beaucoup bars
February's bar chart challenge was straightforward yet also broad. Submissions ranged from standard horizontal and vertical bars to a… barcode? Yes, Adam went all in last month, creating what is perhaps the world’s first barcode chart (don’t quote me on that!). In total, 89 people rose to the challenge delivering a full spectrum of bars. Watch the video below for a quick summary.
Diversity wasn’t the only highlight last month; engagement within the challenge community came alive. Community membership is growing, and its impact on our monthly challenge is undeniable. It’s incredible to see how people contributed to the challenge after submitting their entries, through thoughtful comments and support that kept momentum high throughout the month. Here are a few impressive themes that emerged in the comments section.
Great iterations. Chris submitted what was already a well-designed set of diverging bars and, through productive conversations, took his submission to the next level. Jamie had a similar experience—initially submitting two bar-themed options then iterating to deliver a final result about the magnitude of firearm homicides in the US.
Tactical tips. Mitchell’s racing bar chart illustrated how travel through Heathrow changed over the past two decades. He expressed wanting to fine-tune his creation, yet was unsure how to do so in Flourish. No worries, because Luisa from Flourish came to the rescue! How cool is that?
Thoughtful conversations. We intend for the challenge to be a safe space to practice creating visualizations. While some members use the challenge to explore work-related projects (focusing primarily on effective communication), others prefer to test their creativity. This means that not all data visualizations serve the same purpose. Sometimes our intentions are more artistic, so we can bend some of those data viz best practices (listen to podcast episode #27 to learn more about the goals of data visualization.) This topic organically appeared in several comments as members provided feedback on novel submissions. Check out Graeme's house themed bars, Philippe's sun design, or Ken's horizontal bars. (By the way, if you have thoughts to share about striking a balance between informing and engaging, share them in this community conversation.)
Speaking of Ken’s submission, you may have noticed it’s pretty similar to Agata’s—spoiler: they used the same data. We often see many variations from the same dataset, especially if there is crossover from Makeover Monday (MoM). We saw other MoM datasets this month: James Bond and sunniest places. It turns out that a professor from Merrimack college assigned this month’s challenge (featuring sunny locations) as coursework for an undergraduate class—sounds like a course I’d want to take! We don’t typically assign a dataset for our challenges, but it can be useful to explore how the same data can be visualized multiple ways—even if they are all bars. This reinforces the notice that data visualization sits at the intersection of science and art and can be approached in many different ways.
But there certainly are things to keep in mind—guidelines if you will. We noticed a handful of submissions that could benefit from either more or less white space. Be thoughtful about the gap between your bars. Unless you’re creating a histogram, you typically want to aim for a width that’s smaller than your bars but also wide enough to separate each bar visually.
Also, take care to ensure that bars make sense. As a general guideline, bars are best for categorical data. When using continuous data, consider whether lines would be a better option. Many of us are aware and take explicit efforts to avoid the spaghetti line graph, but what about the bar chart equivalent of spaghetti? In a bar chart, we create distinct elements to represent each category. In contrast, a line aggregates all of those different elements into a single shape, thus lessening the amount of cognitive burden on our audiences. Bars and lines aren’t always interchangeable, but if the underlying data is continuous, then consider how much mental effort you are asking of your audience by using bars. If you’re interested in some additional tips and tricks, check out our recent article all about bars.
Kudos to everyone who took the time to participate! It’s impossible to call out all 89 participants, but here are a few of my personal favorite storytelling bars: Max (bullying in Latin America), Marcin (why we should become vegan), and Klaudia (teenage career aspirations). Also, let's give an extra shout out to the six participants who took on bars twice, both in March 2018 and last month: Adam, Charles, Colin, Jamie, Rodrigo, and Simon. We applaud your commitment to practicing and honing your skills!
While February’s bar bonanza is over, you can continue the momentum by adding comments and datapoints or tackling this month’s challenge featuring animation.