Graphing success.

After determining the formula for the Cities of Champions graphic, the next important step was finding ways of illustrating the histories of those franchises. Because this poster was about Cities of Champions, we were mainly concerned with graphing success and not failures. Whatever technique we graphed success with, I had hoped failures would be clearly indicated by empty space. After all, sometimes nothing speaks louder than a blank space in the win column. Just ask the 2009 Detroit Lions or any of the last sixteen (and most likely future twenty) renditions of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Because our formula took into account league championships, conference championships, playoff qualifications, and winning seasons, we wanted our charts to clearly illustrate those factors.

Our first few attempts played with using a combination of icons and colors to represent those factors. After illustrating a few cities with these techniques, we took a step back and evaluated what was successful and not successful about this effort. First, it was a step towards being a valuable reference because it clearly displayed the postseason success of each team. However, it lacked two things: it was hard to see trends and winning seasons were not illustrated.




For our second attempt, we took a step back to reevaluate how to best show trends. Briefly, we looked at using color and only color to graph championships. While the results showed a lot of potential in showing trends, especially in the opportunity to overlap team successes on top of each other for city summary charts, the reference aspect of the poster was lost. Championships were shown through a darker color, but overall they were harder to identify.


Having come close on two efforts but convinced there had to be better options out there, nearly simultaneously two things happened. One, we realized that a bar chart for games above .500 was the perfect way to show trends of success. Two, we re-stumbled upon Edward Tufte’s excellent work in developing his sparklines. On his website, he has an excellent discussion of the graphs, which he describes as “intense, simple, word-sized graphics.”

Liftoff. After figuring out how to relate winning percentages in all the sports to each other through a little math, we had our answer. Combining sparklines with the icons and colors from earlier efforts provided the perfect way to illustrate trends and serve as a reference. While our finished graphs are not exactly the “word-sized” ones that Tufte defines, they are definitely an effective marriage of multiple layers of information in a compact space. We hope to apply this technique outside of the Cities of Champion graphic and will keep you updated about those developments.