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Welcome to the 5th 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 new content I saw published during May.
There are four distinct sections: Visuals, Learning, News, and a collection of random adjacent creative or design type items wrapped together as Sundries.
Each item is presented with the piece's title, the platform or author, and then a description, which is often lifted from any introduction text accompanying the original published piece. Links to each item are included in the title, the image (for 10 items) and via the 'Go' buttons. Note that because some links point to sites that are behind paywalls, for which some readers may not have direct or immediate access, I may direct you initially towards a social media posting which itself then takes you onwards to the source URL.
To accommodate people interested in this content but technically impeded from receiving it in email form, web versions of each issue will be published on my website's 'Newsletter' page two weeks after each issue is sent via email. That page will also offer a growing archive of all monthly issues.
I hope you continue to find this newsletter to be a useful resource, whether you are working on a dataviz, working in dataviz, or working to get working in dataviz.
See you same time, same place, in July.
Andy
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Latest from me...
Some recent posts or announcements about me, my activities or about my professional services.
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For people unable to travel to join my in-person Masterclass in London in July, or wait until later in the year for the next event, I have scheduled a virtual running of the Masterclass course. This will take place on Zoom over Tuesday 10, Wednesday 11, and Thursday 12 September, with three 4-hour workshops running 1pm to 5pm (UK, BST) on each day. here are various discounts available which you can read about in the post including an early-bird reduced rate which runs through to the end of June. To make the course affordable and accessible to anyone and everyone, two places are offered on a 'pay what you can afford' basis.
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Since the last newsletter issue I launched the third episode of my Explore Explain podcast and video series. This latest conversation was with Natalie Erdem, Managing Partner and Product Manager at TWO-N, based in New York City. We explored the story behind TWO-N’s development of the MSNBC Election Big Board, the dynamic visualisation tool used by National Political Correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC, Steve Kornacki during the live broadcast of the 2018 US mid-terms and subsequent elections. I learned so much in this discussion about publishing dynamic, interactive visualisations for use in live, TV-broadcast settings, not least how to make election analysis understandable to a viewer sat at a bar watching the TV with the volume down.
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Visuals
The freshest data visualisation (or related) design pieces and collections.
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1. Tracking China's 'grey zone' balloon flights over Taiwan | Reuters
"Since December, about a month before Taiwan’s presidential election, China began sending a different type of intruder over the Taiwan Strait: more than 100 balloons, some of which passed directly through the island’s territorial airspace or busy, Taipei-controlled air corridors for civil aviation. Experts say the balloons could be psychological warfare, carry surveillance tools or simply gather meteorological data..."
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2. Labor Transitions in a Net-Zero Era | Liuhuaying Yang
"This visualization project aims to illuminate and explore the intricate dynamics of labor transitions in the face of a net-zero emissions power system, offering both a visual narrative and an interactive dashboard."
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Building from Neil's initial work visualising the (Victor) 'Meldrew Point' - the first occasion by when a "lovable cantankerous pensioner" appears onscreen in a British comedy but is actually played by a 53 year old actor - this piece introduces the US equivalent, with the (Frasier's father, Martin) 'Crane Point' featuring a Lexis diagram plotting the ages over time of actors from the cast of 16 US sitcoms. I'm horrifyingly close to the age of people I feel should be decades away...
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4. Microbial Symphony | Max Graze
"Imagine if you could hear the tiny, unseen microbes all around us. What would they sound like? With Microbial Symphony... I wanted to reflect the unique characteristics of each type of microbe."
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5. Walking To Taipei Through a Google Maps Glitch | Marie Patino for Bloomberg
Marie's visualisation talents are shining brightly right now... "it was such a joy writing about artist Yu-Wen Wu's massive handscroll "Walking To Taipei", a set of 2,000+ Google Maps instructions on how to walk(ish) from Boston to Taipei"
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6. Flying Will Be Messy This Year. See How Bad It Is Across the US | @RachaelDottle on Twitter
...and Marie's skills are fully on show with this outrageously good fisheye distortion interaction, picked up by her colleague, Rachael Dottle.
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7. What is the usual age gap among married couples? | @DucQN on Twitter
"This heat map shows 646,000 marriages and the frequency of all possible age combinations"
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8. The world’s most, and least, walkable cities | @TheEconomist on Twitter
Featuring a splendid lesser-spotted (because they can be hard to perceive and fit a use-case) ternary plot.
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"This is a daily poll where you can contribute your opinion to a pair of questions. The plot updates in real-time as more people participate. Below the plot, you can dive into some statistics about how your response compares to the community's."
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10. Bishop vanished. His species can still be saved. | Washington Post Climate Lab
"Meet Bishop, a North Atlantic right whale. Here he was in 2015 at the age of 1, swimming in the Gulf of Maine after a harrowing journey from Florida. There are only about 350 of his species alive."
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"New physical map collection "Delicious Parks": set of nine 3d-print modals of nine US national parks".
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[Translated] "Europe destroys its underground water reserves. Today a project of months of work by 7 European media begins to see the light that shows that Europe is taking a risk with its aquifers" - this twitter thread introduces the project in more detail then links to the various outputs across different media.
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13. Buried Alive | Reuters
"Papua New Guinean authorities are piecing together the scale of destruction and death toll from a devastating landslide"
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14. The truth/lies behind Elena Zelenska's $1.1m Cartier Haul | @hollieberman on Twitter
"The bling ring: The anatomy of a disinformation campagin"
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Come for the "AFL mullet investigation", stay for the "experimenting with new methods for data collection and computational journalism", excellent work by Alex Lim.
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More excellence from the Bloomberg visuals team, this time exploring the reported ending of "China’s economic miracle" and how President Xi Jinping will govern after the boom.
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Nice demo combining a "3D indoor CO2 heatmap with interactive charts" all made with Observable Plot
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18. How annual bird migration could spread avian flu | Reuters
"Poultry and cows on farms risk exposure to sick wild birds migrating across the Americas. One way to understand the spread of bird flu is to look at the path of the mallard duck"
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19. What polling can tell you | Reuters
A prolific month* of goodness from the Reuters team, this time with a great visual and data explainer about what polling can and cannot tell you. (* for pedants, yes, it was published in April but I only saw it in May!)
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20. Giant Batteries Are Transforming the Way the U.S. Uses Electricity | New York Times
Featuring some typically great analysis and centrepiece charts that some have termed 'Snail' charts due to their snail-shell-and-head-bit-sticking-out appearance (they're just area charts with snail-like shaped data patterns).
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21. The battlegrounds that could decide a US-China war over Taiwan | Financial Times
"Five key military contests are likely to determine the outcome of a conflict" - grim prospect but stunning maps from Steven Bernard
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22. America's best decade, according to data | Washington Post
Some compelling analysis and perfect use-case density plots (aka "ridgeline plots") from Andrew Van Dam
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Learning
Relevant articles, interviews, or videos to help further your development in data viz.
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23. Good Morning Data #1 | The Mystery Job
Julie has started a new monthly column, 'Good morning data', for Nightingale and here's the first one which I described as having "bucket-loads of quintessential Brunet charm"
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You should sign up for Pablo's newsletter because he's brilliant and he includes nice interviews with other brilliant people, like Rebeca, who is the Data Visualisation Editor at The Straits Times.
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Nice piece from Evelina Judeikyte's newsletter about contextualising values and different methods for constructing stories that accomplish this.
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26. The evolution and future of interactive data visualization (Part 5) | CleverºFranke for Nightingale
The fifth and (I believe, right now) final part of this excellent series of articles considering "The future of interactive data visualization, predictions from 2024 onward"
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"In map design, the choice of color scheme is dependent on the basemap..." - great 4+ mins video with super useful tips applicable to all data vis colour thinking
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This website is a beta version of 'Data by Design', an interactive history of data visualization, which is a project of the Emory Digital Humanities Lab led by director Lauren Klein and "created by an interdisciplinary team of faculty, staff, students, and professionals, collaborating across two continents, three states, and four institutions". My understanding is that this work will be published as a final product, digitally and interactively as well in print in 2025.
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29. Family trees, heat maps, waffle charts... | Datawrapper
Nice write up about the origins of the '30DayChartChallenge' as well as the specific experiences and learnings of its co-organiser, Cédric Scherer, as he created his works using Datawrapper.
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30. ‘The Data Diaries’: Making Interactive Data Visualizations about World Banknotes | Alejandro Arevalo for Nightingale
The story behind the visual essay “Who’s in Your Wallet?” and how it took Alejandro from "being a podcast producer to working full-time as a data visualization developer".
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Tons of good stuff on the DVS journal site this month, not least this collection of practical help from Kaushik in the form of "five important elements to consider in the design phase for building great data visualizations".
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...and again, finally, this lovely piece from Natalie detailing how she's been "wanting to dedicate more time to Data Art for a long time, but I’ve been thinking, planning, and preparing for a while without actually doing anything" - then she did something...
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33. Behind the scenes at Monday Night Football: Data, dedication and a massive screen | @ZonalMarking on Twitter
A great Michael Cox piece for The Athletic ($): "Consistently impressed by the use of data on Sky’s Monday Night Football. Don’t think any other television programme in the UK would spend so long discussing fairly complex graphs. I spent Monday watching them put it all together."
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34. Fix my chart... | Datawrapper
Rose Mintzer-Sweeney introduces something new on the Datawrapper blog: a data vis advice column, which launches with a look at some problematic y-axis choices...
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35. AR DXP: Embedded temporal data visualizations in an urban environment for casual exploration. | Human Data Interaction Lab
"Our project focuses on enhancing casual urban data engagement by integrating dynamic visualizations directly into cityscapes through augmented reality. This approach leverages mobile technology to improve public understanding and interaction with urban data, ultimately aiming to enrich the user experience in real-world settings."
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News
Latest developments, announcements, or announcements affecting the data viz world.
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"I am thrilled to announce that Info We Trust Remastered is successfully funded! Thank you for your incredible enthusiasm and support." - delighted for RJ that this project got fully funded. I loved the original, so I can't wait to see the 'true' edition of this book land on my doorstep.
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37. SND45 announcements | @SND on Twitter
An entirely deserving accolade for the mighty Adolofo Arranz, judged to be the 'World’s Best Designer' in the Society for News Design's 'Digital Creative Competition'.
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This is the visualisation which helped Chris secure victory in the the Tableau Conference 'IronViz' final - congrats Chris!
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A new blog about "beautiful maps and how to make them" launched by Der Spiegel's Patrick Stotz.
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40. Resizeable proportional area chart | @szucsi on Twitter
"I've been working on some proportional area charts, and I've created this small tool to help me change the shape of the rectangles while keeping the areas the same."
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41. Nightly News Full Broadcast - May 23 | Joe Murphy on Bluesky
"This is the first time NBC Nightly News has done a segment about the Data / Graphics teams’ reporting, so proud."
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42. New signings for Zeit Online... | LinkedIn
I totally missed the news initially (but legit to include in this issue as he started in May!) that Gregor Aisch has joined Julius Tröger's exceptional team at Zeit Online. The group has been further enhanced by the talented Dana Hajek joining also. Congrats to both, and to the team for their new star signings!
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43. Visualize This, Publication Day, Fourteen Years Later | Flowing Data
Now released, this post details the background to Nathan's development of this second edition (I've got it, its ace) and where you can order it.
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"Tomorrow, I am launching my dream project at Stanford University in San Francisco. TimeMap.org is a world map with time slider, travel back in time to history, with names of countries of the past, rulers and kings, battles, famous artists and over half a million maps."
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Sundries
Additional references to pieces covering broader data, tech, or design matters.
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Many words have been written about Apple's disastrously ill-judged advert for the new iPad, this is one of the best because its very calm in its tone. I certainly wasn't.
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46. "Atlas of Never Built Architecture" by Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin | Phaidon
"A comprehensive global survey of more than 300 extraordinary unbuilt architecture projects from the 20th century to the present day"
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47. How to write text descriptions (alt text) in BBC News articles | BBC GEL
"This guidance is for staff who use digital images when creating content for BBC News." - but we can all learn from it, not just BBC staff...
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"Alexa, what happened to all the Alexas? Oh wait…"
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49. How Sho Shibuya, the artist behind those 'New York Times' sunrises, is making sense of the moment | Fast Company
"In 2020, in the early days of COVID, Sho Shibuya’s printed edition of the New York Times brought daily death tolls, news of political bedlam, the murder of George Floyd, and all things beyond. 'There were so many chaotic moments. Still, I’d look up, and the morning sunrise was as beautiful as ever... and I thought, maybe I should paint - almost like paint over the news - to make me sane.'"
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50. I wonder what record they’re holding up, shouldn’t be that hard to find out should it? | @wearetside on Twitter
What a thread.
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Thanks for reading!
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I’m ANDY KIRK, an independent data visualisation expert currently based in the UK. 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 three-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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