A picture’s worth a thousand words – if it’s good enough

I seem to have spent a good part of the last week finding graphical yet meaningful ways of illustrating data:

• comparing the user numbers (seats) and licence figures for various competing IT systems – using circles and varying their area by the system size
• showing the overlap of users across the same set of competing IT systems – quite simply using overlapping circles like Form 1 set theory.

So as I read through a staggering number of other non-related reports and briefings last week, my eyes (and perhaps brain) were on the look out for novel ways of getting across data without having to resort to a straight bar chart or table of values.

These two caught my eye tonight. They’re from the Oliver & Ohlbaum Associates independent section of the Review of Talent published earlier today by the BBC Trust. As well as the style below, O&O have a good selection of other diagramming techniques.

I'll post any other good or thought-provoking examples as I come across them in the weeks to come.