  Data is omnipresent in the modern, digital world and a significant number of
people need to make sense of data as part of their everyday social and
professional life. Therefore, together with the rise of data, the design of
graphical representations has gained importance and attention. Yet, although a
large body of procedural knowledge about effective visualization exists, the
quality of representations is often reported to be poor, proposedly because
these guidelines are scattered, unstructured and sometimes perceived as
contradictive. Therefore, this paper describes a literature research addressing
these problems. The research resulted in the collection and structuring of 81
guidelines and 34 underlying propositions, as well as in the derivation of 7
foundational principles about graphical representation design, called the
"Physics of Diagrams", which are illustrated with concrete, practical examples
throughout the paper.
