The 3 Second Rule

The 3 Second Rule is a major orienting principle that guides the way we make graphs at Evergreen Data. Because our goal around here is to make graphs that are so freakin good, people quickly grasp what we’re laying down and they want more. You probably have that goal too.

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Questions to Ask When Examining a Graph

Does the story told in the headline match the data used to bolster it? It’s really common for people to read a tweet and take it as the truth. Especially when it comes from official accounts like the White House. And while the Trump White House was notorious for it’s…

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When to Viz

One of the biggest barriers to making great data visualization is the time it takes to do so. But that’s typically because we wait to start visualizing until it’s late in the game. This post is on when to viz. The Typical Data Visualization Process Let’s say you want to…

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Better Posters

I have a big ask. I want you to set aside three and a half minutes of your life (I know that’s a gajillion years these days) to watch Mike Morrison. I promise, he’ll make your heart sing. Mike’s right. The way we talk about data has to change.

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Graphs Need a Personal Bubble

You know that one friend who is otherwise nice enough but he stands inside your personal bubble? Like, even before the pandemic, he just needed to take one healthy step back. You’re cool, you’re just up in my space. Right. Just like you want a little breathing room,…

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Sharpen your Clutter Detector

Clutter shows up as all the unnecessary little things in your graph – anything that isn’t contributing to engagement with the data. You might think the little stuff can be overlooked but when you accumulate multiple graphs and their clutter into a dashboard, it feels too busy and overwhelming and…

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3 Reasons Academics Need to Get Better at Graphs

This is one of the best worst graphs of all time. It was published, no surprise, in an academic journal. It used to be that mediocre data viz was acceptable for academics because journals had limitations on what they could do with color and…

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Save as Template

This is my A+ #1 100% best time-saving hack for making graphs in Excel. When you go through the process of making that one graph that’s totally perfect, you can save it as a template so it becomes, essentially, your new default graph. Here’s how. Right-click somewhere in…

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Signs Your Data Viz Sings

I wish that every awesome data viz presentation ended with each coworker blasting a confetti popper over your head. The reality is that when your data viz sucks, you know it loud and clear. When it sings, you often can’t tell. This post is not going to provide an anatomy…

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Signs Your Data Viz Sucks

You might have landed here because you thought this was going to be a post full of snarky commentary on mediocre graphs. It isn’t. In fact, I’m not going to include a single data viz. Because what makes a data viz suck or sing isn’t just about its outward…

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