They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but you can use a well-designed graphic to help the reader understand your point of view by telling a story. Data visualizations can become the vehicle that leads a reader through your narrative. Having an infographic or series of visuals allows one to tell a story and provide greater understanding than simply having text alone.
I read an amazing article by Allison Stadd entitled, 15 Data Visualizations That Will Blow Your Mind, which shows examples of using visuals to tell a story. A quote from the article really resonated with me; “The best data visualizations are storytelling tools that spark discussion and elicit calls to action.”
Infographics are a good example of storytelling which is gaining in popularity as writers try to capture the attention of readers with complex topics. Doing a quick search on Pinterest will provide many examples of how infographics are used to tell a story. By taking a multi-step article and putting the information into an infographic, the data becomes easier to digest and more accessible to more people. USA Today has a section on Interactive Graphics they use in various news stories that illustrate how they have utilized this storytelling trend.
This is what really drew me into working with data; to help people advance their point of view by giving them the ability to tell their story through data. You can take a thousand lines of data and summarize it in a well-designed visual that will convey your point with greater impact than having hundreds of words of text. Adding visuals will engage your readers and help to lead them through complex topics.
Resources
22 Free and Open Source Data Visualization Tools to Grow Your Business – Has a list of free tools that allow you to create your own visualizations.
9 popular ways to perform Data Visualization in Python – Python is hot in the data analytics area right now. This article has some examples of using Python in data visualization.