Scientific American has a short article on “the great circle debate” in visualization, how circles can be seduction to graphics designers but bring several difficult problems into presentation of data. Rather than focusing on the many things wrong with circle-based visualizations, the article takes a rather graphic-design oriented view and advocates using them.
Others, such as Alberto Cairo (director for infographics and multimedia at Época-Editora Globo), worry that bar and line charts have become too familiar, and risk being overlooked or dismissed too quickly by the reader. These standard visualization formats are indisputably elegant solutions, but information-graphics professionals should not rest on their haunches and rely too heavily on a form established in the late 1700s. Instead, we should push the boundaries and explore new ways of presenting the data in an effort to better engage the reader. Perhaps it was in this spirit that the proportional circle chart was born.
Update 3/30: Alberto Cairo responds to the quote above, stating that it was taken completely out of context. Read his rebuttal in the comments.
I have never said or written such a thing: I love line and bar charts! I am being a bit misquoted in the article. It is true I am in favor of using new graphic forms, but also that I am advocate of making the decision on what form to use on the tasks the graphic is intended to facilitate. Regarding bubble charts, I like proportional symbol maps, but bubbles are always inferior to bars when it comes to accurate comparisons of quantities, so they are a poor choice if the thing you need is a bar chart. I have written about it here (in Spanish):
http://albertocairo.com/infografia/articulos/2009/bolas.html
When I said infographics professionals should not rely so much on hunches I was proposing that they rely more on research, meaning that we all should study more cartography, statistics and cognitive psychology, to base our decisions on how the eye-brain system works.