Album de statistique graphique de la Ville de Paris - sheet 4 of 12 (BnF btv1b52505495j)
The pattern
This still is filed under Data as proof.
Define
A chart, map, or count that is the argument, not an illustration next to the argument.
Mechanism
Sighted evidence. The reader is asked to believe their eyes: a bar, a share, a spread on a map.
Verdict
The claim is comparative or quantitative and the figure can be read without a caption doing the sell.
Why it works
The plate reuses the exact grammar of its neighbour, down to the light tint for the current year and the dark tint for the baseline, which is what turns a pile of separate charts into an album a reader can move through at speed. Both panels share one scale, so the visual difference between poultry volumes and game volumes is a true difference and not a scaling artefact. Species are split into separate coloured columns inside each month rather than stacked, so no category is trapped behind another and every one keeps a common baseline. The legend restates the encoding in full on every sheet instead of pointing back to an earlier page, which is what lets any plate be pulled out and read alone.
Steal this when
Use this when you are building a series of reports rather than one report, and you want the second and third instalment to cost the reader nothing. Fix the encoding once, restate it on every page, and change only the subject.