My go-to practitioner:
Jean-luc Doumont: http://www.principiae.be/X0302.php
I highly recommend his talks (he tours universities in the US quite often) -- they are full of small practical nuggets on data presentation.
Wow! Great reference and lots of material to study. He too would be perfect on a new presentation standardization working group. I have to say that since this post has gone live, I've gotten so many great references, just shows a lot of very smart people thought about this problem - it would be fantastic to connect them all somehow.