Our thinking
What We Believe
The rules we apply to every redesign, every workshop, and every template. None of it is secret. Most of it is teachable in an afternoon.
Where this comes from
None of this is opinion for its own sake
Data visualization has decades of research behind it, from how the eye scans a page to which chart types actually distort comparisons. We didn't invent these principles. We just apply them consistently, and we've noticed most teams never got taught them in the first place.
Nobody sits new analysts down and explains why a pie chart with nine slices is a bad idea, or why red and green together fail for a chunk of your audience. So the same mistakes get copied from template to template, deck to deck, for years.
Five things we hold onto
Principles, not preferences
Clarity beats decoration, every time
A chart's job is to answer a question fast. If a gradient, a 3D bevel, or a fifth color scheme doesn't help someone answer that question faster, it's not neutral, it's actively in the way. We remove first and add back only what earns its place.
One chart, one question
Charts trying to answer three questions at once usually answer none of them well. We'd rather ship two clean charts than one crowded one, even if that means the dashboard has an extra tile.
Color carries meaning, or it shouldn't be there
If blue means "this region" on one chart and "above target" on the next, your audience is doing translation work they never signed up for. We build a limited palette where every color maps to one consistent idea across the whole system.
Hierarchy tells the eye where to go first
Size, position, and contrast aren't decoration either, they're instructions. The most important number on a page should look the most important, without anyone needing a legend to figure that out.
Templates need guardrails, not just guidelines
A style guide nobody reads doesn't protect a dashboard from drifting back into chaos. We build constraints directly into the template itself, so the easy path and the correct path are the same path.
Also worth saying
Accessibility isn't a bonus round
Roughly one in twelve men experiences some form of color vision deficiency. That's not a rare edge case, it's a normal Tuesday audience for most corporate reports. We check contrast ratios, avoid red-green as the sole signal, and label directly on charts instead of relying only on color-coded legends.
We also think about screen readers for anyone consuming reports through assistive technology, and about print legibility for the reports that still get handed out on paper in a boardroom.
Curious how this applies to your reports?
Bring us a dashboard and we'll show our reasoning
We're happy to walk through why a specific chart works or doesn't, no pitch required.