The Talking Heads
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Recently, I challenged my students to remake poorly designed graphs for their assignments. Fortunately, one of them stumbled upon this nugget. Inspired to craft a new Radical Makeover myself, I realized what the graph actually does well. Putting aside the crazy aesthetics, faulty scales and political bias, it makes an attempt to tell the story of the data through extensive annotations and labels. And as Edward Tufte emphasizes, annotations are a key feature of well-designed graphs. Perhaps the linked example overdoes it — but should we, as data designers, be more adventurous in our approach?
Do Graphs Need More Protagonists?
If we choose to highlight key events in the data, who better to tell the story than its protagonists? While the impact of individual politicians on economic outcomes is often overstated, they’re undeniably linked to pivotal policy changes. Take “Reaganomics,” for instance — a policy shift so influential that it’s often credited with triggering a stark divergence in economic indicators. This divergence, compared to previous trends and other countries, has inspired some creative minds to annotate graphs with Reagan’s face to signify the changes starting at the beginning of his presidency.
Finally, here is my take on this concept: a recreation of the famous connected scatter plot by Our World in Data, incorporating a touch of narrative flair trough its main protagonist.
