Dataviz Food Miles Are Not As Important As You Think Our World in Data has just published a great article [https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local] about the source of the emissions associated with different foods. It's a simple stacked bar chart. Each bar represents a food, and the coloured chunks represent where the emisisons come from - the key
Dataviz Google's Dataset Search Is No Longer in Beta Rejoice, number-hunters - Google's Dataset Search tool [https://datasetsearch.research.google.com/] is now officially out of beta. According to a blog post [https://blog.google/products/search/discovering-millions-datasets-web], the search giant has indexed almost 25 million datasets. The tool previously delivered a scattershot of vaguely-related bits of
Behind the Scenes Population of Swedish Urban Areas Or "Befolkning i Svenska Tätorter", if you like. A quick map that I was working on a while back. It's still not quite there - it needs a legend, and maybe a bit of artworking. But right now I'm struggling to get my beloved
From the Archive From the Archive: Cable Cars Are Changing the World Back in 2017, I wrote a lengthy feature on cable cars - and specifically how they're a vital tool in urban planners' arsenals. I wrote the story, provided my own photography, and even designed little pixel art cable car spacers. You can read it here: Cable Cars
Design There Are Only 10 Types of Movies “Can I copy your homework?” “Okay, but don’t make it too obvious.” > 2. Sexy legs pic.twitter.com/0IujkDyRKi [https://t.co/0IujkDyRKi] — 𝕃𝔼𝔼 (@leesteffen) January 14, 2020 [https://twitter.com/leesteffen/status/1217167856418402305?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw] Click through for the full ten [https://twitter.com/leesteffen/status/
Code How to Add Arrowheads to One End of a Vector in Figma I came upon a problem the other day. I was working on a graphic showing the increases in the amount of protected land in every country in the world over the last 15 years or so. I wanted to represent each increase with an arrow - 180 arrows in all.
Dataviz The Missing Legacy of Marie Neurath Looking for a weekend read to dig your teeth into? You could do much worse than Jason Forrest's latest dive into the history of data visualization - The Missing Legacy of Marie Neurath [https://medium.com/nightingale/the-missing-legacy-of-marie-neurath-f9800733d1fc?source=friends_link&sk=2dbd9ba88a9b2b48c3b72cc70bb03a50] . Marie Neurath was the
Tools I Love Tools I Love #2: Flourish The best free platform for making charts on the web is Flourish [https://flourish.studio/]. It has the best balance of usability, chart types, customisation and export options. Flourish has been a vital part of many of the visualizations I've made. Most complex charts are combinations of simple
Dataviz Custom Isochrone Maps Isochrone maps [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map] are one of my favourite things. They show far you can travel from a place in a given amount of time. There are lots of classic examples, but this one by Francis Galton is the first-known. It shows travel times in
Completed Work The 1.5C Carbon Playbook Yesterday, a project I worked on launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos. It's a short and sweet guide for companies who want to keep the planet's temperature below 1.5C. I helped edit the text, and worked on the information visualization. You can access
Design Scripter: Sketching with Code If you love Figma [http://www.figma.com] as much as I do, this may excite you. All-round smart dude Rasmus Andersson has built a Figma plugin called Scripter [https://www.figma.com/c/plugin/757836922707087381/Scripter] that lets you write simple scripts (in Typescript [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Behind the Scenes Defending the Truth There's an interesting line in the latest FlowingData newsletter [https://flowingdata.com/2020/01/16/process-72-misleading-map/]. > It's difficult to plan for every single interpretation and use of your visualization once it enters the internet ethers. It's impossible to control. Nathan is writing about
Music Dymaxion Rotation Discovering new music has become more difficult for me in recent years, for two key reasons. The first is that I've had less time to spend reading the music press, which was always my favourite source of recommendations. The second is that music itself has splintered into zillions
Behind the Scenes Sketchbook Pages #2 Every few days I try and fill a page in a sketchbook with visual ideas that don't have any data behind them. I pick a theme, then execute on it in a few different ways. Here are a few recent pages:
The Geography of TV & Radio I love these beautiful maps of TV and radio coverage in the United States [https://erdavis.com/2020/01/04/visualizing-the-geography-of-fm-radio/], created by Erin Davis. Read more about their creation over on Erin's blog [https://erdavis.com/2020/01/04/visualizing-the-geography-of-fm-radio/]. (via Giuseppe Solazzo [https://us5.campaign-archive.com/
Inspiration Atomic Habits & Cadence For the last few months, I've been trying to cultivate better habits. Much of this was after reading James Clear's Atomic Habits [https://amzn.to/36ReVE3], which is the best self-help book I've read in some time. It's simple, clear, exactly as
Experiments Replicated Territories The other day I saw this great bit of plotter work on Twitter, and loved the look, so I wanted to see if I could replicate something similar digitally. > Territories #axidraw [https://twitter.com/hashtag/axidraw?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw] #processing [https://twitter.com/hashtag/processing?
Tools I Love Tools I Love #1: Copic Multiliner SP Tools are important [https://blog.duncangeere.com/data-visualization-tools/]. A good tool not only removes barriers between you and what you want to do, but makes doing that thing delightful. That's why I want to share with you my current favourite pen. It's the Copic Multiliner SP
Inspiration Beginning I have a newsletter called Beginning, but today I'd like to share a cartoon by Grant Snider [https://twitter.com/grantdraws/status/1213136974787338242] with the same title. > New comic! Beginning pic.twitter.com/SfK3VK7ks9 [https://t.co/SfK3VK7ks9] — Grant Snider (@grantdraws) January 3, 2020 [https://twitter.com/
Inspiration Girih Tiles Some interpretations of Islam include a ban of depiction of animate beings, so much of religious Islamic art is geometric in nature instead. A few years back, I picked up the Islamic Design Workbook [https://amzn.to/35CuNsz], by Eric Broug, at the V&A Museum in London. It
Dataviz Dataviz in 2019 I have a love/hate relationship with roundup posts. I love reading them. I hate writing them. That's why I haven't really summed up my 2019. The best summary of 2019 in dataviz that I've read comes from Data Visualization Society founder Elijah Meeks.
Inspiration Alignment Chart Alignment Chart The latest XKCD [https://xkcd.com/2251/] goes meta D&D, though I'd argue that the alignment chart itself should be lawful evil. Actually, the soil chart (lawful good, though Wikipedia's rendition is chaotic neutral at best [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_texture#/media/
How to Make a Data Story Interesting Familiar information is boring. Readers skim it at best, and ignore it at worst. But unfamiliar information is boring too. Readers lack the context to understand it, so they skip it. To engage with a reader, you need to hit that sweet spot where a reader knows a little about
