The financial-publishing conventions for charting (the FT / Economist / Bloomberg house styles) didn’t develop randomly. They evolved because their audiences read charts critically and notice misleading visualisation choices. Marketing teams producing fintech and finance content benefit from following the same conventions — both because the audience expects it and because deviating from it signals “this team doesn’t read financial publications.”
This is a working reference for the conventions that matter. We use it internally when reviewing fintech infographic work.
Axis treatment
- Y-axis must include zero for any chart showing absolute values where the comparison is the point. The exception: indexed charts (e.g. “indexed to 100 at start of period”) and rate charts (e.g. yield curves). When you break this rule, do it openly with a clearly marked axis break.
- Y-axis labels on the right for time-series. Reader’s eye travels left-to-right; labels at end of journey, not start.
- X-axis intervals regular and clearly marked. Quarterly data should show all four quarters per year, not just the year-end. Monthly data shows months.
Chart-type selection
- Lines for time-series of continuous variables. Line per series; max 4 lines per chart before it becomes unreadable.
- Bars for comparing categorical values at one point in time, or for comparing the same metric across categories. Vertical bars for time periods; horizontal bars for ranking comparisons (longer category labels read better horizontally).
- Stacked bars only when the parts genuinely sum to a meaningful whole. “Revenue by segment” works; “respondents picked X, Y, or Z (multi-select)” does not.
- Pie charts only for 2–4 segments where the parts sum to 100%. More than 4 segments and the chart becomes unreadable; use a horizontal bar instead.
- Heatmaps for correlation matrices, calendar-shaped data, geographic data with sufficient resolution. Avoid for general categorical comparison.
Source citation
- Every chart has a source line. No exceptions. “Source: Federal Reserve Economic Data, FRED series GDP, accessed 2026-04-15.”
- Methodology footnotes for any data series that involved transformation (e.g. seasonally adjusted, real terms, indexed).
- “As of [date]” stamps for any data that updates over time. Old data without dates reads as careless.
Colour
- Two colours of meaningful contrast for any chart with categorical comparison. The third colour is decorative and gets noticed as such.
- Red and green together signal up/down — but fail for colour-blind readers. Either pair red with blue (FT convention) or use blue with orange. Reserve green for explicit “good” annotations.
- Greyscale-tested every chart. If the comparison disappears in greyscale, the visualisation depends on colour to carry meaning — fix it.
Things that get caught immediately
- 3D pie charts. (No.)
- Truncated y-axes that exaggerate small differences (the “Fox News charting” pattern).
- Dual y-axes with different scales presented as if they’re correlated.
- Cherry-picked time windows that hide context (e.g. “since 2023” when “since 2018” tells a different story).
- Logarithmic axes used without labelling them as such. Or worse, labelled as linear.
- “Up to 60%” claims based on the highest single data point in a much wider distribution.
If you’re commissioning fintech infographic work, our Best Fintech Infographic Agencies shortlist filters for studios who design to these standards by default. Or fill the brief at /get-matched/.