i suggest you read one of tufte's books - the classic is the visual display of quantitative data. he dissects 'common' charts etc and then strips away the baggage - that's pretty much what it means. what you call 'arty' is (maybe) some icing on the cake but the core is pretty solid.
I've read most of Tufte's books. And I tend to agree with them 90+% of the time.
But anecdote is not the plural of data. Pretty is not automatically effective.
Nielsen Norman Group occasionally hit some unusual exceptions when they actually tested their assumptions about web usability even though they got most of it right. I suspect the same with Tufte.
That or "Envisioning Information." "Visual display..." is slightly more quantitative (as the name would suggest). He has some ebooks for $2 if you just want to get a feel for his writing and design: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/ebooks
