here, a decrease is a movement to the left. Hard to understand for the eye.

Man with a hat: Two men stand beside each other. The smaller one wears a hat. How small is that one? Values to the right of the bar: better not this time.

Colours group: In WAMS all values for 1991 and all values for 2008. Might be ok. Not ideal here.

Checkered is out: Stripes in the background are funny. And decrease readability.

Most important: reason, years, change between years, part of Germany and variance between East and West – all packed into the vertical. Too much.

Source: DeltaMaster

My rule: Use two visual axes: vertical and horizontal, if it helps. Doesn’t always work. Here it’s ok.

In the newspaper WAMS, the time is vertical. Not too bad. But also not very nice.

Source: Welt am Sonntag, Nr. 40, 04/10/2009, p. 36. Title: 26 percent minus. The German export to the Iran in billions of Euro, January to July for each year

Scribbling threefold from Die ZEIT. Not supposed to take it seriously?
Source: DIE ZEIT No. 19 from 2009–04–30, No. 20 from 2009–05–07, No. 25 from 2009–06–10.

Funny: We use a computer to make it look handmade. Even the handwriting is a computer font.

Handwriting and painting signal: Love letter. Poetry album. Children’s book. First-grader. Shopping list. Draft. Sketch. Holiday greetings. Note. So rather: Temporary. Hasty. Unfinished. Casual. Raw. Imprecise. Maybe faulty. Unchecked. Unique. Spontaneous. And young.

All want young. I don’t care. Data neither.