Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

Very insightful and practical instructions with vivid demonstration of how data visualization may empower storytelling. References to online resources are also very useful.

This is a must read for anyone creating data visualization. It provides clear, succinct examples and explains why one approach is better than other and is loaded with example visuals. This is a great reference for any person or data team to better enhance their storytelling with data. There aren’t enough encouraging words to express what a game changer this book is.

There is some good stuff in here.I like Knaflic’s focus on intentionality. For her, the defaults are something that should be avoided, or at least justified.I like how she looks at the presentation of graphic information as a story arc. There is one thing that you want to focus on to create actionable decisions. This is best, as she describes, if you are presenting. There are limitations if you have a static document that has information for multiple stakeholders.The book is accessibly written with a clean font and plenty of examples.However, I do have to push back a bit. She follows Tufte in trying to eliminate data ink. Part of the intentionality is that you have less and less information on the page and every thing you includes helps tell your story. For me though that leads to a sameness. You want your audience to not have to think so hard. You want to make sure they don’t have their eyes glaze over. But that means that everything is very simple with a muted palette. The author notes that some of these are just her preference, but the mode of thinking has become influential. Part of me wants my audience to do some work in understanding the text I put in front of them. It means a level of engagement that I worry a too-simple graph leaves out.

Great book and very insightful. If you work with data and use charts and graphs this is the book for you.

This book gives both an overall framework for thinking about data visualization and a toolkit for designing the most common types of visualizations. Each type of visualization is presented with insights and practical tips. The book presents all of this material and detail concisely. Well worth a read and occasional review.

Great book, full of insights, even if you are already familiar with the topic.

I work in the project controls arena of large projects that have hundreds, if not thousands of people working on them. A key requirement for project controls is to keep all project personnel informed about the project status. Needless to say engineering plays a major role on these projects and brings lots of data with them; pages and pages of it. As the author points out the analytical types are not necessarily trained on how to tell a story (i.e. communicate) with their data.For the last 10 years or so, I have developed methods for getting the project story down to a single graphic. It's usually a large graphic, but a single one. It has the effect of getting everyone on the same page. But for people who are not used to looking at this type of presentation, it can be overwhelming or as the author points out they have to work at it in order to understand it. This was a key point for me.Before I finished the book, I started making changes in my work products. They were small changes, but the feedback was very positive. One example, do you ever note information in page footers like date, time and maybe filename and path? Does anyone think to put them in the background by using a shade of gray instead of the default black? No! Try it. Then ask for opinions It doesn't sound like much, but it's reducing the competition on people's focus.This book is great! It's fairly short to read and has a lot of examples making it easy to follow the author's intent. She obviously is very good at her profession. If I had to pick one book as a recommendation to someone who wants to learn about making great presentation graphics, I will point to this book. I highly recommend it. But, the book doesn't stop there, the author has included a listing of resources (e.g. books and websites) for continued learning.

Pros: This book reminds me to focus on thinking what is worthy to communicate to different stakeholders. The tips are applicable and easy to apply.Cons: It's shallow from a data expert point of view. All examples seem to focus on communicating with business executives. The story is simple hence easy to build & communicate.