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Senthil Natarajan

Meet the Data Visualization King of Basketball Twitter: Todd Whitehead

Not long ago, I had the opportunity sit down with Todd Whitehead to discuss how he creates visualizations that dominate the discourse. Please note that..

Emma Tait

No Straight Lines: My Process Is Messy and Full of Failures and That’s Okay

The DVS Mentorship Program revolutionized my creative process: learning is iterative, failure is vital, growth comes in many forms, and straight lines are overrated.  No..

Mrinal Ghosh

How to Locate and Understand the Reasons for Rising Land Surface Temperature

September 2022 has been one of the hottest Septembers in the last 143-years of global climate record, as per the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration..

Overhead shot showing two watch faces situated to the left and right of the middle of a sheet of paper. Around both faces run three circles of five types of watch parts corresponding to different activities. Handwritten annotations help to discern the meaning of each part, highlighting differences between the authors’ days, like how “unpaid work” for Tomi means getting up at night for his children, while for Julcsi it’s studying Japanese and for Pisti it’s cooking.
Júlia Borsi, Tamás Varga & István Korompai

What’s a “Handmade Data Object” Anyway?

This is an unusual viz — for a variety of reasons — so here’s a quick guide to reading it: the two dials represent twelve..

Karthik Muthuswamy

SPOTLIGHT: Do You Feel What Others Feel?

Emotions around the globe – Illustration by Gunilla Hagström

Latest articles

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Eli Holder
December 1, 2022

Unfair Comparisons: How Visualizing Social Inequality Can Make It Worse

Our new research shows how popular chart choices can trigger unconscious social biases and reinforce systemic racism. At first glance, the charts below seem harmless...
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Matt Brehmer
November 30, 2022

At the Vanguard of Interface Design

Implications for visualization from the 2022 UIST symposium The ways in which we interact with data and visualization may look and feel very different in..
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Or Misgav
November 29, 2022

SPOTLIGHT: Using Dataviz to Inform My Childcare Decisions

My son Ethan was 18-months old when he had his first daycare summer break. It was my first summer break as a mum, and I..
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Nightingale Magazine is a collectible community celebration! Our print magazine showcases some of the most compelling data visualization projects and stories from around the world. The second edition of Nightingale Magazine, on the theme of inspiration, will be shipping at the end of November!
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Mrinal Ghosh
November 23, 2022

How to Locate and Understand the Reasons for Rising Land Surface Temperature

September 2022 has been one of the hottest Septembers in the last 143-years of global climate record, as per the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration..
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Senthil Natarajan
November 22, 2022

Meet the Data Visualization King of Basketball Twitter: Todd Whitehead

Not long ago, I had the opportunity sit down with Todd Whitehead to discuss how he creates visualizations that dominate the discourse. Please note that..
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Joshua Pine
November 17, 2022

REVIEW: Functional Aesthetics for Data Visualization by Vidya Setlur and Bridget Cogley

The multi-disciplinary nature of the data visualization profession presents opportunities for fruitful collaboration while also leading to points of tension. One such source of tension..
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Mark Palmer
November 16, 2022

How to Get Executives on Board with Data Visualization

Convincing senior executives to jump on the data visualization bandwagon isn’t as complicated as you think: here are five tips to get senior decision-makers on..
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Emma Tait
November 15, 2022

No Straight Lines: My Process Is Messy and Full of Failures and That’s Okay

The DVS Mentorship Program revolutionized my creative process: learning is iterative, failure is vital, growth comes in many forms, and straight lines are overrated.  No..
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Ama Nyame-Mensah
November 10, 2022

When Oversimplification Obscures

When I first entered the information design space, I was eager to expand my knowledge of data (visualization) design and the wide range of disciplines..
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Mara Pometti
November 9, 2022

Data Storytelling Is the Conduit for Modern Data Literacy

All the images in this article are taken from a keynote about humanizing AI that I delivered in June 2022 at the London Tech Week...
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Andriana Georgieva, Laura Meloni, Cesco Reale & Edgar Walthert
November 8, 2022

Say It in Icons! – The KomunIKON Project

My language limits are my world limits
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Nick Desbarats
November 3, 2022

Why I Stopped Using Bullet Graphs (and What I Now Use Instead)

tl;dr: After teaching many data professionals about bullet graphs and using them in many dashboards, I started to notice that they had a fair number..
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Caitlin Cowen
November 2, 2022

Woven Time: Thoughts on Our Experience of Time in a Mashup

Our experience of time is simplest described like this: we move forward, and we measure periods by units like seconds, minutes, hours, etc. But I..
A data visualisation showing the flights and fates of the Soviet Space Dogs. Each dog is represented by a circle. Circle size shows the number of flights they undertook and circle colour indicates whether they survived, while a coloured tail shows the gender of the dog. Flights are represented by triangles along a timeline at the bottom. Triangle height shows the flight altitude and triangle colour shows the rocket type used. Dogs are connected by lines to the flights that they flew on.D
Phoenix
November 1, 2022

Discovering Data Visualisation: How I Discovered and Fell in Love with Data Visualisation Art

I stumbled upon data visualisation art quite by accident early in 2022, at a time when I was at an interesting crossroads in my life...
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Salomé Esteves
October 27, 2022

“I Can’t Draw” and Other Conversations I Always Have with My Dataviz Students

When you, like me, have been teaching for a while, you realize there’s a fundamental paradox: no two clusters of students are alike, yet all..

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Great reads

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Interview with the South China Morning Post Infographics Team

One of the most interesting teams in the world has to be the Infographics team of the South China Morning Post. Based in Hong Kong,..
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Information Graphics in Action: Russian Agitational Postcards 1900–1960

The postcard originated in the middle of the XIX century and went through the development path together with the poster, following stylistic changes in the..
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None Of Us Are Free If Some Of Us Are Not: Catherine D’Ignazio on Data Feminism

I had the great pleasure of seeing Catherine D’Ignazio speak at EYEO festival this past summer. I was totally inspired by her message, and while I had..
Wall map depicting toe tags of migrants where remains were foundD
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Data Visualization As an Act of Witnessing

In late 2016, I read an article by Michael Brennan, principal of Detroit-based, nonprofit design firm Civilla, in the Harvard Business Review. I was haunted by this line: “I..
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Beyond Nightingale: Being a Woman in Data Visualization

If you conduct a quick internet search on “history of data visualization,” you’ll nearly always see Florence Nightingale included in the annals of history. Why?..
Resettlement Administration exhibitT
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The Influence of Isotype in New Deal Information Design: A Resettlement Administration Exhibition, 1936

How the design concept influenced the American government's campaign to help its vulnerable populations.
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Draw The Rest Of The Chart: Imposter Syndrome and Leveling Up in Data Visualization

Is It Ever Gonna Be Enough? A bright, energetic consultant stares intently at Microsoft PowerPoint. This hero, inexperienced but devoted, hears a door open nearby...
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A Poet’s Perspective: Seven Reasons Why Your Dataviz Team Should Include an Analyst from the Humanities

I was once auto-rejected from a job I had written for myself. After several interviews, my soon-to-be manager asked me to delineate the responsibilities I..

Spotlight on Community

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Miriam Quick
October 25, 2022

Dataviz Horror Story: Miriam Quick

Have you ever made an embarrassing mistake in a data visualization? Did you utterly fail to meet your client’s or boss’s vision? Did you proudly..
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Georgios Karamanis & Lee Olney
October 20, 2022

Playing Dataviz Tennis for Collaboration and Fun

Inspired by Layer Tennis, we collaborated on four data visualizations (four matches) where we swap the file back and forth adding to the work. Each..
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Karthik Muthuswamy
October 19, 2022

SPOTLIGHT: Do You Feel What Others Feel?

Emotions around the globe - Illustration by Gunilla Hagström
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Jenn Schilling
October 18, 2022

Making a Data Collage for Dear Nightingale: Paper and NO Pencil

SNEAK PEEK: Nightingale Issue 2 is in design now! We’re so excited for you to see how your community has interpreted the theme of “Inspiration.”..
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Ripley Cleghorn
October 26, 2022

Behind the Scenes of “The Future of Data Science”: An Interview with Ciera Martinez

A few months ago I had the pleasure of sitting down with Ciera Martinez to discuss the founding of the project, Data Science by Design,..
Overhead shot showing two watch faces situated to the left and right of the middle of a sheet of paper. Around both faces run three circles of five types of watch parts corresponding to different activities. Handwritten annotations help to discern the meaning of each part, highlighting differences between the authors’ days, like how “unpaid work” for Tomi means getting up at night for his children, while for Julcsi it’s studying Japanese and for Pisti it’s cooking.W
Júlia Borsi, Tamás Varga & István Korompai
October 13, 2022

What’s a “Handmade Data Object” Anyway?

This is an unusual viz — for a variety of reasons — so here’s a quick guide to reading it: the two dials represent twelve..
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Mark Palmer
October 12, 2022

Start with the Hero, Not the Story

To do a better job with data, take a moment to define your hero. Kat Greenbrook advises data analysts to start with the who, not..
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Krisztina Szucs
October 11, 2022

SPOTLIGHT: Animated Sports Results

This article is a summary of the animated data visualizations I’ve created for UEFA Euros 2020, Copa America, Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics (fencing, swimming), 19th..
Bridget and Vidya holding their book “Functional Aesthetics or data visualizationF
Noëlle Rakotondravony
October 6, 2022

Functional Aesthetics for Data Visualization: A Behind-the-Scene Q&A with the Authors

If you ever wondered how to make a visualization or a dashboard that’s beautiful and functional at the same time, then read on. I had..
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Joshua Pine
October 4, 2022

REVIEW: Cole Knaflic’s Storytelling with You: Plan, Create and Deliver a Stellar Presentation

We have all been on the receiving end of bad presentations. Slide decks with too much text, cluttered data visualizations and presenters who read from..
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Kosma Hess
September 29, 2022

Five Inspiring Data Visualization Galleries

If designed with care and preparation, data visualization can immensely improve viewers’ understanding of what is happening. Yes, data exploration and data analysis are essential,..
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Or Misgav
September 28, 2022

Can We Understand Blood Test Results without Numbers? Ask Participant 23

About a year ago, I handed in my dissertation. I was examining new visualisation of blood test results amongst UK patients. The aim was to..
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Sarah Clark
September 27, 2022

What’s Cookin’?

Years ago, I took the advice of a famous writer whose name I can’t recall. He suggested that for an idea to be thoroughly examined,..
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William Careri
September 22, 2022

REVIEW: Be Data Driven by Jordan Morrow

Following up on his first book, which considered data from the individual level, Jordan Morrow’s Be Data Driven looks at harnessing the power of data..
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Aaron Siegel
September 21, 2022

Dreaming of Data

For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with getting a good night’s sleep. I have often gravitated towards staying up late at..
Tablet with bookshelves and students searching and reading information. Digital learning, online database, content storing and searching, ebooks concept. Vector isolated illustration.A
Celia López
September 20, 2022

A Tale of Books and Bias

Books were one of our first methods of data storytelling-beyond speaking or paintings. Humans turned data into words, and now we have begun to turn..
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Inspired by the Future: Star Trek and the Rise of Dataviz

The challenge of any piece of science fiction – be it literature, film or TV – is to present a complete and realistic view of..
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How Long Does It Take to Fall in Love?

Humans have long been curious about the process of dating and finding the right person. Now that we can swipe left and right on the..
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Game of Thrones — Network of the Dragon

One of my first data science projects was titled, Who Dies Next in the Game of Thrones?—a short article based on my data mining semester..
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Reasons to Visualise the Same Data, Differently

You may have heard, “data visualisation should tell a story” – but this is not always true. Data visuals are created for many reasons: from..
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Insights Of Their Own: Visualizing Women’s Baseball

Viz by the author.
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SPOTLIGHT: W.E.B. Du Bois Portrait Gallery

Chimdi Nwosu’s interactive visualization, the W.E.B. Du Bois Portrait Gallery, is a beautifully designed exploration of 20 re-created Du Bois charts. The gallery won Favorite..
Jigsaw puzzle partly assembled, with some linked pieces and some obvious gaps.M
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Missing Data: Why Don’t We All Take the 2022 DVS SOTI Survey?

September 2022: the Data Visualization Society is running its annual survey about our diverse and dynamic field. I hope many of us will contribute our data this month, and invite people we know. To request your help on both counts, this article discusses three reasons we might *not* take this survey.
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Sewage Alerts: The Long History of Using Maps to Hold Water Companies to Account

This article originally appeared in The Conversation and refers to the huge criticism water companies in the UK are facing over their sewage discharge practices. Southern Water..
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Dataviz Horror Story: How I Crashed the Top Exec’s Email

Have you ever made an embarrassing mistake in a data visualization? Did you utterly fail to meet your client’s or boss’s vision? Did you proudly..
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REVIEW: Dan Bouk’ Democracy’s Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them

The practice of data storytelling often focuses on weaving a narrative by highlighting themes from a dataset. Author Dan Bouk flips this conventional practice on..
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Dear Nightingale: Paper and NO Pencil?

This article originally appeared in Issue 1 of Nightingale Magazine. Purchase a copy, while supplies last. Paper and no pencil? An analogue data creation challenge!..
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Data Is Plural Visualization Challenge

This article originally appeared in Issue 1 of Nightingale Magazine. Purchase a copy, while supplies last. The Challenge: We’re a community of data visualizers, so let’s do..
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Reflections from Graphic Hunters

After seven years of leading Graphic Hunters, Goof van de Winkel’s data visualisation training programme will come to a close this autumn. We had the..
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Creating Personas to Identify Yourself in the Community and Data

In this post, I am going to walk you through the process of creating the Data Visualization Society State of the Industry Survey 2021 Challenge..
Alt text: A large graph visualization titled “Cosmograph: visual analytics for big graphs"H
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How to Visualize a Graph with a Million Nodes

Large-scale graph visualizations are tricky. The more nodes and edges you have in your network, the more difficult it is to compute the layout for..
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You Asked for It: Nightingale Magazine Issue 1 Alternate Covers

Many Nightingale Magazine readers have expressed appreciation for our first issue cover. We’re delighted with this reception — we love it, too — but, our..
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A Design Process for Dataviz

Design is a plan to create something that will be beneficial to people. Design involves considering both the form and the function of the final..
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Step 3 in the Data Exploration Journey: Productive Tangents

This article is part IV in a series on data exploration, and the common struggles that we all face when trying to learn something new...
Simple cartoon outlines of people in a complex cave system. They use their smartphones as a light source to search the cave features and make sense of their surroundings.E
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Embracing Mobile to Make Your Data Visualizations More Equitable

Most of us have issues we care deeply about, whether they are large or small, individual or societal. When you think about the issues that..
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The Declutter and Focus Concepts – Popular Academic Opinions or Effective Design Principles?

Declutter and focus are two guidelines for creating clear and efficient visualizations. The declutter guideline suggests removing all the non-critical elements of the chart like..
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Information Empowerment: A Reciprocal Data Literacy Case Study, Part 3

This is part three of a six-part series dedicated to sharing cross-functional ideas for design thinkers, data practitioners, business intelligence analysts, researchers, policymakers, and subject..

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Experimentação Para Gerar Novas Descobertas Em Dataviz

Find the English translation of this article here. Para algumas pessoas, criar uma visualização de dados incrível exige que os astros estejam alinhados. Mas a..
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Experimenting Can Lead to Great Dataviz

Encontre a tradução em português deste artigo aqui. Some may have the idea that creating an amazing data visualization requires the stars to align. But..
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“In the end, all data visualization ends up with a conversation” — A Joint Review of Eyeo 2022

The Eyeo festival has always held an interesting place in the community as, I’m told, it never really focused on any specific subject matter. At..
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Starting Out in Data Visualization Today

My career path in data visualization might best be described as meandering.  I started as a public health analyst, writing reports and web content for..
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The Ellis Puppy Olympics: A Kids’ Data Visualization Challenge

Recently, it has been HOT in Austin, Texas, with highs getting close to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. As a family, we are always looking ways to..
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Behind the Scenes with Axios Data Visualization

Axios launched in 2017 as a news organisation with the mission ‘Smart Brevity,’ emphasizing the power of saying more with less. Their method of storytelling..
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Three Questions with… Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2022 print edition of Nightingale Magazine. Didn’t get a copy? Purchase one while supplies last!Giorgia Lupi is an..
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Connecting Researchers and Dataviz Practitioners through Study Opportunities

The field of dataviz research is wide and deep, with academics studying everything from how to use machine learning to generate effective chart recommendations to..
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“Cut Short”: Visualizing Lives Lost with Empathy and Impact

In May 2022, the U.S. hit the grim milestone of 1 million COVID deaths. Newsrooms across the country reported this statistic, often accompanied by sobering..
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Visualizing Your Personal Gender Pay Gap: How Does Your Salary Compare?

Every year the Data Visualization Society (DVS) conducts a huge survey called the State of the Industry—collecting a rich array of data that paints a..
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What a Book Published in the 80s Taught Me about Data Visualization

I was on holiday recently in the Welsh border town of Hay on Wye, when I came across a book that instantly caught my attention...