From the course: The 33 Laws of Typography

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03 Avoid chart junk and page junk

03 Avoid chart junk and page junk

From the course: The 33 Laws of Typography

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03 Avoid chart junk and page junk

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- Law 3, Avoid Chartjunk and Pagejunk. These may be new terms for you, so let's start with a definition. Chartjunk is the excessive and unnecessary use of graphical elements in charts and graphs. So, let's look at an example to better understand this concept. Here's a chart that is loaded with chartjunk, and this chartjunk is showing up as thick dark rules, darkly shaded background, all these pattern fills, and the large heavy text that's been used. Now, here's the same chart with the same information but without all the chartjunk, and you can see in this example that everything in this chart is adding or clarifying meaning, and that's what you want when you're creating charts and graphs. If you have elements that are not adding or clarifying meaning, get rid of them. Now, for the elements that are adding meaning, reduce them down to their simplest form. So, that means if you have borders that can be thinner, make them thinner. If you have shading that can be lighter, make it lighter.…

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