Blue Box Data Storytelling

Blue Box Data Storytelling We train data-driven teams, turning calculators into strategic advisors. Data Storytelling trainers. Brisbane-based.

01/10/2026

Bar charts and column charts are not the same thing.

This is a hill I will die on.

A bar chart runs horizontally. It works beautifully for categorical data. Biggest to smallest, most important to least important.

A column chart runs vertically. It’s generally better for time-based data, where we naturally read the progression from left to right.

But these aren’t absolute rules.

I actually also like column charts for money, because in my head money “stacks up”. That’s not a data-vis principle as such, but it makes intuitive sense to me.

Three parts science, one part art.

29/09/2026

What actually makes a good chart?

There are plenty of data visualisation rules we can reach for.

Bar charts goooood. Pie charts baaaad. Don’t use 3D. Don’t use too many categories.

Useful guidance, sure (especially no 3D - that's solid). But none of those things actually define whether a chart is good.

Our definition is much simpler:

A good chart is one that does the job it was designed to do.

And if the job is to explain an insight to an audience, we have three tests:

-> Can they understand it quickly?

-> Can they understand it easily, without having to work through unnecessary complexity?

-> And, most importantly, is it unmistakable? Will they walk away with the message you actually intended?

Quick. Easy. Unmistakable.

That’s a much more useful test than whether you’ve followed a list of data visualisation rules.

28/09/2026

I started my career in workplace health and safety.

I eventually moved into finance and analytics, but safety reporting was where I first started working with data, reports and the challenge of getting important information in front of decision-makers.

So I was particularly keen to get Rob McDonald, aka Safety Rob, on the podcast.

Rob has spent decades working in workplace safety, and our conversation ended up sitting right at the intersection of our two worlds: safety, reporting and communication.

How do you get important information heard? What should we actually be reporting? And how do you communicate something effectively enough that someone acts on it?

28/09/2026

When you’ve spent hours playing with a dataset, it becomes almost impossible to see your charts with fresh eyes.

You know what you’re looking at. You know which part matters. You know the context behind every number, so of course the chart makes sense to you.

But there’s a big difference between a chart being (actually) clear and a chart being clear because you’ve stared at it for hours.

Before you put a chart in front of an audience, give it to someone else.

Can they work out what it’s telling them within a few seconds?

If not, you probably haven’t finished the communication part yet.

Tidying up the chart you used during your analysis isn’t necessarily the same as creating a visualisation for your audience.

27/09/2026

How do you make a compelling case for something that hasn’t happened?

That’s one of the hardest reporting challenges. You might have good evidence of a risk. You can explain what could happen. You can estimate the consequences.

But you’re competing for attention and budget against other people presenting things with a much more obvious commercial return.

“We spend this and make $500k” is an easier story to tell than “we spend this and hopefully nothing happens.”

Safety is a perfect example of this. When prevention works, the outcome can be completely invisible.

And yet that’s exactly what you’re trying to convince someone to invest in.

Sometimes the hardest results to communicate are the ones where success looks like nothing happened.

24/09/2026

My first experience of reporting was literally an archive box under my desk.
Incident reports would arrive on paper. I’d stamp the date on them, file them away, and that was pretty much the end of the process.
We were collecting information, but were we actually using it?
I think this is a problem that extends well beyond safety reporting.
Organisations can become very good at producing reports, tracking measures and collecting information without being particularly good at getting that information to the people who can do something with it.
Sometimes the information is uncomfortable. Sometimes nobody wants ownership of the problem. Sometimes reporting has simply become a process that everyone follows because that’s what we’ve always done.
A report existing isn’t the same as information being communicated.
That distinction came up in our conversation with Safety Rob McDonald on The Presentation Boss Podcast.

23/09/2026

This is all about your own messy thinking process when sorting through data. Create tons of visualizations to spot trends and anomalies—the only person who needs to understand it is you.

23/09/2026

Think about the best manager you’ve ever had. What made them good?

When Safety Rob asks people this question, one of the most common answers he hears is surprisingly simple: “They knew my name.”

My immediate thought was: they listened to me.

Good communication with your team isn’t just about how clearly you give instructions, run meetings or deliver information.

It’s whether you’ve built enough of a relationship to actually understand the people you’re leading.

Do you know what they’re dealing with? Do you ask questions? Do you listen to the answers?

That foundation is important when you eventually need people to raise a problem, share what’s really happening or tell you something you might not want to hear.

We talked about this with Safety Rob McDonald in Episode 9 of The Presentation Boss Podcast, in a much broader conversation about workplace safety, leadership and two-way communication.

22/09/2026

One of the mistakes we can make with data storytelling is starting with the story we want to tell, then going looking for the data to support it.
I experienced this early in my career - I was asked to produce numbers in a particular way because there was already a narrative they needed those numbers to support.
At the time, I knew it didn’t sit quite right, I just didn’t have the experience or language to explain why.
There’s nothing wrong with starting with a hypothesis. The problem is when you’re only looking for evidence that confirms it.
Data → analysis → insight → story.
Not:
Story → find some data that backs it up.
We talk about this, and other ways data storytelling can go wrong, in Episode 7 of The Presentation Boss Podcast.

10/09/2026

The idea of a 'data journey' isn't new, but Brent D***s unpacks the concept so clearly and articulates what many already understand implicitly, and we're using his language to explain it.

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