The ‘story’ is what you are trying to say with the visual element.

To identify your story, first think about your aim. For example:

• Do you want to convince the reader that heart disease among Australian men has increased since 1980?
• Do you want the reader to know that a greater proportion of mammalian species are endangered than bird and reptile species?
• Do you want to explain how to do something on a computer?

Each of these stories will require different kinds of information or data to create a visual display.

If your visual display is based on quantitative data (eg measurements, numerical observations), first find out what the data are telling you. That can influence how you display the data. For example:

• Do you want the reader to see differences in the size of data values across several groups or locations?
• Do you want the reader to see that 2 measures tend to change together (a correlation)? 
• Do you want the reader to see that the values change over time in some way (a trend)?

The type of relationship that your data show, and that you want your readers to notice, will determine the type of visual display you create.