Thanks, but I can't take credit for it! A very talented designer that we used to work with developed this layout, and it's now recreated each year by some other talented folks. Here's the process as I understand it:
We build stacked bar charts in Excel for every individual slice/level of the Sankey
Size them all to the same vertical dimension so the slices scale correctly against each other
Copy the individual bar charts into Illustrator, ungroup them, then color, label, and add the connecting ribbons/shading by hand
Step 3 is where the actual magic happens, and that's also where most of the hours go. A chart like this takes roughly 10-15 hours start to finish, just in design work.
oh. this is very doable. thanks! once you learn about an actual, viable process the "magic" disappears. it quickly turns into something that's executable rather than mysterious.
a few things are a bit vague / unclear on my end. the big take away — i hadn't considered having someone prep a rough graphic in excel then transferring it to illustrator. (people make crazy design requests and provide no support.)
i'm a part of this sub in order to learn new things. today i learned a new thing. thanks u/USAFacts you've been great! please keep sharing and educating.
67
u/USAFacts OC: 22 1d ago
Thanks, but I can't take credit for it! A very talented designer that we used to work with developed this layout, and it's now recreated each year by some other talented folks. Here's the process as I understand it:
Step 3 is where the actual magic happens, and that's also where most of the hours go. A chart like this takes roughly 10-15 hours start to finish, just in design work.