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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. In this issue I chronicle some of the best content I saw published during February 2025.

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

Latest from me...

Firstly, some recent posts or announcements relating to my professional services and activities.

Visuals

The freshest data visualisation (or related) design pieces and collections.

7. Happy 100th anniversary to The New Yorker | Ben Fry​

"Here's an updated version of a poster I first threw together a couple years ago depicting every cover to date. For the anniversary, that's 5,056 covers."

8. Data Vis Dispatch, February 25 | Datawrapper​

Including a definitive collection of visualisation work relating to the German elections.

9. What does an earthquake look like beneath your feet? | Dr. Alice-Agnes Gabriel on Bluesky​

"This visualization shows seismic waves in action. We’re studying how such visuals improve public communication after major earthquakes. We'd love your input! Please take our short survey..."

10. Visualised: Europe's population crisis | Guardian​

"The rise of the far-right could speed up the population decline of Europe, projections show, creating economic shocks including slower growth and soaring costs from pensions and elderly care."

11. Collecting the hits... | Moritz Stefaner on Bluesky​

"On the communication side of dataviz — what would you say, were the "hits" in the last few years? Pieces that went viral, found wide adoption, opened new audiences, were shared a lot..." Check out the replies for a nice reminder of some of the great works we've seen.

12. Close To Home | Francis Gagnon on Bluesky​

Some splendid design and chart work in this report by the Voilà team about the costs of climate-related damages to housing.

13. Gaza's Garbage Crisis | Reuters​

"After 15 months of war, Gaza is suffering from a destroyed waste system. As the cleanup begins, the impacts on its people’s health and land will be long felt." (especially love the horizontal scrolling section)

14. How To Read This Chart | Philip Bump​

Sure I've recommended before but worth repeating myself if so. One of my favourite subscriptions, this weekly (Saturday) issue always includes loads of collection of curious and clever charts from Washington Post columnist Philip Bump.

15. Two-thirds of the Earth’s surface experienced record heat in 2024 | Guardian​

"In oceans and on land, from the north to the south pole, records were smashed for the monthly average temperature"

16. The Hard Rise | Owen Winter on Bluesky​

A staggering chart - or more specifically staggering data: "After the AfD's surge on Sunday, far right parties are the most voted-for of any grouping in Europe, for the first time in history"

17. Visualizing all books of the world in ISBN-Space | Phiresky's Blog​

A visualisation showing 97,380,212 books. Be careful, once you dive into this you might not return to the surface for air for a while

18. The Coolest Basketball Data Visualizations Ever Made | Beyond the RK​

"Today we are celebrating the analytical art form known as basketball data visualization by searching the interwebs for the most creative data viz ever created." (BIG collection)

19. The paths of unmanned bicycles pushed until they fall over | Canadian Cycling Magazine​

An oldie but a goodie: "Researchers model the path of 800 bicycles to study how we keep them upright"

Learning

Relevant articles, interviews, or videos to help further your development in data viz.

23. Making of The Natural System of Colours | Nicholas Rougeux​

You can't have one (the project) without also sharing the other (the process): this is the companion piece behind the work listed above dissecting the process Nicholas went through, with his characteristic depth and attention to detail.

24. Looking for uses of generative AI in visualization and information design | Alberto Cairo on Bluesky​

Worth reading through the threads and responses to this posting from Alberto seeking any good use case examples

25. Modern Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? | The Bullshit Machines​

I suspect the website URL rather gives a clue to the suggested answer. Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West have spent "eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take".

26. Does cultural experience shape visual perception? | Mark Rubin on Bluesky​

New paper reporting on fascinating research that finds "profound differences in visual phenomenology, with rural Namibian participants often failing to see percepts obvious to UK/US participants and vice versa."

27. Fix My Chart | Datawrapper​

Everyone loves a makeover and I love these pieces where people like Rose offer advice for ways to improve an existing visual.

28. Here's a little nerd thread... | Gregor Aisch on Bluesky​

"For the German election we wanted to use a cartogram of German election districts but didn't find anything good, so we created our own. Here's a little nerd thread how the final algorithm worked"

29. InfoVis Lecture 1: Introduction | FILWD on Substack​

Enrico is generously sharing videos and notes of his new lectures from his Information Visualization course. This first one covers "What's Information Visualization? Why use it?"

30. Hope. Despair. Resistance. Timeseries | Effect & Affect Newsletter​

A write up of "visualizing social change to inspire hope and spark resistance."

31. You Just Need More Chart Choices | Stephanie Evergreen​

"In my 15 years of experience working with many different organizations all over the world, I’ve seen a pattern: Most institutions already have the talent. You 100% have the ability to figure this out... Truly, my experience has shown me that people just need to expand their bench of possible chart types."

32. What Does AI Understand About a Graph? | Nightingale​

Reflections from a conversation (involving Michael Friendly) with a Chatbot (Claude 3 Haiku) about a Graph.

33. The Democratization of Data Visualization | Viz Responsibly​

Amanda Makulec' newsletter poses the question: 'Creating a chart is easier than ever before. But is that a good thing?'. "Over the last few months, Elijah Meeks and I have been working on a white paper about the Fourth Wave of data visualization. We felt that the field had moved into a new era, beyond the first three waves he described in his Tapestry Conference keynote in 2018."

34. How We Made It | Steven Bernard on Bluesky​

Find out what goes into making the 'Climate Graphic of the Week'

35. The Data Journalism Podcast | Simon Rogers on Bluesky​

Announcing the new episode featuring the esteemable Chiqui Esteban: "Inside the Washington Post graphics team and how to visualize opinion"

36. Dagstuhl report | Jan Willem Tulp on Bluesky​

The report from the 2024 Dagstuhl workshop on "Art, Visual Illusions, and Data Visualization" is now published

37. We solved a crime | TLDR by Wealthsimple​

"Don’t Fall for Bad Graphics. Here’s How to Foil Four Common Chart Crimes"

38. Low Wage Does Not Mean Low Skill | Shirley Wu Studio​

Nice walk through a client challenge looking at 'Pathways to Mobility for 24 Million Workers Skilled Through Alternative Routes'

39. There be dragons: dataviz in the industry | Moritz Stefaner on Visualizing The Field​

Another oldie, from 2017, but a timely reminder from Moritz for us to reflect on these ideas 8 years on: "there’s one nut we have not been able to crack: anchoring bespoke data visualization as a full fledged profession in corporate settings."

40. Collage your charts | Chartography​

RJ goes deep in to the use and misuse of dual axes.

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.

42. A sample of the government webpages Trump doesn’t want you to see | Washington Post Opinion​

"404: Government not found" by Amanda Shendruk and Catherine Rampell who "gathered just a small sample of the thousands of websites that have been disappearing under Trump. Some are coming back online. Some aren’t". Dark times.

43. Vintage BBC weather forecast | Cameron Yarde Jr on Bluesky​

Footage from 40 years ago of the final appearance of BBC weather forecasters using magnetic symbols. "Computer graphics were on their way. Michael Fish was the last forecaster using the old style presentation and gave us a glimpse behind the scenes of the weather studio"

44. Graphane.dev​

"Graphane is an initiative focused on declarative data visualization, and we believe it could be a valuable resource for those interested in advancing their understanding of this field." (Read more here also)

45. Cartokit | via Oli Hawkins on Bluesky​

Cartokit is "an interactive mapping framework that has both code and no-code interfaces" - if digital cartography's your thing, give it a look here.

46. State of digital government review | via Georgina Sturge on Bluesky​

Report on the government's review of its own digital and data capabilities

47. Cars will need fewer screens and more buttons to earn 5-star safety rating in Europe | The Verge​

Very much agree with this push for tactile interaction controls: "Car makers in Europe are being encouraged to stop using touchscreens for basic functions like turn signals and wipers in an attempt to promote safer driving."

48. Can You Match the Oscar-Nominated Film to Our Headline? | New York Times​

"We picked 20 movies that have been nominated for an Oscar since 1990 and found the headlines that ran with each New York Times review. Can you pair them correctly?" (Yes, reader, I very much did: 20/20)

49. Cold War Military Slides | Beautiful Public Data​

"A reporter stumbled upon a treasure trove of Department of Defense slides from the 1970s and 1980s depicting data from missile systems, Soviet capabilities and America’s nuclear arsenal."

50. Photoviz | Alex Cozzi on Instagram​

I always love a photoviz composite, this is from "the early kickoff Watford against Norwich on Saturday, a range of images captured through out the game to combine 90 minutes of events into one image".

Thanks for reading!

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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