Comments on: Sub-Prime Charts: Should Data Visualization Be Boring?

By: Jorge Camoes

Jorge Camoes — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:06:45 +0000

@Jess: That’s OK with me… Business users should never elect the media as their role model for data visualization. Copying “crazy infographics” using Excel will be harder…

@Benjamim: Thanks. “clear, precise and reduced to the essential”: well, some people will argue that this is what boring is about… (I love Prague. I was there twice and I’d love to show it to my almost 4-year old twins. Do you think I should add Kafka to their bed-time stories?:)

By: Jess

Jess — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:15:27 +0000

I think suit and tie business may go back to conservative chart making but specter of wild and crazy infographics/visualization has already been let out of the box and is only growing in intensity. People are stretching information display to see how far they can do so. I look forward to a return to the age of comprehension in that area.

By: Benjamin

Benjamin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:05:07 +0000

Thanks for this great discussion of the NY Times article. Though the title could be somewhat misleading because as you said: it’s not about a chart being boring but rather clear, precise and reduced to the essential.

By: Jorge Camoes

Jorge Camoes — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 21:31:01 +0000

No, I didn’t. I’ll take a look. Thanks for the link.

By: Simon Pride

Simon Pride — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:16:41 +0000

Jorge, have you seen the new graphing / charting tool from Omni Group, OmniGraphSketcher? It’s aimed at creating clear, clean, simple graphs and annotating them, and nothing more. Looks pretty Tufte-compliant to me!

http://www.omnigroup.com/

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraphsketcher/