The Pictorial view uses images to turn data into stories, making complex information instantly more relatable.

For this demo, we're working with a dataset on energy use by country. Fields include:

• Region and Country
• Sector breakdown: Residential, Industry, Other
• Energy Use (TWh)
• Energy Type: Renewable, Non-Renewable

We will start with a clean dashboard titled Energy Use Overview. It contains three KPIs and some empty space ready for us to get to work.

The Dashboard we will create in this article is available to download at the bottom.

Pictorial: One icon, many stories

Let's start by adding a Pictorial view to our dashboard using the default lightbulb icon.

Configuration walkthrough

1. Add a Pictorial view
2. Stack by sector
3. Select Energy use (sum) as the measure

What we see

The pictorial gives us a breakdown of energy use by sector. Industry clearly dominates the breakdown, clocking in at 6.45 TWh.

Pictogram: Bringing granularity to the story

Next, we add a Pictogram view to our dashboard. You can think of it as a bar chart in disguise - instead of solid bars, we use repeated images to represent data magnitude.

Configuration walkthrough

1. Add a Pictogram view
2. Split by country
3. Select energy use (sum) as the measure
4. Sort descending

What we see

The Pictogram gives us a breakdown of energy by country. China dominates with the USA second.

The Pictorial and Pictogram are the same view, with a different initial configuration:

• Pictorial: Both the X and Y axes are hidden, no split, single stacked image
• Pictogram: Split but no stack, both X and Y axes are visible.

Images and customisation

By default the Pictogram uses the lightbulb image - which is fitting for this dataset, but it's likely you want to use a different icon. Omniscope provides several built-in images, selectable via the image dropdown. For example we can switch lightbulb to a coffee bean:

While coffee beans look nice, they probably make more sense for a coffee sales dataset. Luckily we can use custom images by supplying an SVG path. This allows for precise design, especially useful when branding or thematic alignment matters.

Creating custom SVG Icons

To generate your SVG path, you can use free tools like inkscape or svg-path-editor. 

You need to ensure your icon is aligned to (0,0) on both axes within the SVG view box.

In our example, we build a lightning bolt icon using svg-path-editor, then we can copy the path in the top-left corner directly into Omniscope:

M21.71-43.42H8l-7.4 22.28a.1.1 0 00.09.13h8.49a.1.1 0 01.1.13L2.71-1.24a.5.5 0 00.88.45L23.41-28a.1.1 0 00-.08-.16H14.42a.11.11 0 01-.09-.15l7.47-15A.1.1 0 0021.71-43.42Z

Omniscope renders the Pictogram with the new image, adding a fresh visual identity to the data.

Customising the image height

The Pictorial view offers two ways to set the image height:

• Repetitions: Set a fixed number of images, based on the maximum height.
• Fixed units: Defines how many measure axis units each image represents.

Next, we adjust the Pictogram's image sizing so so each icon represents 500 TWh, offering a more precise visual scale.

Summary

Whether you're mapping energy grids, investigating market insights or illuminating ideas, the Pictorial view offers a flexible and expressive way to bring your data to life.

Get in touch with any feedback, or show us what your doing with the Pictorial view - we'd love to hear from you!