Data and data sets are not objective; they are creations of human design. We give numbers their voice, draw inferences from them, and define their meaning through our interpretations. -Kate Crawford, 2013
In her series of books and online posts entitled Storytelling With Data, Cole Knaflic has identified a 6-step process to help users create a narrative with their data visualizations. These steps include:
A visualization's complexity should reflect the medium where it is published and the target audience. This chart from the Urban Institute offers a useful reminder of the levels of complexity appropriate for different publishing formats.