Jon Moon

Clarity and impact

Fun stuff

Also, see further below for the useful

First, here's stuff that's been in my email updates. To receive these updates and see more of this nonsense - plus useful stuff too - enter your details here.

Fun graphs
A truly awful graph that's just like a Jackson Pollock painting...
A great pie chart - which is a phrase I've never said before
A Michael Jackson graph (fear not, it's not in bad taste)
A fantastic pdf - a "bar of pies" and "pie of bars"
A Fox News pie with a tiny error on it... can you spot it?
How to fool bosses that you're working, from lastminute.com
Here's a horrible new trend - funky "data visualisations"...
Which is the worst pie? Which? is the worst pie
Sky News' marvellously bad column chart of the UK election
An unwittingly ironic graph on how we use information
A curious column chart - I won't say more
An awful infographic that shows the budget as moons...
Five breathtakingly bad graphs (infographics again...)
And now, even there are even M&S joke pies


Other - bullets, Venn diagrams, flowcharts, org charts
The Beatles' "Hey Jude", as a flowchart...
A wonderful organisation chart that tells it as it is
Put on your 3D glasses - 3D bullets floating your way soon!
A fascinating Venn Diagram of the UK's Royal Wedding
Not really witty. More like WiTty - a recipe in WiT. Neat
My book has 285 Figures in it - here are two more
The best worst CV ever - brilliantly funny
A book that charts the lyrics of pop songs...
Here and here for parodies of cheesy clichéd business photos
Finally, it's not on clarity & impact, but it's great - Bus Art


Video clips (duration in mins in brackets)
Below, the first video is stunning and has been seen by over 6 million people. And the second is wonderfully funny.

A superb animation, it makes "Education Paradigms" fun (12m)
A stand-up comic tells us How Not to Use PowerPoint (4m)
Five Microsoft videos tell us to ignore its software...(5 x 2m)
... but it then does this ad on how to pimp graphs (0.5m)


Want to find bad stuff yourself?

First, go hunting yourself. Do a Google Image search on words like "graphs", "3-D graph software", or even "kpi" or "dashboard" (speedometers really help bosses engage with information… don’t they?). Or marvel at these graphs.

Then there's this, the European Insurance Review of Insurance. Quickly scroll through 164 pages. Bad graphs first surface about page 54, then appear fast and furious after that. Page 66 of 164 is groovy. Page 71 of 164 is bizarre – why's it a line graph?!
 

The useful (educational, helpful and more)

The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams. A great easy-to-read book for all us, not just for arty types with Apple Macs. There’s no screen shots or computer instructions. You learn what to do, not how to do it on a computer.

Plain English Campaign. Fun, educational, useful. Check the Golden Bull award and the free guides. There's also free software that checks your documents for waffle (“Drivel Defence”). If you try it, let me know what it’s like.

Fight the bull website. This too has free software that checks your work for waffle (“Bullfighter”)- again, if you try it, let me know what it’s like. There's also a wonderfully titled book: "Why business people speak like idiots".

"Ask ET" page on Edward Tufte's website. Click on the link, then scroll down a bit to see his discussion threads. Fascinating and worth a browse. He's Professor Emeritus at Yale University. 

"Write to sell" by Andy Maslen. A fantastic little book on how to write persuasively. It's aimed at people that write marketing flyers, adverts, etc, but it's full of great ideas that'll make a big difference to most people's writing.