The Royal Statistical Society have published ‘Best Practices for Data Visualisation’, containing insights, advice, and examples (with code) to make data outputs more impactful. The guide begins with an overview of why we visualise data, and then discusses the core principles and elements of data visualisations – including the structure of charts and tables, and how those structures can be refined to aid readability. Concrete advice, examples, and code are presented to help improve the styling of charts, with a particular focus on accessibility. There’s a dedicated section on styling charts for RSS publications, and readers are also provided with links to resources for choosing the right type of chart for the data at hand.

The guide is free to read online, and source code and files are on GitHub. Best Practices for Data Visualisation is written by Andreas Krause, Nicola Rennie, and Brian Tarran.