“Writing with Style”

In data visualisation, looks matter. When creating a chart from a data set, its form, colour and layout are tools for making your message clearer.

For Economist Education’s data course, we spoke with Elizabeth Lees (EL), a visual data journalist at The Economist, and asked her for advice on making attractively simple charts.  A recording of the conversation can be found in Module 1 of Economist Education’s data course. The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Q: The Economist’s journalists prize simplicity and often use basic charts to visualise data. But they use fancier ones too: which types, and why? 

EL: Bubble charts are one example. There are disadvantages to them: for instance, the human eye can’t accurately compare the size of the circles. However, bubble charts are visually engaging and good for displaying huge ranges in data. You can also use labels to show the exact values of data points. This same information could have been presented in a table, but this is more interesting and the forecast demand for the decarbonisation of steel jumps out immediately:

Economist Education’s latest online course, Critical thinking: problem-solving and decision-making in a complex world, trains business professionals to avoid cognitive bias, reason with rigour and exercise human judgment when harnessing artificial intelligence (AI).

We launched the course earlier this year and have already helped more than 100 participants from around the world to hone their critical thinking skills. Here is what some of them had to say about it:

“Clear, concise explanations and tools to aid critical thinking and problem-solving in a complex world. The course should be of benefit to the experienced practitioner through to someone first engaging with the subject.” —Richard Preece, Director, DA Resilience

“The course gave me a lot of input on improving my critical thinking. It provided me with lots of tools that I'm confident I will use. The learning experience was positive and really motivating! I loved listening to experts from different backgrounds talking about their experiences and giving suggestions. A short course like this keeps your attention and I felt I had enough time to listen and study, even though I lead a busy life. It was good to be given the flexibility to follow the course, and get assignments done, at my own pace.” —Barbara Albisetti-Heath, Director of sport

E.G. Thermometer charts are another type of visualisation. They work well when you want to compare two categories, such as men and women or the same data point across two different years. This saves space and makes it easy to see the difference between categories.

Q: How do you go about choosing the colour palettes of charts? 

EL: We typically keep to a limited colour palette. This makes it easy for readers to identify your work and keeps a cohesive style across your charts. It also removes the need to make colour decisions every time you make a chart, saving time. At The Economist we have consistently used one main colour—dark blue—and another, secondary colour—light blue. These have a high contrast so you can see the difference between them easily. 

Our purposely limited palette lets us use up to six colours very quickly. Beyond six, your reader might struggle to see the differences between your data points.

Video test:

Video block test:

Slideshow block test:

End test