Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2020

Publication Title

Issues in Information Systems

Abstract

Brinton (1914) wrote the first ‘Design Style Guide’ in the form of rules more than 100 years ago, yet no one really studies nor uses them. Organizations like Google and London City Intelligence recently extended their design systems to include standards specifically for data visualization. This speaks to the growing importance of using data and metrics in an organization’s decision making and the value of branding them appropriately. In 2014, Amy Cesal created one of the first actual Data Visualization Style Guides for the Sunlight Foundation. Since then, many other organizations have created style guides of their own, however, Data Visualization texts have only recently begun to cover style guides. In this paper we argue that more widespread use of data visualization style guides by organizations would bring consiste brand identity, readability and accessibility to their data visualization work, and that incorporating data visualization into university curricula will be instrumental in encouraging widespread adoption of these style guides.. We present a historical analysis of these style guides from Brinton’s 1914 edition to today’s examples from 2014 through today to contextualize data visualization style guides for instructional purposes.

Department

Information Systems and Computer Science

Volume Number

21

Issue Number

4

First Page

264

Last Page

274

DOI

10.48009/4_iss_2020_364-274

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