Bella consults

I wanted to add something about pictograms and ships. Firstly: There are good pictograms and bad pictograms. The ships are good. As I already said. And as he did.

Source: Wall Street Journal, 2010–08–17, page 3.

Secondly: Why? Because they are well drawn. Look closely.

That is a cargo ship. For real.

That is still a cargo ship. But without the trimmings.

Still a cargo ship.

And still a cargo ship. Not a paper ship. Not a ferry. Not a sailing boat. As much cargo ship as necessary. As small as possible. As authentic as necessary. As simple as possible. That’s how to pick just a gram successfully.

Spending money is more fun when you’re pale blue than dark blue. But it’s most fun when you’re cornflower blue. No? Girls are paler than boys. The younger you are, the paler you are. No? No.

2011 consumer study among boys (Jungen) and girls (Mädchen) aged 15–17 and 12–14 years old. Source: Welt online and Welt kompakt, 2011–09–21, page 23.

Learning legends is boring. And generally unnecessary.

Redesign: me.

I already said this here five years ago. Wow. What an old dog I am.

Warnings also have to be issued about the German weather. Officially. The national meteorological service in Germany is called Deutscher Wetterdienst. On 9 September there was a sudden formation of ice. Throughout Germany. Lake Constance was even colder. Munich was muddy. I’ll stick with the French weather.

Stop! Put the winter tires away again. I misunderstood it. It’s explained on the detailed map. With a legend.

Legend: Purple = Warnings about severe storms; Red = Storm warnings; Orange = Warnings about distinctive weather; Yellow = Weather warnings; Blue = No warnings

I see. Blue “everything okay”. Yellow warning weather. Orange “distinctive”. Hm. Not so good: Blue makes me think of water. Or cold weather. Maybe traffic-signal green would be better. The way the French do it? I think so. Because traffic-signal colors are a good way of warning on maps. But country colors on maps don’t signal well.

Maps for data are difficult. Traffic lights as well. Maps for a country are great. Traffic lights for “danger” – “don’t know” – “no danger” are great as well. I find map traffic lights for dangers in a country really great. You understand them even in small. You understand where. You understand how.

Look:

You had to be careful on Thursday. Almost in the whole of France. And especially down in the bottom right. But not the Corsicans at all.

Because there might be lightning.

On Saturday you had to be careful especially on the right-hand side. Including the Corsicans.

Today you can go for a nice stroll without worrying.

But put lots of sun-tan lotion on your coat.

Source: All graphics from Météo France.

Nice: The German bank Comdirect is drawing graphical tables. Not so nice: The reference lines. They are wrong. Because they make some of the bars look like columns. I’ve corrected them. The way I did in my diagrammatic.

Source: Comdirect Informer showing stock quote data, 2011–08–09. Enlargement (center) and redesign (below): Me.

When do we need reference lines? When the eye needs to be guided. Columns and bars don’t normally need reference lines. Because a column is higher than it is wide. A bar is wider than it is high. Exception: Thin bars and flat columns. What to do then: Feet for columns, borders for bars. The bars at Comdirect have feet. The wrong way round.

You can’t see some things. Because they are not an object. Or because they are a law. Or because they apply to a lot of things. Then you have to find an example. The example can involve an object. You can draw the object. When you understand everything, you have an infographic. Like this one:

Trading the Right to Pollute

If the object is not an example, it looks like this. Pretty amusing. Customers and suppliers are spheres. Payment and production are propellers. It’s easier to understand without a graphic.

Your enterprise

Source: both from Kondo, Hiroko, The Best Informational Diagrams, Tokyo 1999, pp. 25 and 37.

Some people say Bill (Clinton), Fannie (Mae) and Freddie (Mac) are to blame for the financial crisis. The one from 2008. Bill wanted everyone to have a house. So he said to Fannie and Freddie: Don’t be so strict with the money. Bill always used to have a Labrador with him. He wouldn’t have allowed that.

He says the other people are right. They say it’s much more complicated. And a lot of mistakes were made with houses everywhere. It’s all the same to me. I don’t even have a doghouse.

Source: Dissenting Statement of Commissioner Keith Hennessey, Commis­sioner Douglas Holtz-Eakin, and Vice Chairman Bill Thomas. In: FCIC (publ.), The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report – Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States, January 2011, pages 411–440, here page 415.

What’s great: Putting a lot of things next to each other. For comparison. You repeat the form. And change the content. That’s called Small Multiples. The name is from Edward.

Important: The scale has to be comparable. By using an index, for example. You can omit what’s redundant. Here they omitted the superfluous labeling.

The German newspaper Die Welt showed changes in sales. Of the top 500 German companies. From 1995 to 2010. In annual growth rates. Do you see sales? I don’t. Is the situation after the crisis like it was before? Hang on. I’ll get my pocket calculator.*

Change in sales since 1995. In percent.
Source: Die Welt, 2011–06–20, page 11, Welt online, 2011–06–24, Figure 2.

I get dizzy looking at percentage mountains. Look. This is how the sales really changed.

Redesign: Me.

You can still annotate the percentage change. Note: Lines are developments. As is growth in percent. Lines above growth in percent is drawn annotations instead of an annotated drawing.

* If 2008 is 100, deduct 8 percent. Makes 92. Then add 11.8 percent. 92 x 0.118 = 10.9. Addition: 92 + 10.9 = 102.9. Ah!

Vodafone compared its subsidiaries. How quickly they have grown. In the regions around the world. There is only one subsidiary in the US. It was still compared though. But what with? Looks rather amusing. Single column.

Sales growth fiscal 2008/2009 (left) and 2009/2010 (right).
Source: Vodafone Group Plc Annual Reports 31 March 2009, page 11, and 31 March 2010, page 11.

I see: The graphic designer was stumped. Everything had to look uniform. What could he do? Use a global scale. Then everything is all right again. And one column is by itself but no longer lonely.

No more lonely columns in the 2010/2011 Annual Report, but amusing suggestions. Write whether it was “growth” or “decrease” afterwards. Then you’re not negative anywhere.

William Playfair invented bars, columns, and pies. Over 200 years ago. And drew many timelines.

People still draw the same way. Not always a good idea. For example, William drew this. Above: England buying in Asia. Below: Asia buying in England. People in England are angry.

Exports and imports.

You think: Gap widening, widening, widening, staying wide, slightly closing, closed. Starting in 1755, parallel at last, parallel, parallel. Starting in 1765, widening again, widening, widening. But that’s not the case.

Orange lines by me. Click to enlarge.

You don’t see the hump. Because we see a horizontal parallel line. And ought to be looking vertically. Rather arduous. Our eyes do this only if we know the trick. That’s what he says as well.

The FAZ newspaper in Germany drew it like William. And we don’t see a lot of the humps. Troubled him as well. The FAZ noticed. And created a second graphic. But it’s not clear there either. Because the red columns start at blue. Instead of at zero.

US trade dispute with China (including Hong Kong). Left: US goods trade with China in billions of dollars. Red = imports, blue = exports. Right: US balance of trade in billions of dollars. Red = China, blue = other countries. Source: FAZ, 2010–09–27, page 13. And his article.

The balance is missing again and you think it shows gaps where there aren’t actually any.

Source: His article.

Don’t resort to William all the time. Just because something’s been around for a long time, doesn’t mean it’s good.

Looking into the future is hard. Look: Forecast down, remained the same. Forecast down again, gone up. Forecast up, gone down. Forecast a little down, gone down a lot. And so on and on. Up and down.

Source: Wall Street Journal, 2003–02–07.

Therefore: If you forecast, say that. Clearly. There are a lot of nice means to do so:

Paint in the front.

Paint besides.

Fill and paint besides

Paint a box around

Very important for lines: How many points have you forecast?

The climax: Paint range

So always mark. Because: Unmarked speculation is manipulation.

Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa are developing. Die Welt shows how. Memorize the color. Find the column. Read the height. Jump to the right. Find the next column. Memorize the height. Jump back to the left. Compare the heights. Jump two times to the right. Find another column. Note the height again. Jump to the left again. Compare the heights. Oh. Forgot the color? Start over again.

Economic growth and inflation of the BRICS countries. Source: Die Welt, 2011–04–15, page 13.

I see. They’re trying to show the development of the BRICS countries. In detail. The development, though. You only see this if the years are side by side, not the countries.

Redesign: me.

Funny: If you want to see developments, it’s sometimes better not to sort by time.

Not so funny: Two out of three values are speculation, but not marked as such. 2011 isn’t over yet. 2012 is still to come.

The Handelsblatt website now does sparklines. Nice actually. If only they really were sparklines.

Lines in the Handelsblatt articles. Source: handelsblatt.com/4066396, 2011–04–15.

Funny: The line for Bayern Munich (a soccer team) is the stock price for Munich Re (an insurer). And the one for Bayer Leverkusen (also a soccer team) is for BMW (the automobile manufacturer).

The line details. Try it yourself or look at the whole page.

Pity: No number after the line. The first rule in my guide to sparklines.

Great pity: The line always shows a stock price. No matter what the article actually refers to.

This one took me a while. Looks harmless. The biggest one on bottom, the smallest one on top. Together they are decreasing. Got it. The strongest drop is Chrysler. The second-strongest Ford. The least drop is GM. Got it wrong. Measure it. Otherwise you don’t get it.

US market share of American automobile manufacturers, cumulated in percent.
Source: Financial Times Deutschland, 2008–11–21, page 8.

I played with that. The smallest one on bottom, the biggest one on top. That lifts Ford and lowers Chrysler.

When you put Ford on top, then it really falls.

Watch out: The first of the stacked lines is normally what matters. Look what happens if the first line rises and the others fall. I turned the GM data around. No changes for the others. Chrysler also rises now, although it´s falling.

Market share of GM the other way round with data of WardsAuto.com.

Therefore: Beware of areas. Don’t stack lines. Read graphics carefully. By the way: It would have worked like this:

Every line is one manufacturer. For the total amount another line. Everything logarithmic.

You already know this: Don´t chart things in a map that don’t belong in a map. In 1945 The Economist tried it.

Distorted territory size, proportional to the Gross National Income, in The Economist 1945.

Eduard was annoyed about this already in 1972.

„These or similar cartoons of diagrams are among the worst sins in cartographical and statistical drawing.

The Worldmapper is still amused by that.

Distorted territory size, proportional to the Gross National Income in Worldmapper 2011

I´m angry about this like Eduard. He is too. Distortion, however, can be essential and correct. Look at this. There is no territory in this map. Because: For tramming original is irrelevant. The tram just follows the tracks.

Timetable of tram line 8 in Nuremberg. Travelling time in minutes. Source: VGN.

Take another look at this. Here original is almost irrelevant. But there´s more territory in this map. Because: People drive a car themselves. The territory is linear here. Reduced to distances. No left, no right, no up, no down. It works. The maps show what will happen. A series of turnings and crossings, every few miles.

Road map of South Africa. Click to enlarge. Source: Camp & Live Guide, www.caravanparks.com, South Africa