Visual credibility: how to make an Economist-style chart with simple tools

The concept of visual credibility is basically ‘this thing reminds me of x, and I love x.’ Borrowing the visual style of someone or something that is credible to your audience can be a shortcut for the acceptance of your ideas.

An example is Elizabeth Holmes borrowing the visual credibility of Steve Jobs by wearing black turtlenecks. She used the turtleneck visual cue to link herself with him in people’s minds. So she could be seen as a kind of visionary genius and win over investors.

Steve Jobs and Elizabeth Holmes, both in black turtlenecks

Her path is obviously not one to emulate but in a way her story reinforces how powerful visual communication can be.

You can also borrow credibility for yourself via the visual representation of your ideas.

Say for example you know that your boss reads the Economist and enjoys how the information is laid out. Now I’m sure the Economist team has a very sophisticated way of making their charts and they may even have proprietary software, but you can recreate this style using Excel and PowerPoint.

The first step is analyzing key components of their charts. And the second step is to reverse engineer how it was made and then build one yourself. I’ll show you here.

Here is our sample chart from the Economist.

I observe the following:

1. There are three colored lines, the rest are in gray so ensure the colors stand out.
2. Data labels are at the right edge of the data lines, not in a separate key.
3. Comments are placed directly on the chart, not below.
4. X axis is customized. Not all numbers are shown.

Here’s my starting chart in Excel.

Very basic and not elegant! After I generated the chart, I add one extra blank month to the table and pull the blue data box to the new edge because I know I’ll need that space for my first step below. Note: it doesn’t work to add the blank month at the beginning and then generate the chart. You have to do this as step two.

So I paste my chart into PowerPoint and get to work.

First I create a white rectangle to cover the right edge of the chart and then I overlay text boxes with my data labels. The countries I will highlight have larger, bold text. I delete the chart title placeholder at the top.

Then I click each country line and change the fill and outline of the lines I want to highlight in color, and the ones I want to fade into the background (those I make gray). I also delete the key at the bottom since I no longer need it. I have to adjust the chart slightly upward, so the text matches the lines once again.

At the bottom of the chart I create a white rectangle with black outline so I can see it. Then I make text boxes for each data point (month in this case), and line them up to the X axis.

Then I move the rectangle and the text boxes (with the align tool you only need to move the first and last box into position, then align top, distribute horizontal) over the X axis and remove the black outline. I delete the months I don’t want to show. I create text boxes with my comments, and make sure the text box background is set to ‘no fill.’

To finish the chart I add a colored rectangle to the background and add a title with a text box at top. Here is the side-by-side of the original and my Economist-style chart.

Post originally published on my site, displaystudies.com