Monday, June 02, 2008

A picture’s worth a thousand words – if it’s good enough

I seem to have spent a good part of the last week finding graphical yet meaningful ways of illustrating data:

  • comparing the user numbers (seats) and licence figures for various competing IT systems – using circles and varying their area by the system size
  • showing the overlap of users across the same set of competing IT systems – quite simply using overlapping circles like Form 1 set theory.

So as I read through a staggering number of other non-related reports and briefings last week, my eyes (and perhaps brain) were on the look out for novel ways of getting across data without having to resort to a straight bar chart or table of values.

These two caught my eye tonight. They’re from the Oliver & Ohlbaum Associates independent section of the Review of Talent published earlier today by the BBC Trust. As well as the style below, O&O have a good selection of other diagramming techniques.

I'll post any other good or thought-provoking examples as I come across them in the weeks to come.

2 comments:

SimonH said...

I do like your pictures of the solar system

Coke_Shy_Hero said...

Yes, I see you can just about get from Lave to Diso and back on one tank of hyperspace fuel! :-p

Anyway, nice to see where I stand with BBC4 - although odd to see that it's quite so male... Also fascinating that Sky One is quite so "young" - perhaps no one can afford it after they have kids!