As the title implies, information designers quite often have to, well, design information. But when you’re beginning, it can difficult to choose which way you’re going to go about doing it. Knowing which charts and diagrams work with what information can help to fix this problem.
When choosing, your chart, you first have to think “what point am I trying to make”. It is integral that you know this BEFORE you design your chart/ diagram.
This article on ‘Which charts are best at showing data relationships’ by Mustapha Mekhatria is a great place to start reading about what charts work where.
There are definitely some graphs that are more frequently used than others, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
This article outlines the 44 best graphs/ chart used in top industries.
Please keep in mind that if you choose the wrong type of data visualizations, information can become incredibly misleading. (Of course, execution obviously plays a role in this too.)
Keep this in mind, as it is our role as information designers not to misinform.
To reiterate, choosing the right graph/ chart can totally change how information is understood, so understanding graphs and charts is incredibly important.
Meara Kenny 