Small Multiples Charting

salespodder -

Here’s the FT’s dataviz on coronavirus, recently released from behind their paywall. Here shown from the journalist’s tweets.

Given that logarithmic plotting is likely beyond most of our selling data sets, as powerful here as it is, the second of these charts above is the one of today’s sales presentation interest.

In my youth I got quite fascinated by the visual impact potential of sparklines.

Slightly reminiscent of the above grid of linegraphs.

The tip from this is I feel to remember that we needn’t report a single linegraph.

A simple diagram where all your individual lines each has its own colour with a helpful legend in one corner.

We could earn more in-room dialogue as well as greater later recall from this trick of ‘small multiples’.

It would certainly be different from how your competition would present their data. They’re likely to go the simple, traditional way. Where you jolting the prospect with something different is nearly always a good thing.

next day update, a further example: