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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. So, in this issue I chronicle some of the best content I saw published during April 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, as always, to all subscribers and readers, see you next month with another compilation packed full of visualisation goodness.

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. Can You Stop an Outbreak of a Contagious Disease? | The Upshot​

Brilliantly designed participatory interactive: 'we simulated an outbreak of a hypothetical disease, about as contagious as the flu... We’d like you to contain it.'

8. A timeline of our [Axios'] coverage of Trump’s expansion of executive power in his (second) first 100 days. | @jacqueshrag on Bluesky​

I particularly love the solution Jacque came up with for the Instagram-optimised design.

9. Charting solar power's explosive global growth! | @laorso on Bluesky​

One of the analyses from Ember's 'Global Electricity Review 2025', I love this connected scatter plot charting, as Lauren describes, 'solar power's explosive global growth!'

10. Exoplanet Demographics | Nadieh Bremer (for Scientific American)

New work from Nadieh, beautifully designed as always. I often say that in most cases data visualisation is not complicated, but more complex. Here's an example of a data visualisation that will have been inherently complicated to formulate, but there's nobody better placed to handle that with such flair!

11. If they raised the Mary Rose, why not raise the Titanic? | @maryrosemuseum on Bluesky​

A novel way of using social media threads to make a visual point about scale!

12. Exploring London’s Royal Observatory, the capital’s original time machine | Ian Bott on LinkedIn​

'I’ve written and illustrated another London Museum walk for FT Globetrotter, the Financial Times' guide to cities.'. The above links through to the FT site which might be paywalled for some visitors.

13. How South Korea's largest and deadliest wildfire spread | Reuters​

'Spread by strong winds in bone-dry conditions, the wildfires have killed scores of people and charred thousands of hectares in the southeastern part of the country.'

14. Over five decades, here’s how voters have shifted away from the major parties | ABC​

'This triangle is going to help us explain how Australian politics has fundamentally changed. Like typical triangles, it has three sides and three corners. But this one has special meaning - each corner represents different electoral groups.' These opening lines give you a flavour of the excellent way this ternary-plot inspired scrollytelling piece is carefully unveiled and presented to the viewer.

15. #30DayChartChallenge | @revisual.co on Bluesky​

'As an agency that makes charts, we’re jumping on the #30DayChartChallenge to re-share old RVL work!' I liked this approach to participating in April's annual chart challenge, for which you should also check out the wide range of other excellent original works created via the Bluesky hashtag search.

16. They Criticized Musk on X. Then Their Reach Collapsed. | New York Times​

Tons of smart little design details in this piece which nevertheless offers a reminder that, even when presented with excellent design, compelling data is always the star of the show.

17. The Beast: 2025 NFL Draft guide | The Athletic​

'The goal for “The Beast” is the same each year — to create the most comprehensive and detailed NFL Draft guide available.' And boy do they achieve it. Its not my sport of interest, and its not necessary a feast of visualisations, but as a sports-analytics curious person I don't half appreciate the leg work that went into this 'passion project that takes more than a year to put together'.

18. The Genius of Jokic | The Ringer​

Similar in theme to the above, basketball is not my sport but I really appreciated the writing and the mini charts showing Jokic's 'no look passing' maps.

19. The iPhone Supply Chain | @samlearner on Bluesky​

Again, this link in this might take you behind a paywall, like several pieces on here, but if you can view it its another masterpiece of visual storytelling from the FT team about another look at the supply chain behind the iPhone and why it would be impractical to manufacture in the US.

20. Your Home Without China | New York Times​

A related piece, this magnificent analysis uses an isometric cutaway house to illustrate how reliant on Chinese-imported products the typical American household is.

21. How sound is passed down over generations | The Pudding​

Tremendous work by Stephen Lurie and graphical brilliance from Jared Whalen to explore the lineage of shared DNA in music.

22. Hot Air | Tortoise​

'Introducing Hot Air, a publicly-available interactive database and visualisation tool highlighting the volume of online misinformation surrounding climate change.'

23. 15 Minute City Platform | 15min-City​

Found via Francis Gagnon, this interactive map allows you to see just how '15-minute' worldwide cities are based on the times of accessibility to services from any place in a city by walking or biking

24. Bad AAPL | @zenithval.com‬ on Bluesky​

An animated view of the FinViz stock treemap during the Trump-inspired market crash and ongoing turbulence.

Learning

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

28. Making of the New York and Erie Railroad organizational diagram | C82​

Nicholas' customary amazing process narrative to accompany and describe the project included above.

29. The next addition to your data viz bookshelf should be a Comic About Comics | Alex Wein​

'I wrote about one my favorite genres of anything: Comics About Comics. There's a bit of a data viz focus, but these books are great for everyone.'

30. European data on animals aloft now publicly available | Springer Nature​

'Weather radars continuously register the movements of billions of animals in the air! We have now published datasets covering large parts of Europe, providing an overview of the aerial habitat in a way no other method can.'

31. Design for an Audience | Style​

Came across this piece again recently and though, in date terms, it is an 'oldie', the thought process Jonathan Corum goes through here to explain how he defines and designs for an audience is as fresh and as relevant as ever. From one of the best in the game.

32. Can LLMs Detect Reasoning Errors with Charts? | FILWD on Substack​

Yes and no, as Enrico explains.

33. Injuries and Rest in Basketball: Can Data Viz Help Find a Balance? | Todd Whitehead for Nightingale​

Love this piece from a few years ago about 'A Lesson on Radial Charts with Dr. James Naismith' - 'To demonstrate the activity patterns of 1 hour and 9 minutes of basketball action — and to answer the research question: “Is Basketball Injurious” — Naismith logged periods of motion and rest for one representative player, subdivided into blocks of 3 minutes or less...'

34. Getting lost in Zuantu | Chartography​

'A team from Peking University and Oxford have launched a new tool to explore hundreds of thousands of Chinese visualizations and diagrams'

35. From Point A to Point Q, and Beyond | Vital City​

'A transit map designer reviews the new MTA subway map.'

36. The "Dashboard" is Broken | Jason Forrest on LinkedIn​

Really relevant article from Jason about an 'issue' I'm experiencing a lot at the moment which is the fraying of the clarity in terminology and the purpose of 'dashboards'.

37. The Future Favors the Curious | MikeIndustries​

Mike Davidson writes 'a little piece about how AI is changing the job market for designers. Something similar happened in 1995, and there is a clear way through it if you stay curious.'

38. Insight Out: Week 31 | @Revisual.co on Bluesky​

I love these short weekly threads that show some of the thinking behind a data viz challenge. This week's posts look at a waterfall chart showing 'the path to net-zero emissions for India’s buildings sector'.

39. Shading In Between Two Lines In Tableau (Using Area Charts) - Tableau Tips With TableauTimothy | The Data School​

I've included this for two reasons: 1) it specifically helped me solve a related problem and 2) I am just so appreciative of the volume of how-to posting like this people like Timothy and The Data School make available.

40. The big idea: do we worry too much about misinformation? | The Guardian​

Perhaps a slightly misleading heading (ironically), but I like the premise of the article: 'Seeing falsehoods everywhere is as damaging as believing too much. Our focus should be on helping people interpret information better'

41. AI-Assisted Authoring of Text and Charts for Data-Driven Communication | Tableau​

This post summarises the interesting research paper 'Pluto: Authoring Semantically Aligned Text and Charts for Data-Driven Communication' by Tableau research scientists, Arjun Srinivasan and Vidya Setlur, and Prof. Arvind Satyanarayan from MIT.

42. What is Qualitative Data Visualization? | FILWD on Substack​

A second entry for Enrico who is doing some really excellent writing and positioning of ideas right now. This offers an 'initial investigation trying to put some order in this space'.

43. Why data viz competitions are good for our industry... | Viz Resonsibly​

'...but are so tough to judge'. Amanda Makulec reflects on the conversations she's recently had and the questions she's been asked about the experience of judging a data viz competition.

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.

45. Charting Stories | Edit Gyenge​

...and speaking of new books, congratulations to Edit for news of her first title about the process behind 50 storytelling pieces' offering 'an honest reflection on the creative process, the struggles of balancing different skills, and the lessons I’ve learned along the way'.

46. 46th annual creative competition | Society for News Design​

An interactive gallery of the results from the 46th edition of the Best of News Design Creative Competition. 'Winners are selected by visual journalists who are gathered in Minneapolis to assess the best work published in 2024' and wow this really is a collection of THE best work.

47. Story lines | Incidental Comics​

'This comic was inspired by Kurt Vonnegut's classic lecture about the shapes of stories'

48. Bicycles Built Based on People’s Attempts to Draw Them From Memory | Booooooom​

The title is sufficient description, you'll just have to go take a look!

49. Images I Post to Upset UX/UI designers... | @natalt on Bluesky​

Again, the title is sufficient description, you'll have to go take a look...

50. 'Freelancing in 1991' | Present Correct​

'When you decide on freelancing from home, plan the position and layout of the studio very carefully. Remember that clients will be visiting, so try to separate it as much as possible from the rest of the house'

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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