# Practitioner Guides

## What Problem This Solves

This index collects respected practical guides that are especially useful for chart choice, critique, and newsroom-grade communication.

## When to Use It

Use this when the user needs concise examples, visual vocabularies, or a practical bridge between theory and implementation.

## Key Takeaways

- Practitioner guides are strongest when used for examples, anti-patterns, and communication heuristics.
- They complement but do not replace primary API docs or theory sources.
- Editorial and newsroom sources are strongest as process models: find the story, sketch alternatives, annotate evidence, critique, and adapt for responsive publication.
- Ambitious interactive graphics often use animation, photography, generated imagery, 3D, maps, and illustration as evidence-bearing surfaces. Treat those as art direction problems with data-bound overlays, not as decorative theming.
- Scrollytelling practitioner guidance is most useful for deciding when scroll helps, how to preserve native browser behavior, how to plan mobile fallbacks, and how to avoid decorative parallax or scrolljacking.
- Mobile visualization practitioner guidance is useful for deciding when to create sibling mobile layouts, control chart height, reduce labels, preserve the focal chart above controls, and design touch-first interactions instead of squeezing a desktop composition.

## Common Mistakes

- Treating a visual vocabulary as a rigid taxonomy.
- Using example charts without checking whether the data and task truly match.
- Copying a publication's visual identity instead of learning from its principles.

## Adjacent Skills

- `../../skills/visualization-strategy-and-critique/SKILL.md`
- `../../skills/data-visualization/SKILL.md`
- `../../skills/node-link-and-diagram-layout/SKILL.md`
- `../../skills/uml-and-software-architecture-visualization/SKILL.md`

## Source Links

- [From Data to Viz](https://www.data-to-viz.com/)
- [FT Visual Vocabulary](https://github.com/ft-interactive/visual-vocabulary)
- [Datawrapper Academy](https://academy.datawrapper.de/)
- [Datawrapper: Responsive height control](https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/responsive-height-control)
- [Datawrapper: Locator maps for mobile devices](https://www.datawrapper.de/academy/locator-maps-for-mobile-devices)
- [Tableau Research: Responsive Visualization Design for Mobile Devices](https://www.tableau.com/research/publications/responsive-visualization-design-mobile-devices)
- [UML-Diagrams.org UML 2.5 diagrams overview](https://www.uml-diagrams.org/uml-25-diagrams.html)
- [C4 model diagrams guide](https://c4model.com/diagrams)
- [Structurizr DSL pattern catalog](https://docs.structurizr.com/dsl/patterns)
- [Datawrapper choropleth guidance](https://www.datawrapper.de/academy/what-to-consider-when-creating-choropleth-maps)
- [Datawrapper annotation guidance](https://www.datawrapper.de/academy/annotate-tab)
- [Datawrapper color restraint guidance](https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/10-ways-to-use-fewer-colors-in-your-data-visualizations)
- [Atlassian Gantt chart overview](https://www.atlassian.com/agile/project-management/gantt-chart)
- [Jira Advanced Roadmaps CSV export](https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/export-advanced-roadmaps-plan-data-as-csv/)
- [Asana project import and export](https://help.asana.com/s/article/project-importing-and-exporting)
- [Asana task dependencies](https://help.asana.com/s/article/task-dependencies)
- [monday.com Gantt chart view](https://support.monday.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015643840-The-Gantt-Chart-View-and-Widget)
- [monday.com dependencies](https://support.monday.com/hc/en-us/articles/360007402599-Dependencies-on-monday-com)
- [monday.com Excel export](https://support.monday.com/hc/en-us/articles/26989749858578-Export-from-monday-to-Excel)
- [Smartsheet dependencies and critical path](https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/765727-enabling-dependencies-using-predecessors)
- [ClickUp rescheduling dependencies](https://help.clickup.com/hc/en-us/articles/6304547785367-Rescheduling-dependencies)
- [Axis Maps: Choropleth Maps](https://www.axismaps.com/guide/choropleth)
- [Axis Maps: Proportional Symbols](https://www.axismaps.com/guide/proportional-symbols)
- [ColorBrewer](https://colorbrewer2.org/)
- [Amanda Cox on visualization's "Aha!" moments](https://hbr.org/2013/03/power-of-visualizations-aha-moment)
- [Jen Christiansen](https://www.jenchristiansen.com/about)
- [Mike Bostock: How To Scroll](https://bost.ocks.org/mike/scroll/)
- [The Pudding: Responsive scrollytelling best practices](https://pudding.cool/process/responsive-scrollytelling)
- [The Pudding: How to implement scrollytelling with six different libraries](https://pudding.cool/process/how-to-implement-scrollytelling/)
- [data.europa: Scrollytelling introduction](https://data.europa.eu/apps/data-visualisation-guide/scrollytelling-introduction)
- [data.europa: Scrollytelling graphic sequence](https://data.europa.eu/apps/data-visualisation-guide/scrollytelling-graphic-sequence)
- [data.europa: Scrollytelling animated transition](https://data.europa.eu/apps/data-visualisation-guide/scrollytelling-animated-transition)
- [data.europa: Scrollytelling pan and zoom](https://data.europa.eu/apps/data-visualisation-guide/scrollytelling-pan-and-zoom)
- [data.europa: Scrollytelling moviescroller](https://data.europa.eu/apps/data-visualisation-guide/scrollytelling-moviescroller)
- [data.europa: Scrollytelling show-and-play](https://data.europa.eu/apps/data-visualisation-guide/scrollytelling-show-and-play)
- [Robert Kosara: The Scrollytelling Scourge](https://eagereyes.org/blog/2016/the-scrollytelling-scourge)
- [2025: The Year in Visual Stories and Graphics](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/22/us/2025-year-in-graphics.html)
- [Columbia Journalism School Data Visualization course description](https://journalism.columbia.edu/content/cross-registration)
- [Perceptual Edge](https://www.perceptualedge.com/)