SNR is a good general principle to keep in mind during all aspects of your design work, but it is especially important to remember when designing quantitative displays for the screen. In the case of charts and graphs, the signal is the concrete message we are trying to show—the data in its clearest form. Visual noise consists of anything that gets in the way of seeing the data—the signal—onscreen in the most direct, clearest way possible. The goal is to have the highest signal-to-noise ratio possible in your slides.
