The Importance of Figure Styling and Aesthetics

Data visualization and analysis involve the process of grabbing the data, playing with it, and finding interesting patterns. Once we’re done with the tedious task of finding patterns within the data, the next step is to make it visually appealing. It’s one of the critical components of the data visualization pipeline and is often overlooked. We don’t have to make our visualizations look pretty by playing with colors and shapes; instead, we must be rational about our choices.

Figure aesthetics include different elements such as colors, patterns, scales, and shapes. Each one can have a drastic impact on the final figure. We’ll review some examples where the wrong choice of different aesthetic elements may lead to figures and graphs that are difficult to comprehend.

Let’s say we’re tasked with presenting data containing a firm’s annual budgets for different departments. The annual budget for various departments is presented in the table below:

A wise choice would be to present the data in the ...