Chapter 9
Designing with a Purpose
When you explore your own data, you don’t need to do much in terms of storytelling. You are, after all, the storyteller. However, the moment you use your graphic to present information—whether it’s to one person, several thousand, or millions—a standalone chart is no longer good enough.
Sure, you want others to interpret results and perhaps form their own stories, but it’s hard for readers to know what questions to ask when they don’t know anything about the data in front of them. It’s your job and responsibility to set the stage. How you design your graphics affects how readers interpret the underlying data.
