Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
What About Picture Graphs?
Picture graphs use visuals to represent the data points. They are very common in
popular media because they get your attention—at least that's the idea. While I am
a fan of high-impact visuals, I am not crazy about picture graphs. The downside is
that they (1) take longer to create and (2) can obscure the actual data. But the
primary reason I avoid picture graphs is simply because graphs themselves—if
designed well—are already powerful visuals. There is no reason to decorate the
data with pictures.
In general, our visual perception is not very good at accurately comparing areas of a circle. The chart on
the right also greatly exaggerates the data—the area of the American flag bubble is far larger than ten
times the Japanese bubble.
Our visual perception is pretty good at seeing differences in line length in a bar chart, but this is made
more difficult with the irregular shape and exaggerated area of the illustrated trees.
