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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.
Brianna Wilson

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..

Mary Aviles & Jason Forrest

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..

Letícia Pozza

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..

Amanda Makulec

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..

Chesca Kirkland

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..

Latest articles

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
Brianna Wilson
August 11, 2022

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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Shachee Swadia
August 10, 2022

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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Mary Aviles & Jason Forrest
August 9, 2022

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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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.
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Letícia Pozza
August 4, 2022

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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Letícia Pozza
August 4, 2022

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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Jason Forrest, Jill A. Brown, Nate Coursey, Tristan Guillevin, Jeff Harrison & Eli Holder
August 3, 2022

“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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Amanda Makulec
August 2, 2022

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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Laura Ellis
July 27, 2022

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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Chesca Kirkland
July 26, 2022

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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Claire Santoro
July 21, 2022

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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Amanda Makulec
July 20, 2022

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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Claire Santoro
July 19, 2022

“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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Mia Szarvas
July 14, 2022

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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Tom Randle
July 13, 2022

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...
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Martina Dossi
July 12, 2022

A Matter of Time: Linking Job Titles to Data Visualization Tasks

Is there any difference in the amount of time we allocate to the different phases of a data visualization project, depending on our professional role?..

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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..
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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?..
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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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Jenn Schilling
July 7, 2022

Early Sketches for Career Portraits in Data Visualization

This article is part of a larger effort to leverage the DVS Survey data to provide useful insights about data visualization to our members. Previous..
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Neil Richards
July 6, 2022

REVIEW: Dr. Selena Fisk’s I’m Not a Numbers Person

When I came across I’m not a numbers person and learned about Dr. Selena Fisk, I knew that I would be interested in reading the..
map of Paris showing noise levels in shades of pink with a decibel meter in the bottom rightN
Claire Santoro
June 30, 2022

Noisy Cities: Behind the Scenes with Karim Douïeb

Karim Douïeb is a Brussels-based data scientist and co-founder of Jetpack.ai. He is also the creator of an unexpectedly-viral U.S. election map that he spoke..
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Mary Aviles, datacitron, Jason Forrest & Claire Santoro
June 21, 2022

Nightingale Magazine, Issue 1 Retro: What We Learned

Now that the Spring 2022 issue of Nightingale Magazine is showing up in mailboxes all around the world, the editorial team wanted to share some..
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Ama Nyame-Mensah
July 5, 2022

Beyond the Bar: Alternative Methods for Visualizing Two Points of Change

People love comparisons, whether between two groups or the difference in an outcome between two time points. Many data (visualization) designers use a clustered bar..
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Jason Forrest
June 29, 2022

I Asked an Artificial Intelligence to Draw a Chart

A new generation of text-to-image generative models are rapidly changing what is possible in generative design. Two apps in particular, Midjourney and Dalle-E 2, have..
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Nick Desbarats
June 28, 2022

Are Vertical Line Charts Ever a Good Idea?

I recently asked dataviz Twitter if anyone could point to situations in which a vertical line chart was the best chart type for that situation...
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Mary Aviles, Jason Forrest & Claire Santoro
June 26, 2022

How to Write for Nightingale

Everything you ever wanted to know to publish with us! In addition to helping writers to level up their skills, these guidelines provide alignment for..
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Evelina Judeikytė
June 16, 2022

Behind the Scenes of the First Nightingale Magazine with Its Creative Director

Enjoy an exclusive interview with Nightingale’s creative director Julie Brunet (datacitron) on how the magazine came to life. This interview originally appeared in #ThePlot newsletter...
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Michael Friendly
June 15, 2022

Remembrances of Things EDA

Published for Tukey Day, June 16, the 107th anniversary of John Tukey’s birthThis article recounts the origins and influences of the movement in statistics and data..
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Theresa-Marie Rhyne
June 14, 2022

Watching for Peas and Carrots: Solving the Green and Orange Dilemma in Data Visualization

In this writing, I discuss the challenge of working with a green and orange color scheme in data visualization. Unfortunately, 99 percent of people with..
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Claire Santoro
June 9, 2022

Three Questions with… Jason Forrest

Jason Forrest is the Director of the McKinsey & Co. Data Visualization Lab and Editor-in-Chief of Nightingale. Check out his writing for Nightingale here.1. If..
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John Polk
June 8, 2022

Get behind Me, Titivillus! How to Avoid Mistakes in Your Work

Meet Titivillus. His LinkedIn profile describes him as a demon who works for Satan to introduce errors into the works of scribes. Imagine if you..
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Sarina Chen
June 7, 2022

SPOTLIGHT: My Creation Process for the SOTI Dataviz Explanatory Challenge

I first heard about the Data Visualization Society’s State of the Industry visualization challenge when Loris Mat posted the design process behind his winning entry...
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Jason Forrest
June 2, 2022

Patrick Abercrombie’s “The Greater London Plan”

One of my favorite works of data visualization is a map from “The Greater London Plan” in 1944. This semi-abstract map by Patrick Abercrombie and..
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Eli Holder
May 26, 2022

Timely Advice – How Long Does Dataviz Take?

Visualizing 3iap timesheets for 10 dataviz client projects. How much time goes into researching, data-wrangling, designing, and building different types of data visualizations? Every client..
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Exploring Necessity, a Personal Data Art Project, by Tiziana Alocci

Tiziana Alocci, an award-winning information designer and lecturer based in London, recently launched a new data art series, Necessity. To learn more about the project,..
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SPOTLIGHT: The Pinterest of Data Visualisation

150 stunning chart examples, and growing! I’ve just created a website called dataviz-inspiration.com and it showcases hundreds of stunning dataviz projects I’ve encountered in the..
A visualization of the design elements of Amanda Rach Lee’s bullet journal over five years from 2017 to 2021, showing the consistency of some features, the parts that got discontinued, and the new sections that were added over the years.S
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SPOTLIGHT: Visualizing Five Years of Bullet Journaling

Bullet journaling is a style of journaling where you start with an empty dot grid notebook, and fill it with different pages that you create..
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Telling the Story of Urban Innovation and Pandemic Response with Data

In late March 2020, shortly after COVID-19 was recognized as a global pandemic, the National League of Cities (NLC) partnered with Bloomberg Philanthropies to create..
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Step 2 in the Data Exploration Journey: Going Deeper into the Analysis

This article is part III in a series on data exploration, and the common struggles that we all face when trying to learn something new...
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SPOTLIGHT: How to Say ‘I Love You’ with a Graphic

For the past two years, the data visualization narratives we’ve become familiar with infection curves, maps of health zones, and models of how the virus..
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Building and Visualizing a Social Network through the Vikings’ Example

As an avid fan of the Vikings, I was extremely excited about the new spin-off on Netflix titled Vikings: Valhalla. Simultaneously, my network-and-data-scientist self was..
Cover image of young Tommy Westphall in front of tv static and the latest major evolution in the visualization of the Tommy Westphall Universe.T
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The Visual Evolution of the Tommy Westphall Universe

Television series finales often offer their long-time viewers heartfelt moments, character arc completions, plot line conclusions, tears, laughs and more. Unlike any other series finale,..
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Bracket Carousel: Discovering the Next Generation of Bracket Design

Another year, another successful March Madness! From renowned bracketologists, to casual bettors, and even former Presidents, millions of people embark on a quest to achieve..
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DESTACAR: Visualización de La mujer de los perros

Read the English version here. El siguiente proyecto consistió en la traducción del guión cinematográfico de La mujer de los perros – una película argentina..
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SPOTLIGHT: Visualization of Dog Lady (La mujer de los perros)

Lee este artículo en español aquí. The aim of this project was to translate the film script of Dog Lady (La mujer de los perros) –..
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REVIEW: Delivering Data Analytics by Nicholas Kelly

In his book Delivering Data Analytics, author Nicholas Kelly presents us with a step-by-step guide to help Business Intelligence (BI) consultants drive BI adoption from..
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Blue and Yellow: A Matter of Complements

Very often the combination of blue and yellow suggests the color green. In this writing I provide a different perspective on this combination. I discuss..
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Five Ways to Teach Math as an Art Form

Some days it feels like my first words were, “I hate math.” There’s a stereotype that creative ‘right-brainers’ can’t do math, and as a writer..
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Data + Women Quarterly: Finding Your Path in the Data & Tech Industry

Hello everyone! I’m Rachel, one of the co-organisers of the Data + Women network. Nice to meet you! For those who have never heard of..
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Getting to Know… Lawrence Gray, PhD

The dataviz community is broad and encompasses practitioners from a range of backgrounds, professions, and interests. In an effort to get to know the community,..
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50 Years of Oscars: Acting Success and Collaboration

The Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars, have been one of the most prestigious awards in the film industry for nearly a century, acknowledging..
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Does Twitter’s Algorithm Hate Your Friends?

I love Twitter. Well, I love my community on Twitter. I love learning about new art, new events, scientific discoveries, and social movements new and..
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Three Questions with… Michael Brenner

This content originally appeared as part of The ‘Gale, Nightingale’s biweekly newsletter. Michael Brenner is the Head of Design at DATA4CHANGE and the creator of..
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REVIEW: Atlas of the Invisible

It’s been about 450 years since Theatrum Orbis Terrarum was published by Dutch cartographers in 1570 as an attempt to collect the entirety of knowledge..
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Three Questions with… Mary Aviles

This content originally appeared as part of The ‘Gale, Nightingale’s biweekly newsletter. Currently a senior UX researcher at Detroit Labs and the managing editor of Nightingale,..

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REVIEW: Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch

The art of fandom is to observe and infer. This is especially true in cinema as the cult of the auteur director fuels our reverence..
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Colorless Green Graphs Sleep Furiously: A Conversation with Leland Wilkinson

This article traces some history of ideas behind Leland Wilkinson’s development of the Grammar of Graphics (and later, of ggplot2) in the form of a..
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Three Questions with… Nancy Organ

This content originally appeared as part of The ‘Gale, Nightingale’s biweekly newsletter. Nancy is currently a freelance data visualization designer and developer, with past lives..
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Step 1 in the Data Exploration Journey: Getting Oriented

This article is part II in a series on data exploration, and the common struggles that we all face when trying to learn something new...
On left is a textile with a typewritten phrase from the Book of Common Prayer: "FROM PESTILENCE FAMINE BATTLE MURDER AND FROM SUDDEN DEATH GOOD LORD FROM LIGHTNING AND TEMPEST, FROM PLAGUE DELIVER US." The phrase is overtyped 549 times on the textile surface and eventually obscures itself. On the right is the same textile, after washing.T
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The Soul of Data: Data Physicalizations on Fabric

When my area went into lockdown in March of 2020, initial case counts were relatively low in my state, even as the coasts were plunged into..
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Blog This: Transforming How Students Engage and Learn from Visualization Research

What started out as an experiment by Professor Niklas Elmqvist to make student work more meaningful gave rise to VisUMD. It’s a Medium blog that..
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How to Create a Pivot Marimekko Chart in Plain JavaScript

You have probably already seen many different articles on bar and pie charts. It’s enough to suggest that they are the only chart options available..
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Is There a Happy Ending for the Peaky Blinders?

Peaky Blinders is an award-winning historical drama series produced by BBC Studios. The show is set between the two world wars and is centered around..
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Data Literacy and General Education: A Potentially Perfect Partnership

In 2012, Harvard Business Review declared data scientist the sexiest job in the world. No one ever has declared general education the sexiest anything in..
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REVIEW: Mindworks – The Science of Thinking

Researchers and analysts are always seeking new ways to engage people, to help their insights feel meaningful to their audiences. Action is rarely generated from..
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Three Questions with… Chesca Kirkland

This content originally appeared as part of The ‘Gale, Nightingale’s biweekly newsletter. Chesca is a London + Brighton based data visualisation designer and photographer (and..