Book Review: Storytelling With Data by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic
I enjoy writing book reviews for personal use as they help me retain the information from the book. However, if you happen to come across this blog and you work with data visualizations, even in a simple capacity, I highly recommend purchasing or borrowing this book from the library.
If you are acquainted with Edward Tufte’s book, “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information,” you are already familiar with the fundamental design principles. These principles include reducing clutter, presenting data in a non-misleading manner, achieving a high data-ink ratio, and utilizing white space. Nussbaumer Knaflic adheres to these principles while also expanding upon them.
Outlined below are the key points she emphasizes and aims to convey.
- Understand the context.
- Choose an appropriate visual display.
- Eliminate clutter.
- Focus attention where you want it.
- Think like a designer.
- Tell a story.
To provide context for the narrative, Nussbaumer Knaflic shares techniques for distilling it effectively. If you had only three minutes to convey the information to your audience, how would you approach it? She introduces the concept of “The Big Idea” — the primary message you aim to convey. Additionally, she recommends storyboarding your presentation to plan the information flow, similar to a film or comic book.
When selecting the appropriate visual display, she prefers simple charts over complicated ones. She encourages the use of charts that are easy to comprehend, employing common elements. Unusual fonts, excessive colors, and complex charts that confuse the audience are discouraged. She advocates for the thoughtful and deliberate use of color. She strongly dislikes pie charts, donut charts, 3D charts, and misleading y-axes.
She emphasizes that a well-designed data visualization should not overwhelm the viewer cognitively. The graph should be designed in a way that instantly conveys its intended message. A chart that requires prolonged examination and back-and-forth interpretation is considered subpar. To eliminate clutter, maintain white space, and remove non-essential elements that don’t contribute information.
Utilize color, size, and text strategically to draw the audience’s attention to the important information. Utilize shades of gray to de-emphasize less significant details. Ensure your visuals are functional, easy to read, and visually appealing. Remember, when telling a story, guide your audience’s attention to where it matters most. Craft a story that follows a beginning, middle, and end structure.
I learned a lot from this book, some of the important points are not intuitive to me. I fancy myself to be creative, and sometimes I learn a little too much into a maximalist style with lots of color. I also don’t tend to think of data “story-telling” as such. I present findings to the consumer of my visualizations. I think reframing it as story telling can really improve how the information is delivered to the audience in a compelling way.
If you haven’t read this book, pick it up! At the library, like I did. Because I’m frugal. Buying it is okay too!
