Maps and legends

This chart, which I found flipping through Stern magazine in Germany, accomplishes one important goal. It makes me stop flipping, and look.

The chart presents a point of view that is refreshing. The Airbus A320 is a true collaborative effort. The chart presents a good amount of information efficiently. Reminds me of diagrams in instruction manuals for building airplane models.

It is in essence a map. And as with maps, it has a built-in bias. The size of a part is not proportional to its importance or value. So, one issue with this diagram is it draws attention to large parts with uncomplicated shapes.

One way to address this is to use an informative legend. Notice that the map up top takes up a lot of space while serving little purpose. Instead, one can use a bar chart with a colored bar for each country. This bar chart allows one to add an extra measure. For example, the proportion of value accounted for by each country.

European readers: I wonder if there is a standard color scheme for different countries. What do you think of their choice of color?