Charts
Chart rules
One visual language for every chart: what colour means, when things appear, how they move, and how a chart reads without a mouse. The pages after this one hold the charts.
The rules
Blue is income or the thing measured now. Orange is expense or the comparison. Green is done, red is late. Grey is "other". Never colour for decoration.
No tooltip, highlight or crosshair is shown until you hover, tap or arrow into a chart. Leaving clears it.
Frosted card, period name on top, one row per series with a coloured dot, figures right-aligned in tabular numbers; a total under a line when parts add up.
Axis labels in the faint grey, three even steps each side of zero, round tops (48k, not 46.8k). Zero is orange on mirrored charts.
Bars grow from their baseline, lines draw themselves, rings sweep — once, when the chart scrolls into view, and again when its data changes. 0.9–1.4s, easing out. Reduced motion shows the end state.
A fine 135° hatch on bars and soft fills, so pale bars still read as solid shapes on glass.
Every total on a chart equals the parts beside it, and the same figure is the same everywhere on the page.
Loading keeps the chart's shape; empty and error say why and what to do next.
Every chart can be focused and read with arrow keys, and carries a plain-language label for screen readers.
States, on a real chart
Loading keeps the chart's shape so nothing jumps; empty and error explain themselves.
Which chart?
| You want to show | Use |
|---|---|
| Two flows over time (money in / out) | Diverging bars |
| A share of a whole (≤ 6 parts) | Donut |
| One trend over time | Area chart |
| This period against last | Line chart · insight card |
| What a total is made of, over time | Stacked bars |
| Who or what is biggest | Ranking bars |
| From a start to an end | Waterfall |
| Actual against a target | Bullet |
| How far along | Ring · milestones · tick bar |
| A score on a scale | Tick gauge |
| One figure over a week or a few months | Glow bars |
| Each period against a full scale (a normal day, a goal) | Tick wave · track bars |
| Work across months | Gantt timeline |
| Activity per day | Calendar heatmap |
| A trend in a sentence or a table cell | Sparkline · spark bars |