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Stack or Slope?

6/8/2018

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The stars lined up this week leading to June’s short and sweet blog post: I started a new consulting project with Apple Inc., noticed a viz I was not familiar with in the news (about same client), and hours later Storytelling With Data published the monthly visualization challenge – leading to a great makeover opportunity.
 
A WSJ article used this chart (anyone recognize it?) to show the breakdown and change in Apple’s Services revenues:
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"Apple Looks to Expand Advertising Business With New Network for Apps" WSJ 6/1/18
My makeover goal was to highlight the key message more boldly - App Store and Apple Music sales were the top growth categories while iTunes sales declined most.

​Using a slope graph helped improve alignment and legibility, especially as it pertains to the categories with smaller contribution percentages (like Apple Music, and Apple Pay). Also, using color more sparingly helped pop the categories with the highest growth and decline over time.
Picture
There may be other chart types that would achieve the same result I was going after but the slope graph certainly fit the bill in more than one way this time!

​Which of the two visuals worked best in your opinion? Would you use another chart type to tell this story?
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