“A lot of people just visualize complex data,” says McCandless. “They’ll take the data without wrapping it in a story, filtering it in any way, humanizing it, or focusing on what’s interesting. Without doing that, you just translate the complexity into visual form.” A complex visualization is counterintuitive, he adds, because its purpose is to clarify and distill data. The strength of an idea is what carries it through each precise stage of the creation process, from data gathering through structuring and designing.