Data Authors: Skilled Designers of Data Presentations - Data Fluency: Empowering Your Organization with Effective Data Communication - page 120

7. Sort for comprehension. Add structure and clarity to the chart by sort-
ing by a metric of interest. Users want to see what values are largest or
smallest. They shouldn't have to hunt through a chart to find this basic
information, as shown in Figure 5-31.

BAD GOOD

Unit Sales by Fruit Unit Sales by Fruit

80 80

60 60

40 40

20 20

Apples Bananas Blue-

berries

Oranges Pears Apples Pears Oranges Blue-

berries

Bananas

Figure 5-31: Sort columns to make it easy to find the interesting insights.

8. use color variants. If you are displaying multicolumn or stacked charts,
use variants on a hue or gray to show different data series. This approach
reduces the need for a wide variety of distracting colors, as shown in
Figure 5-32.

BAD GOOD

Unit Sales by Fruit Unit Sales by Fruit

80 80

60 60

40 40

20 20

Apples Bananas Blue-

berries

Oranges Pears Apples Bananas Blue-

berries

Oranges Pears

Figure 5-32: Fewer colors can be better.

Also, don't vary the colors by point like in the chart in Figure 5-33. This creates
a lot of unnecessary visual noise and makes similar colors seem related.