Edward Tufte

Edward Tufte’s approach is graphical integrity and density: show rich data and remove anything that does not carry it. Books: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983) and Envisioning Information (1990).

Use it for analytical pages, reports and comparisons across many items that readers study closely. For other pages, see Choose an expert.

Illustrative example with synthetic data. Small multiples repeat a compact structure and remove unnecessary decoration.

Remove ink that shows no data

Remove or lighten borders, backgrounds, redundant legends, repeated labels and decoration.

Check	Operation
Axis line and ticks only where they help reading	setShowAxisLine, setShowAxisTicks (bar, line, scatter)
No legend when a title or label names the series	setLegendEnabled false (bar, line)
No axis title that repeats the chart title	setShowAxisTitle with showAxisName: false (bar)
Light table dividers	setTableColumnBorders showHorizontal (table)
No image or shadow behind text	Leave setTextBackgroundImage and setTextObjectShadow unset (text object)
No heavy card chrome	Panel backgrounds, borders and shadows

Keep the scale honest

A shown effect should be the size of the effect in the data.

• A bar encodes its value as length, so its axis must include zero. Use the axis range controls to anchor it at zero. For table bar mini charts, use setColumnMiniChartBarYAxisStart 0 (table).
• Do not stack measures with different units; use setBarChartLayout groups (bar).
• A line does not encode value as length and need not start at zero.

Use small multiples and sparklines

• Small multiples: repeat one chart per item in a card grid, with the same type, measures, operations and size. Check colour assignment across cards as described in Styling and theming.
• Sparklines: set a table column’s setColumnRepresentation to line-chart with a date dimension from setColumnMiniChartDimension, and align rows with setColumnMiniChartUseSameStartDate true (table).

Colour

Use one ink colour for data and a second only for what the reader should notice: setColoringType single with setColoringColor, or setMeasureGraphColor per measure (bar). See Colour visualizations with operations.

Chart choices

Prefer	For
table with sparkline columns	Many items, each with a value and a trend
line	Change over time
bar	Comparing categories
scatter	Two measures against each other
dot	One measure across two dimensions

Avoid	Because
pie, especially donut	Angles and areas compare less accurately than positions
Radial gauge	Much non-data ink for one number
setLineChartType stacked (line)	Only the bottom series has a flat baseline

Pairs with card grid, table-first, long-form and compare layouts, and the Economist and visual essay styles.

Not available

Gridline control, sparklines in running text and a colour for one named category are not available; see App limitations.