enhancing
the defaults 008:
charts à la The Economist

to all Excel colleagues out there, have you noticed this new feature: high contrast only toggle? (it appears in the video below when I right click on the background of the chart area) – simply amazing 😁👌!

I venture myself on a regular Sunday to see how close I can get in emulating the The Economist charting style in mighty Excel and I think, I got pretty close. Case you would like me to do a live stream on this example, I would be happy to do so. If there’s enough interest, I’ll a set a date and time, and go live and explain everything on my YouTube channel. Let me know in the comments. Enhancing the Defaults series in my blog is coming back soon, stay tuned.

note: this is the original graphic (also: do you notice the 16 design decisions implemented?)

God is in the details. 16 observations, open to debate.

1. Bold left aligned title.

2. Subtitle indicating the measure being displayed on chart.

3. Baseline indication labels.

4. Chart number corresponding to the printed news article on top right corner.

5. Muted grey horizontal grid-lines.

6. No vertical grid-lines.

7. Principal data series (London) directly labeled and bold.

8. No vertical (y) axis line on the right.

9. Vertical axis labels on top of the horizontal grid-lines for space efficiency.

10. Spaced horizontal axis labels with tick marks.

11. Current or last year shown: 2022 as just “22” (year 2020 is skipped).

12. Solid black colored horizontal axis line.

13. Muted data source label is grey color.

14. Solid black colored baseline.

15. Soft background color permitting high color contrast ratio to the other chart elements.

16. The Economist chart signature or tag; it’s red rectangle on top left corner above the title.

Have I missed anything? Let me know 😅