Visual Vocabulary

Choosing the Right Chart for Each Type of Information

There are many ways to visualize data, but how do we choose the most appropriate representation for each situation?

Developed by the Financial Times, the Visual Vocabulary organizes different types of charts according to the relationships they are intended to highlight: deviation, correlation, ranking, distribution, change over time, magnitude, part-to-whole, spatial relationships, and flow.

Rather than simply presenting a collection of charts, the document serves as a decision-making tool. It helps designers, researchers, journalists, analysts, and other professionals identify which visual resources can communicate information with greater clarity, accuracy, and meaning.

The original work was developed by Alan Smith, Chris Campbell, Ian Bott, Liz Faunce, Graham Parrish, Billy Ehrenberg-Shannon, Paul McCallum, and Martin Stabe, members and contributors of the Financial Times graphics team.

The initiative was inspired by the Graphic Continuum, a project created by Jon Schwabish and Severino Ribecca, which also systematizes different forms of data visualization.

The original material is available at ft.com/vocabulary and is distributed by the Financial Times under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). This license allows the work to be shared and adapted, provided that appropriate credit is given to the authors and any derivative works are distributed under the same license.