Design and themes

Jeff Stevens

2023-04-05

Design principles

Edward Tufte

Graphical excellence

Communicating complex ideas with clarity, precision, and efficiency

Graphical excellence

Communicating complex ideas with clarity, precision, and efficiency

  • Well-designed presentation of interesting data
  • Gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space
  • Multivariate
  • Requires telling the truth about data

Graphical integrity

Tell the truth about the data

Graphical integrity

Wilke’s Principle of Proportional ink

The representation of numbers, as physically measured on the surface of the graphic itself, should be directly proportional to the numerical quantities represented

Graphical integrity

Perceptions of length and area do not match (and we’re bad at judging area)

Data-ink ratio

Data-ink: the non-erasable core of a graphic, the non-redundant ink arranged in response to variation in the numbers represented

Data-ink ratio: amount of data-ink divided by total ink used to print the graphic

Data-ink ratio

Tukey boxplot

Tufte “box” plot

Data-ink ratio

  • Above all else show the data
  • Maximize the data-ink ratio
  • Erase non-data-ink
  • Erase redundant data-ink

Chartjunk

Non-data-ink or redundant data-ink that does not tell the viewer anything new

Themes

Themes

Set-up

Switch to R script

Let’s code!

Themes [Rmd]

DPaViR 2023