About Data Visualization Style Guides
A data visualization style guide is a practical playbook for how your team designs charts, tables, and dashboards. It turns broad brand standards into clear decisions for data work, including color use, typography, labeling, annotation, chart selection, and accessibility.
Style guides matter because they help teams communicate with more clarity and less friction. Instead of reinventing decisions project by project, people can use shared standards that improve quality, consistency, and trust.
The resources on this site are designed to help you build that playbook faster:
- Tips show focused lessons from real style guides so you can apply proven ideas right away.
- Examples let you study how organizations document visualization rules in practice.
- Resources provide deeper guidance on process, systems, and communication so your guide is useful in day-to-day work.
For collaboration, speaking, or content suggestions, send a note through your preferred channel.
When sharing chart examples for review, include:
- The question your audience needs answered
- The data source and date range
- The chart type you considered and why
Who we are
Alan Wilson is a Principal Product Designer at Adobe, where he focuses on making the Adobe Experience Cloud more intuitive through scalable design systems. By building frameworks that ensure consistency across a vast product landscape, he simplifies complex information for users and helps design teams scale their impact. Outside of his work at Adobe, Alan serves as an adjunct professor, teaching undergraduate students the principles of data visualization and user experience design. He is dedicated to both mastering the craft of information design and mentoring the next generation of practitioners.
Amy Cesal is a freelance information designer and strategist who helps organizations build strong data visualization practices and style guides. She co-founded the Data Visualization Society and writes and teaches about practical design systems for data storytelling.
Jonathan Schwabish, PhD is a Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute and is an economist, writer, teacher, and creator of policy-relevant data visualizations. He is considered a leading voice for clarity and accessibility in how researchers communicate their findings. Dr. Schwabish helps nonprofits, research institutions, and governments at all levels improve how they communicate their work and findings to their partners, constituents, and stakeholders.
Maxene Graze With a background in biological and linguistic academic research, Max Graze has an interdisciplinary approach. By day, she's a Senior Data Visualization Engineer at King. By night, she explores innovative methods in data visualization, including multisensory representations that combine visual, auditory, and haptic stimuli to enhance understanding and engagement with data. Her work aims to bridge the gap between human experience and data analysis.
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