Telling Stories About Data, Oil & Gold
Many of you have read or starting reading “Storytelling with Data” the great book by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic. In this excellent book, she explains how important it is to understand your viewers, the people that look and interact with your visualisation. Also, thanks to the #VizBookClub I have been reading Alberto Cairo’s excellent book “The Truthful Art” which has opened my eyes in many ways, specially to be truthful to your story, investigate and send a message across with every viz.
When I saw this week’s #MakeoverMonday data set, I felt completely out of my comfort zone … I knew almost nothing about Gold or Oil prices and production, less to mention if the price of one affected the other !
There were then two options, do a simple viz trying to replicate what other people were doing or investigate, learn and pass the knowledge. I decided for the later !
My #MakeoverMonday this week is different than any other previous ones I have ever done. I wanted to tell a story, to send a message across. I also wondered how many people have actually investigated and learned about the subject or have simply created what looked like a nice dashboard?
Telling the Story with your Data
I must confess that with the time that took me to read about Gold and Oil and the different types of vizzes that started and re-started again; it took me way longer than one hour to complete it (upsss Eva & Andy, I’ve confessed!) … but was totally worth it !
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Inspired by <a href="https://twitter.com/VizWizBI">@VizWizBI</a>'s viz, here is my <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MakeoverMonday?src=hash">#MakeoverMonday</a>, a short story of Oil & Gold partnership. Interactive <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/viz?src=hash">#viz</a> <a href="https://t.co/DOtOLhD2Ob">https://t.co/DOtOLhD2Ob</a> <a href="https://t.co/hQV4RTsMDz">pic.twitter.com/hQV4RTsMDz</a></p>— Pablo Gomez (@PabloLGomez) <a href="https://twitter.com/PabloLGomez/status/851752048374804482">April 11, 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Once I understood what the numbers in the data set meant, it was a lot clearer the message I wanted to show. At the same time, Andy Kriebel’s viz was perfect as a source of inspiration.
I wanted to explain with numbers and words what’s the relationship between Gold and Oil and also, to highlight some key moments in the history of these two important commodities.
Couldn’t have done it without the help of Luis’ design and Lorena’s feedback, both big part and moving forces of I FOR IDEAS.
To tile or to float?
An endless discussion but … why not both? – The viz below has as many Tiled elements as Floating ones and yet they both can compose a great viz when working together.
So, the main question for me this week apart from the relationship between Gold and Oil was … How much Oil can you buy with an ounce of Gold?
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The answer is in the viz below!
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