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
Completed Work Sibling Travels A few days ago, I shared a hand-drawn data visualization I made for my stepfather for Christmas. I also made a similar visualization for my sister, showing the countries we've visited together. This one was more challenging, as I didn't have as much data or an
Behind the Scenes Sketchbook Pages #1 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. I've not been doing it very long, but I've
Dataviz New Year Badges For my New Year's Eve party this year, I made a small collection of hand-drawn data portraits of the attendees. The goal was to give the attendees - some of which didn't previously know each other - a conversation starter. I collected data using a Google
Inspiration Peak Map Ridgeline plots (formerly known as joyplots - read the explanation for the name change [https://serialmentor.com/blog/2017/9/15/goodbye-joyplots]) are a lovely way of displaying topography. Peak Map [https://anvaka.github.io/peak-map] is a website created by Andrei Kashcha that lets you go to anywhere on
Completed Work Endangered Languages of Italy As a Christmas present for my stepfather, who is learning Italian, I drew a data visualisation showing the endagered languages spoken in Italy. The visual style is heavily inspired by Giorgia Lupi [http://giorgialupi.com/], of Dear Data [http://www.dear-data.com/] fame. The opportunity for the Italian connection was
Site Admin Bar & Line? My workblog is called Bar & Line. I wanted to name it for three reasons. 1. I like the name "Bar & Line" a lot. It's classy, and a little funny. I wanted to lay my claim to it, in case I want to use it
Writing Choosing the Right Tools for Data Visualization A few weeks back, I led a discussion in the Data Visualization Society [datavisualizationsociety.com/]'s Slack community about tools for data visualization. The discussion covered favourite tools, how people approach learning a new tool, and why data sketching could change your life. Here's a summary [https:
Site Admin The First Post Owning your online presence is important. A huge Twitter or Facebook following is great, but if either platform goes away then so does your audience. That's why I'm starting a blog. This is at least the fourth blog that I've started. In the past,
