Now that you've had the opportunity to see the impact of different layouts and settings on the same network data, it's time to determine what the best option is before proceeding with your graph. This is not always an easy task, and can certainly be influenced by subjective factors such as differing layout preferences among individuals, different layout needs (for example, print versus interactive), and personal decisions on what story to tell with the network graph. After all, the same data can often lend itself to many narratives, depending on the perspective of the individual analyst.

Even with the above caveats in mind, there are certain criterias that are at least somewhat objective, and can thus help in making the graph selection process a bit easier. Here are a few measures we might start with to select an appropriate layout: