Design guidelines¶
Note
This section is under construction. Please contribute!
The following guidelines are picked up mostly from the books by Edward Tufte and Stephen Few.
General¶
- 3D projection is not recommended (particularly for bar series, ribbons, pie charts)
- Pie charts are not recommended (difficult to compare values, bar charts are usually better)
- Minimize the ratio ink/data
- Don’t use a border around legends
- Use only one font
- Don’t use a border (box) around the plot
Grid lines¶
- Avoid dark/heavy grid lines
Ticks¶
- Use TickStyle = Outside
- Don’t use minor tick marks
Category axes¶
- Don’t use tick marks
- Don’t use axis line on vertical category axes
- Limit the number of subdivisions (not more than 5-6 bar series)
Bar series¶
- Use a bar width around 50%
- For histograms you could use a bar width of 100%
Recommended reading¶
- The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Edward Tufte) google amazon tutorial
- Perceptual edge (Stephen Few)
- Show me the numbers (Stephen Few) amazon google