Mike Bostock has a great design sensibility, but there is also some work behind the scenes. It's a little like the LaTeX of charts that way. Notice how the tic

Mike Bostock has a great design sensibility, but there is also some work behind the scenes. It's a little like the LaTeX of charts that way. Notice how the ticks look, which is dynamically handled, for instance. There's some tweakage behind how many ticks to display, where to place ticks, and other Tuftian goodness.