DataEdge

The iCharts Blog for Great Chart Making

The Next Gen of Data Discovery, In-Chart

The (Data) Story Told by You. Interpreted by the World.

Charts used to lead us down a pathway to a single data story. But we are now in a time where we expect more from everything we consume. We want to customize. We want to discover. And not only in ways that define what we listen to or what we buy, but in how we also look at data. Data now needs to deliver dynamic ways of synthesizing information. iCharts frees data from singular points of view and empowers viewers to draw meaningful insights.

Take this standard chart below. At first glance you see that the tertiary programs most popularly undertaken across a majority of OECD countries are in the social sciences, business and law fields. But click on the colored circles in the legend to also compare and contrast fields across countries.

What else have you drawn about these education choices? What do you suspect is driving clear wins in specific countries? What does it imply about how the global economy exchanges goods and services today and in the future as students become full participants in their local economies?

Chart: Distribution of new entrants into tertiary programsBY FIELD OF EDUCATION (2009)Description: In almost all OECD countries, the largest proportion of students choose tertiary programs in the social
sciences, business and law fields. In 2009, this collection of fields received the highest share of new entrants in all countries with the exception of Finland and Korea. In Finland, the proportion of new entrants was highest in engineering, manufacturing and construction. Korea’s largest proportion of entrants was highest in education, humanities and arts.Tags: world, education, tertiary, OECD, charts, infographicsAuthor: ChartChannelcharts powered by iCharts

Cool, right? We’re only scratching the surface! What about being able to analyze across segments or drill down to more specific groups or circumstances?

PowerCharts are iCharts synced to survey data with filters that allow more complex and customized cuts within data. For example, how far can you dig into the Supermarket Impression Breakdown? Click on the yellow filters to slice and dice across age, gender, education, marital status, region and quarter. How do supermaket brands perform across demographics in preceding quarters?

Chart: Supermarket Impression BreakdownDescription: DemoTags: Supermarket Survey, ABC Research, impressions, brandAuthor: ABC Researchcharts powered by iCharts

Share your data story. Let the world discover more within your data. Get started now with an iCharts free trial account.

Playing the Game: Data Collection, Visualization and Social Sharing

Big data, small data. It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle. And everyday iCharts wrestles through what the larger industry is facing – an identity crisis with data.

The most prolific challenges lie in…

  1. Data collection that delivers against specific business goals
  2. Data management to absorb old and new frontiers (e.g. Open Graph, Advertising Analytics) in a meaningful, action-oriented approach
  3. Data visualization (a.k.a. charts) and socializing at the speed of light to provide turnkey, shareable decision logic for larger business problems like how/when iterate a product and visual masterpieces for bloggers and stand-alone market researchers

At iCharts, we believe that solving these challenges start with a few key ingredients. (Note: iCharts is focused on #3)
Continue reading →

So You Don’t Have Data? You Can Still iChart.

Information and Inspiration for Creating InfoCharts

You have your hands on a few factoids from a hot press release or Mashable article. Can you chart it? You sure can. iCharts, while not a full-scale info graphics tool, does allow you to create mini infographics called InfoCharts. InfoCharts provide the flexibility for you to:

  • Create great looking charts without real datasets (e.g. Excel tabulations, survey response data)
  • Add awesome images and branding (Platinum plan only)
  • Showcase and share interesting statistics in an engaging format on a blog, ebook, website or social network without design expertise
Want to see InfoCharts in action? Here’s an example from our Pinterest board.

How do you get started?

Prepare to build your story with a mix of data, facts and design.

Plan - Pool together the facts (data points) that you want to include. Also collect images that you may need.
Create  - Import your images and copy/paste your  data points and any additional copy commentary into iCharts. Arrange and customize the elements as you see fit.
Share - Publish your chart to your website or blog or share it on your social networks.

Want to start creating InfoCharts for free? Sign-up here for your FREE, ALL-ACCESS 30-DAY TRIAL. 

Teeing Up Your (iChart) Templates

Things You Shouldn’t (And Can’t Afford) To Miss When Designing Chart Templates 

Continue reading →

iCharts Offers Bananas Plus Some for SurveyMonkey Users

Hello, SurveyMonkey Users!  Now Optimize Your Survey Data with iCharts.

If you are in the market for creating and sending out surveys, chances are you found yourself in the caring hands of SurveyMonkey for the simplicity, scalability and affordability of its tool.

What’s not to love? Survey set-up and distribution is a cinch and data collection behind the scenes is in real-time. You can get quick snapshots of how people see, feel and think about things that matter to you with their in-house charting even while the survey is still being fielded. But these charts are really just meant for your eyes only, giving you a pulse-check on  public sentiment. What about charts that are dressed with your brand for the world-stage, equipped with custom filtering and instant sharing capabilities? That’s where iCharts comes in with the SurveyMonkey data uploader we just launched today.

What Does That Mean?

It means that you can export your SurveyMonkey data, upload it into iCharts to design, create and share powerful charts.

Creating and Designing Charts from SurveyMonkey

We continue to do all the hard work for you. There is no need to re-format your data. You don’t need a programmer to sync your data to your design, nor do you need a graphic designer to pretty up your chart. iCharts takes care of all of it. But we make room for you to customize it to your own brand guidelines (logos, colors) with ways for you to optimize your SEO (hyperlinking, keywords, tagging).

Cross-tabbing and Filtering in Chart Form

We geek out for you with auto-generated cross-tab and data filters.
 Grab what you want to drill down by and segment your data on the fly. We’ve made it so that you skip having to run the numbers yourself then manually enter each value one-by-one into a whole different platform for charting.

Interactivity

We make it fun with data-focused interactive functionality. Viewers can explore cross-tabs and data filters that you have custom-selected for their use (click on the yellow buttons below) and flip through various data snapshots you have assigned for them to see (click on the left and right arrows next to Chart Views on the top right). Whether or not the filters and views are revealed or hidden to viewers is completely up to you.

Chart: Supermarket Impression BreakdownDescription: DemoTags: Supermarket Survey, ABC Research, impressions, brandAuthor: ABC Researchcharts powered by iCharts

Share
We take social sharing to a whole new level with stand-alone chart embeds, sharing and clipping features. Journalists and bloggers can use your chart to report on your insights. Chart viewers who see conversation-value in your insights can share it easily with their social networks or via email.

So How do You Getting Started
?

  1. Sign-up and activate your free trial within 24-hours of sign-up.
  2. Ensure you are a SurveyMonkey Select or higher user.
  3. Export response data in a .zip file to upload to iCharts.

Now upload your data, design and start sharing with the world! #sweet

iCharts for SurveyMonkey

Branding Charts With Platinum Powers

Tips on using iCharts’ Platinum features to protect and extend your brand.

iCharts has made it so that everything that you tailor behind the scenes promotes your brand and optimizes your SEO (learn how). With the powers of Platinum in your hands, you want to push your brand even further. You have your logo, corporate colors and data in hand… but how do you bring it all together in a way that means business?

Use logos and images, but only in a way that respects your data.

At the Platinum level, you have unlimited access to image uploads. The temptation to use the largest version of your logo and place it front and center or to use as many flashy images as possible is undeniably palpable. But try to keep your excitement at bay and channel it wisely. The focus of the chart should be on the data. Images, logos and their placements should very gently set the stage so that your data can shine.

Accent charts with your logo.

Logos should quietly frame your chart. Placing your logo in the middle of your chart, for example, certainly draws attention to your logo but distracts the viewer from the information you’re presenting. Having a clean space around your data implies that meaningful insights are not only important to your brand, but define your brand.

  • Ensure logos are not any larger than one-fifth or one-fourth of the visual width of your chart. (e.g. If your chart is 500 px in width, then your logo’s width should not be more than 100 px or 125 px in width.)
  • Place logos in one of the four corners (top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right). Give about 30 px of space around the logo so it is not cramped against the edges.

Be choosy with the images you use.

If you are taking it upon yourself to find the perfect image, you will soon find out that there are almost too many to wade through. The ones that will work out the best will fulfill two requirements:

  • Complementing the storyline and personality of your brand.
  • If resting in the background, the image will create open space for your chart while also drawing attention to what matters most to your readers.

Color MatchYour company may have a well-defined corporate brand color scheme. Use that palette to dictate your data series colors. You can easily copy and paste the HEX and RGB codes in the studio if you have access to them. If you don’t, take a your logo or a screenshot of your company website and upload it to any of the following tools that will analyze the image for the most commonly used colors and yield those codes for your use:

Getting the Gold on ChartBooks

Tips on how to size charts for the perfect ChartBook.

ChartBooks  - available to iCharts Gold and Platinum plan users – are a great way to create stories with charts through an online, interactive presentation. What’s that? You’ve never seen one before?

Take a look here to flip through one. Just bear in mind that this one is more richly formatted and branded, thanks to the Platinum user benefits. But here’s a taste for  how it all comes together.

Below are a few guidelines on how to size up your charts to make the most of your data (bite-size) stories.

The Basics

Charts can be arranged into a grid-like composition on each page. When you create or edit a page, determine the number of columns each page will have. Choosing to have two columns for a page that will contain four charts, for example, will arrange the first two charts into the first row, and the second set of two will be in the  second row. If you have decided to have a three-column spread, then only the last chart will be bumped into the second row. Or, if you choose to have a one-column spread, then your four charts will never be on the same row; viewers will use the vertical scrollbar in order to view the remaining charts.

The key to coordinating a clean ChartBook page is sizing; it quickly becomes a width and height game.

Heights

Here are a few general things to consider when determining the heights:

  • The sharpest ChartBooks have charts whose heights are equal.
  • Because the height of the chart is more or less determined by your data and the amount of extra information you wish to add (comments, annotations), play around with how much content you will more or less have to determine a go-to height for the charts.
  • If keeping the entire chart or first row of charts within the field of view is important to you, then try to keep your charts under 500 px in height.

Widths

Widths can be tricky to wrap your head around if you intend to have a collection of pages with differing column arrangements. Aim to have charts of equal widths.

But which width should you decide on? Well, you can have charts at any width of your choice, up to a certain point. Here is simple table of the maximum widths your chart can have per your column selection to guide you as you organize your charting process:

ChartBook Width Guide

*While it is absolutely possible to create layouts with 5 or more columns of charts to a page, the widths you would need to make your page orderly would render your charts almost impossibly too narrow to make the data legible.

We trust these quick pointers will get you well on your way to building your first of many Chartbooks.

Author Note:
ChartBooks are currently only shareable between iCharts users. We are working hard to release the option to publish unique web-based URLs to share publicly, as well.

Basic Doesn’t Have to be Boring

Tips for [Basic Plan] iCharts Users

Just because you might choose the iCharts Basic Plan,  it doesn’t means your charts are subjected to an aesthetic handicap. While you may not be able to upload your own images (see Gold or Platinum), Basic still provides simple tools to create visually appealing charts. With iCharts, free version or not, you still have full control over key ingredients like spacing, font and color to have clean and visually balanced storytelling imagery.

SPACING

  • Perhaps one of most easily overlooked Basic tools is spacing. Poor spacing decisions within charts can be one of the biggest distractions when someone is looking at it. As you begin, mentally plot out where your chart title, text box and chart area will be placed. Also map out an imaginary margin around the entire chart page that will designate where content cannot be placed. Think of it like a fresh document you’re working on with equal margins on all four sides.
  • When you fine-tune the relative positioning of the text boxes, chart titles and the chart area, ensure that the white space between them is equal.

Example:

FONTS

  • Mix and match fonts wisely. Mixing and matching fonts is a subtle way to give a sense of organization to the eye. One font style can set the main points, for example, while another font style can set the supporting points.
  • There are general rules of thumb regarding how many fonts can be used in harmony with one another in the graphic design world, but since you are working in a relatively small space within a chart, I suggest only working with two at a time. Sans serif fonts work wonderfully set against serif fonts, and vice versa. Within iCharts, Georgia and Arial or Georgia and Helvetica are the most balanced combinations.
  • And at the risk of stating the obvious, bold and italic font formatting decisions are extremely useful tools for you to draw attention to specific points, especially when they are used in tandem with color choices that echo a relationship with the chart colors (more on this in the color section below).

Example:

COLOR

Use color to highlight the take-aways of your chart.

  • If there is a single category or multiple categories that you want to call attention to, use a bolder, brighter color to illuminate them from the stack
  • And if you’d like to expand on the categories you’ve singled out, use the same color to emphasize your points within the text – this is a quick, and simple way to make relationships between data and analysis.

Example:

Chart: Israel, Argentina, Russia & Turkey Most Socially EngagedDescription: Israel is the most engaged country on Facebook, spending an average of 11.1 hours per visitor during the month of October 2011. Argentina (10.7 hours), Russia (10.4 hours) and Turkey (10.2 hours) are not too far behind. Worldwide, users spend an average of 5.7 hours per visitor. SOURCE: comScoreTags: world usage, Facebook, time spent, charts, graphs, infographics, comScoreAuthor: iChartscharts powered by iCharts

So, fear not. If you have a free [Basic] account, you still have an awesome set of tools within your grasp that will take charting from dull stat sharing to creative works of art.

The Ugly Duckling [Data] All Grown Up

The everyday consumer is no stranger to data.  You don’t even have to be a data scientist to be touched by it – every day, in virtually everything you do.  It haunts us everywhere – in stock tickers, ad campaign dashboards, political polls, March Madness statistics, office KPI reports, board meetings, and our personal finance alerts.

In recent months though, the subject of big data has become a larger one. It regularly frequents blogs ranging from Tim O’Reilly to Jeff Bullas to Giga.Om.  Some might even say it feels like the song and dance we’ve experienced with mobile technology over the last five years -  “this is the year for mobile” – only to see it ride steadily with no significant bursts in innovation or consumer adoption trends.

Well, honey, the duckling is a swan. Mobile is here. And data …well, it’s growing up.

First, data visualization is here to stay.

What used to be reserved for data junkies and designers, has gone mainstream. With plug-n-play, interactive charting tools for anyone with  a little access to data sets and a decent eye for copy and design…you can_have_charts. Lots of them. Just check out the number of charts  – info graphics, mini info graphics, data illustrations and standard charts – that float across the blogosphere and Pinterest.

Second, data just got way easier to crunch and share.

It’s not perfect yet, but it certainly has gotten easier. On iCharts, it’s only a 3-step process: Upload, Choose Template, Publish. And if you so choose, add a fourth by Sharing it with all your favorite people via blog, Facebook, Pinterest and more.

Third, interactive charts are expanding to enhance surveys.  

(Reader Beware: This one’s a teaser for what lies ahead.) But yes, if you regularly use survey data and even like to share results with friends, peers and colleagues, you will soon have accessible, time-effective tools at your disposable. Think Survey Monkey, on steroids. #awesome

Need a little more to chew on? Check out the iCharts User Guide or FAQs section to get you started with your next data – err, charting – creation.

Dipping Your Toe Into iCharts? Four Steps to Getting Started.

Charting isn’t always a straight-forward as it might seem. But we’re here to make it easy with (4) simple steps to get you started.

STEP 1: Load Data.
There are (3) ways for you to load data.

  1. Load from an Excel spreadsheet or connect to a Google Spreadsheet.
  2. Power your charts directly from a database by connecting it with an iCharts API connector. Learn more about setting one up.
  3. Enter data manually. If you don’t have a spreadsheet but have the data on hand, type it in yourself.
STEP 2: Design and Format.
You don’t need to be a graphic designer to make a good, clean, stylish chart. All it takes is one click.
  1. Browse through iCharts’ (15) pre-built design templates for additional background and formatting options.
  2. Apply a template in 1-click. Edit it as often as you like. Explore what can be changed.
  3. Or create your own custom design template to match your brand or style (platinum plan only). Find inspiration on our ChartChannel.


STEP 3: Create and Publish Charts.
Put the final touches on your chart and determine just how private or public you’d like it to be.

  1. Customize! Choose size, color, form factor, images, logo and much more. (Note: Options vary by plan type.)
  2. Add comments to your charts.
  3. Turn on/off interactive features - such as Sliders, Filters and Legends that are automatically generated to your chart/graph by iCharts.
  4. Choose Public or Private as your chart setting. See what the difference is.
  5. Share - via email, embed on your blog/website, share with another iChart’s user (account: account sharing) or post on your favorite social network.


STEP 4: Create a ChartBook.
Need cool reports with charts? Create a ChartBook.

  1. Include as many pages as you like.
  2. Drag and drop (unlimited) interactive charts into your ChartBook
  3. Rearrange charts on the fly with 1-click
  4. Add text-only charts into your ChartBook for additional context
  5. Share your ChartBook with other iChart’s users.
Need more information? Check out our FAQs section. Or download our new User Guide.
Not an iCharts user yet? Sign-up today for free.