I recommend reading a series of academic journal articles on data visualization from Nature Methods (http://blogs.nature.com/methagora/2013/07/data-visualization...)

This an amazing resource. Thanks!

Quite an interesting review, with lots of useful learnings for practitioners (in my opinion). I also liked the use of the term "graphical literacy" in the abstract, which is something I've seen cause challenges first hand (though I never thought to use that term):

"Effectively designed data visualizations allow viewers to use their powerful visual systems to understand patterns in data across science, education, health, and public policy. But ineffectively designed visualizations can cause confusion, misunderstanding, or even distrust—especially among viewers with low graphical literacy."

Nice survey, with more recent cites.

I don't recall any of these style guides recommending validation. For any discipline.

Kinda drives me nuts.

I've always tested my work. Despite all my experience and intent, working with talented people, initial releases are always absolutely shredded by user (audience) feedback.

I've done tech writing, speeches, user interfaces, diagrams, charts, press releases, support call scripts, blah, blah, blah. It all gets tested.

Gods, I miss the days when we'd at least pretended to do QA/QC.

Any ArchiveBox user here? I can successfully archive the linked html page of the full article, but archiving the url of the PDF (which is viewable in the browser) only gets the limited version of the html page.

the book nearby for a quick reference here is:

    Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century, Robert Horn 

slightly sad to see his Stanford affiliation and personal website summarily 404 just now, but a wayback machine visit might help with that.