Declutter

Cluttered, and ineffective (from here)

 

Nice!  Simple, sharp, fun even (from here)

Better:

• No data labels
• No dots, squares, triangles
• No legend, fun use of pictures

Could be even better:

• No line shadows (get rid of that new Excel default)
• Clean up the year labels, only one needed for each year
• Include the line for "other devices" since this chart is about market share, and we don't want to miss the trend for "others"

Reference: "Chart of the Day", Oct 28 2009, BusinessInsider.com; "Apple Soars Behind iPhone 3GS Momentum", October 27, 2009, InvestorPlace.com

Comments

[Jesse]

Another improvement could focus on the audience that does not know what different phones look like. I wouldn't know what the phones were (except the iPhone) unless I had the first chart for reference.

[Tommi Himberg]

Not related to this post in particular, but couldn't find other means of bringing this to your attention...

A funny example of "Minard-like" graphs about movie narratives: http://xkcd.com/657/

[junkcharts]

Tommi: you can submit ideas to my gmail account. The user name is the name of the blog.