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Welcome to the latest issue of the 'Visualising Data Newsletter', chronicling the most insightful and delightful data viz content every month, straight to your inbox.
Each month I collect, curate, then publish a selection of links to 50 of the best, most interesting, most thought-provoking data visualisation-related content I've encountered during the previous month. This month's issue relates to content I saw published during December.
There's a small change to this month's issue. Normally, I have four sections and 10 preview images spread across each section in the ratio of 4, 3, 2, 1. This month I've decided to merge 'News' and 'Sundries' into a combined section and have switched to 6 preview images from the Visuals section, 3 from Learning, and 1 from News & Sundries.
I hope you continue to find this newsletter useful whether you are working on a dataviz, working in dataviz, or working towards working in dataviz. To catch up on all previous monthly issues visit my Newsletter page.
Thanks for reading and see you next month.
Andy
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Latest from me...
Firstly, some recent posts or announcements relating to my professional services and activities.
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I recently announced details of my next public training course which will be a virtual 'Masterclass in Data Visualisation' course taking place over Zoom during February 18th, 19th and 20th. Each daily session will be 4 hours in length, running 1pm to 5pm (UK, GMT). Visit the links for more details about the course, pricing including possible discounts, and how to register.
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With my new book now formally published and available across all regions and markets (and now an initial pricing blip has been resolved in the North American market!), I have set up a small event on 6th Feb in London to mark its release. This will take place at Canva UK HQ in Hoxton Square from 5pm to 7pm (doors open from 4pm) and will be formed of talks, a Q&A, various participatory activities, contests, and general chat-based mingling, hopefully offering a fun couple of hours accompanied by drinks and snacks, courtesy of my wonderful hosts. I will be giving two talks: one titled ‘How I got here’ - a short overview of the book and some remarks about how it all came about and came together - and a second one titled ‘How we got here’ - reflecting on the recent golden history of data viz that I've encountered in my 15 years working professionally in this field. Tickets are free, with the option to also pre-order a discounted copy of the book.
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Running alongside the build up to this event I have organised a handful of contests for participants to potentially win a copy of my book. You don't need to be attending the launch event to enter, these are open to all and everyone. They include 1) BEST WORST VIZ What’s the worst data visualisation design you can create? No purpose, no data, no rules: do the best worst you can! 2) BOOK-MARKED Who has used my book the most? Send pics of old editions with your markings, highlights, notes, folds, and stickies. 3) STAR-BOOKS Nominate an up-and-coming data viz superstar who’d most deserve or benefit from receiving a copy of the book.
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Published earlier this month, I was delighted to spend time chatting with Alan Smith, Head of Visual and Data Journalism, at the Financial Times office in London to explore the story behind a unique project titled the ‘FT Money Machine‘. This was an incredible, faithful recreation of an analogue computer built in 1949 by Bill Phillips designed to model the flow of an Economy using water and pumps, but translating it to be experienced in VR, with the FT’s first application built for the Apple Vision Pro.
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Visuals
The freshest data visualisation (or related) design pieces and collections.
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A stunning piece of work by Liuhuaying Yang (杨柳桦樱) "This project explores the complexity of Chinese names and the challenges of using Pinyin romanization, focusing on how it impacts the distinction between surnames and given names." (Once you've finished exploring this project, check out the other incredible portfolio of visuals created by the CSH Visuals Team, Liuhuaying and colleague Tobias Batik)
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2. How Drug Overdose Deaths Have Plagued One Generation of Black Men for Decades | The Upshot
As the title describes this piece looks at the shocking rise of fentanyl related deaths amongst older Black men. If its possible to look beyond the subject matter, the presentation of the data in this piece is immaculate.
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3. More days with less Arctic sea ice | Financial Times
A perfect use-case for a density plot/ridgeline plot from the FT's latest star visualiser, Jana Tauschinski, looking at how the Arctic Ocean could see its first ice-free day by 2030.
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Aman Bhargava's "2024 Pudding Cup-winning" piece looks at data from Indian elections to "find similar-sounding candidates and analyze some of the different ways they show up. We then tried turning those similarity scores back into visuals which you can play around with"
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5. Data Stories Podcast: Transcriptions | Observable
With the help of AI and Miska Knapek, Moritz Stefaner transcribed and visualised the 170 episodes of the Data Stories podcast: "The result is a detailed tagging of 1,539,957 words in 27,059 statements from 184 speakers, along with time stamps and episode info"
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"Based on a database of notable this small interactive experiment shows an alternative view of a timeline: who was alive at the same time, and how old was someone at each specific year." I love analysis like this, though it always kills me when people have clearly accomplished great things at a far younger age than me!
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Such a brilliant mixed-media/mixed-visuals piece, epitomising the pinnacle of contemporary data storytelling practice in many ways. I'm going to use this as a case study for so many reasons.
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8. Data Vis Lists, 2024 | Datawrapper
Rather than me attempt to include individual collections in this newsletter, this offers a typically, superbly comprehensive collection of so many 'our best works of 2024' lists from various news and media outlets.
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9. Data Vis Dispatch, December 17: Holiday special | Datawrapper
...And while you're on the Datawrapper blog, check out the selections of favourite works of 2024 from the team.
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10. A grisly job | Reuters
The team explain - with exquisite illustrations, as always, from Adolfo - how bears "are spreading across Japan, making their way closer to homes and risking lives".
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11. Anti-Tag Cloud | Bewitched
"An Anti-Tag Cloud shows you the most common English words that never appear in a text, visualizing the "negative space" of a literary work. Size indicates how frequent a word is across other texts."
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12. This is what the CDU, SPD and Co. are taking in the election campaign | Spiegel
"When the German government collapsed on Nov 6, some parties immediately got a lot of donations for their campaigns" this visualisation, by Marcel Pauly and Matthias Stahl, tracks large donations to political parties in Germany.
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13. Never Ever Make Predictions | Financial Times
"...Especially about interest rates"
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14. Sample Breakdown: The Most Iconic Electronic Music Sample of Every Year (1990-2024) | Tracklib on YouTube
Found via Nadieh Bremer, "a mesmerizing video breaking down the most iconic music samples between 1990-2024".
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"Worries have been mounting in Japan following a string of deep incursions by Chinese and Russian forces into Japanese territorial waters and airspace. Take a look at our in-depth analysis and visual storytelling."
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"In a wireless world, it is easy to forget the all-too-real cables that snake across the turbulent ocean floor. Until they snap."
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17. No daylight saving time? See how early or late you would be in the dark | Washington Post
The title already perfectly captures what this is about but it really is such a smartly conceived and executed visual about a matter that we all have opinions about!
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18. Valencia floods: the scandal of a disaster foretold | Financial Times
Another piece this month from the FT but with a particular mention for a stunning map from Steven Bernard which I saw him describe as the largest he's made.
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19. The sky as a canvas: the artistry and science of drone shows | South China Morning Post
Just an absolute masterpiece by Yi Zhe Ang (who is emerging on my radar as one of the best in the business) explaining the mechanics, physicality, artistry and planning that goes into drone shows. Every square inch of this piece is packed with quality and flair.
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"We designed a captivating audio-reactive visual experience to accompany the intricate data sonification. Be sure to play the video and turn the volume up high to truly immerse yourself and let the data sing."
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21. These 10 Charts Will Help You Understand 2024 | New York Times
Article from Steven Rattner but with really charming graphics from Sara Chodosh
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22. Japan's Football Talent Takes Europe by Storm | Nikkei Asia
As a big fan of Liverpool's cult hero Wataru Endo, this piece really chimed with me, looking at the huge increase in Japanese football players (both men and women) now playing in major European leagues.
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Learning
Relevant articles, interviews, or videos to help further your development in data viz.
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23. Dataviz accessibility principles, demonstrated by the 2024 presidential election dashboards | Sarah L Fossheim
Sarah is the absolute authority on topics like this and this piece is such a thorough (and sobering) reminder of how visualisation designs can fall short in their accessibility
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24. Good Morning Data #8: The Mysterious Affair of Style | Nightingale
Julie's residency on these pages continues with another brilliant piece about the role of, the need for (or otherwise), and the journey towards developing a signature style in data viz.
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25. Eleven quick tips for properly handling tabular data | PLOS
This paper from Marla Hertz and Ashley McNeill was so timely in terms of my radar being alert to matters around data transformation. "Proper handling of tabular data, i.e., spreadsheets, is an essential skill for most researchers. Well-curated tabular data has built-in quality control, is machine readable by downstream analysis applications, and ultimately saves researchers’ time."
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26. Five ways to effectively use animation in data visualization | Observable
Great piece by Robert Kosara and Allison Horst sharing five ways that animation can improve data visualizations describing how it can be useful for viewer understanding and experience with examples showing the approach used effectively.
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Interview with James Cheshire (Professor of Geographic Information and Cartography at University College London) who, with Oliver Uberti, created this visualisation showing the movement of ice on the Greenland ice cap for their book Atlas of the Invisible. James explains "why the visualisation was created, the data used and how you can create something similar".
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28. Predictions for Journalism, 2025 | Nieman Lab
"Each year, we ask some of the smartest people in journalism and media what they think is coming in the next 12 months. At the end of a trying 2024, here’s what they had to say."
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29. If you read only one newsletter about the best coding language for data journalism, choose wisely | Alex Selby-Boothroyd on Bluesky
Clever pair of articles each arguing for why R or Python is the better coding language for data journalism than R or Python
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Typically smart piece from Amelia offering some musings on "how we might use LLMs to interact with text at multiple levels of abstraction inspired by the fish-eye lensoffer"
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"The authors have gone back over the recent biology literature (3387 articles from 2023 in 15 high-profile journals) and they find that 88% of these use some sort of bar graph to present data."
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32. Bargaining, Bending, Breaking Boundaries: CEST-LA-VIZ Conference Highlights | Nightingale
This is an excellent written summary of the key moments and takeaways from the conference by Imaji Kasih Ayunda Rizal & Dario Rodighiero
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33. Can you use a digital tool to create manual visualisations? | Questions in Dataviz
Neil answers his own (interesting) question as eloquently as always.
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"Let me ask you a question that’s gonna either feel completely off-the-wall or it’ll 100% make sense: Do you connect certain school subjects to certain colors?"
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35. Seeing Beyond the Data: Lessons from Faith, Text, and Visual Representation | PolicyViz
Very thoughtful and thought-provoking piece from Jon inspired by this quotation: "But why is a visual representation of God inappropriate even though a verbal representation is appropriate?"
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36. Core Dataviz Style Guide Components | Nightingale
Maxene Graze offers some insights into how to navigate "through the process of establishing a foundational data visualization style guide".
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37. How to find & create good color palettes | Datawrapper
Lisa Muth offers 17 practical tips for picking out your color palette.
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Simon and Alberto interview David about his new book "The Art of Uncertainty"...
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39. The Art of Uncertainty | Penguin
...and here's the book, about an essential topic relevant to all data viz practitioners and which will be essential reading as always from such an excellent author.
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40. How Spotify Wrapped nails data storytelling (without a single chart) | Figures and Figures
Gabrielle explores the success of Spotify Wrapped: "Every year, Spotify Wrapped takes over social media.... By all criteria, the campaign is a data-driven one: each frame is a story based on a single dataset, but one thing is missing: there's no charts on the horizon"
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41. How The New York Times used space and sound to revive Notre Dame after the fire | Storybench
Malika Khurana and Yuliya Parshina-Kottas offer behind-the-scenes insights into The New York Times interactive 3D visualisation and the sound design for “The Quest to Restore Notre Dame’s Glorious Sound.”
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42. Niamh McIntyre: tips from a career in data journalism | Online Journalism Blog
Interview with Niamh McIntyre, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s Big Tech Reporter, about "how she got started in the field, why you don’t need to be a maths whizz to excel, and navigating the choppy waters of the newsrooom"
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News & Sundries
Latest developments, announcements, or announcements affecting the data viz world, as well as additional references to pieces covering broader data, tech, or design matters.
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"Ever wanted to waste infinity hours doing tile puzzles of every place in the world?" Ahmad has you covered with this fun puzzle!
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44. How long does it take to get to Jerry's door? Time taken from buzzer to entering. | Reddit
Long-term followers will know I'm obsessed by Seinfeld related analysis, so I was naturally drawn to this extra-special niche investigation.
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"For 27 years, I took photographs as I waved good-bye and drove away from visiting my parents at their home in Sioux City, Iowa"
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Announcement that Outlier 2025 will take place over June 11-13 in Miami, Florida!
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47. The Pudding Cup | The Pudding
We’re excited to announce the winners of the 2024 Pudding Cup!
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49. Abstract business names | Tumblr
Yes, a link to a Tumblr post! Very 2012. Actually the name 'Tumblr' is relevant here because this is a fun compilation of posts about the enigmatic nature of easily-forgettable abstract business names (led to via this and this).
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50. Well, well, well… I’ll count this as a #badgeographyjoke… | Simon Kuestenmacher on Bluesky
Childish, yes, but Uranus related jokes sadly never wear thin even as an adult
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Thanks for reading!
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Hi, I’m ANDY KIRK, an independent data visualisation expert. My vision is to deliver data viz excellence, everywhere. I offer data visualisation professional services to clients worldwide in my capacity as a design consultant, a prolific and experienced trainer, as a four-times published author, as a researcher and sought-after speaker. I'm editor of visualisingdata.com and host of the Explore Explain video and podcast series. If you have a desire to elevate your data viz capabilities, whether at the start of your journey or further along, get in touch. |
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Newsletter compiled and published by Andy Kirk on behalf of Visualising Data Ltd, 41 Talbot Road, Leeds, West Yorkshire LS8 1AG
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