This paper describes an approach for visualisation specification and retrieval, with the aim of supporting the reuse of visualisation design knowledge. For this purpose, the approach focuses on requirement abstraction, visualisation characterisation, mapping rules and visualisation retrieval. Requirement abstraction represents knowledge for problem understanding. Visualisation characterisation and mapping rules represent the design knowledge. Visualisation retrieval makes the knowledge reuse effective. The novelties include using generic features for the visualisation specification and proposing a vector model for visualisation retrieval.