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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 new content I saw published during August.

With the format of this newsletter becoming established with many of you now repeat viewers, I'm going to cut down on the usual introductory text and instead divert you towards my 'Newsletter' page which has more info as well as the public archive of all monthly issues.

As always, I hope you continue to find this newsletter useful, whether you are working on a dataviz, working in dataviz, or working to get working in dataviz.

See you same time, same place, in October.

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.

5. What Makes Mondo Fly? | Washington Post​

Lots of Olympics-related stuff this month and this is a super nice visual explainer of the technique of relentless world-record-setting Pole Vaulter, Mondo Duplantis.

6. Elon Musk's Hard Turn to Politics | Wall Street Journal​

Very good deep-dive into the changing interactions and the 300,000 words posted by Musk on Twitter over time, revealing his shift towards Trump World.

7. ‘Weird and Daunting’: 7,000 Readers Told Us How It Felt to Focus | New York Times​

Fascinating write up about an experiment (posted here) to test readers' skill in focusing, "we asked readers to spend 10 minutes with a painting. No distractions, no notifications — just a full 10 minutes of attention".

8. Fentanyl’s deadly chemistry: How rogue labs make opioids | @DaisyChungArt on Twitter​

Nice little thread offering process insights behind a visual story exploring the chemistry behind fentanyl (which can be found here).

9. 'The multi-tiered cake chart' | @Szucsi on Twitter​

Krisztina's latest experiment with visually depicting sporting contests that don't often being visualised, in this case a new chart type for showing the Olympics High Jump competition.

10. 'The 100 most densely populated...' | @UnderTheRaedar on Twitter​

Alasdair is so good at these types of unique spatial-data curiosities, in this case showing 'the 100 most densely populated 1km x 1km grid squares in Europe, arranged in a 10km x 10km square'

11. Is Your Home Risk From Climate Change? It Depends on the Data | @K3blu3 on Twitter​

New piece from Bloomberg (direct link here) looking at how homeowners in the US can source flood risk scores for their property but raising questions about how trustworthy those scores are, with some screen shots posted by Krishna Karra in case you can't access behind the paywall.

12. Olympics Infographics Thread | @Jasonforrestftw on Twitter​

Jason is a huge fan of the Olympics and has been equally inspired by the associated graphical output, for which he collates a nice thread of examples he's encountered.

13. 'Move over Brat Summer, its BART Summer!' | @HarshaReports on Twitter​

Really smart visual using the architecture of the BART network to present information about the wild variations in temperatures in each locality.

14. The world of work is changing. Is Canary Wharf ready? | FT​

Another superb visual story from the FT team, with glorious 3D illustrations from the master, Ian Bott.

15. 'Heat waves are changing our lives. How the scale of the warming is spreading to Romania' [Translated from Romanian] | Panorama​

Really nice mix of visual material - from charts, to animations, to illustrations - in this deep dive look at the impact of heat waves on people across Romania and how it compares to the past. Also love the dynamic title.

16. Scotland's evolving population over time | Colin Angus on Blueksy​

I do love a good Lexis chart and this is a good Lexis chart from Colin.

17. Gaza Reduced to 42 Million Tonnes of Rubble. What Will It Take to Rebuild? | @JennahHaque on Twitter​

Another mighty piece of work from the Bloomberg team, this Twitter thread walks through some of the key summarising charts and discoveries. The work itself has some immaculate transitions and best-in-class content navigation.

18. Police shootings database | Washington Post​

A terrible but important dataset that's been going since January 2015. This piece comes with its own visual analysis but its more about the dataset (of over 10,000 records) that is available to download, explore and interrogate.

19. 10 years of BMJ Infographics | Will Stahl-Timmins on LinkedIn​

'The first #BMJinfographic was published 10 years ago today! To mark the occasion, here are 10 of my favourite graphics we’ve made over the last decade...'

20. H.R.Giger_The man who paints monsters in the night | Yuli Wang on Tableau Public​

Nice tableau vis concerning HR Giger whose work I've loved since I was first terrified by Alien.

Learning

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

24. Investigative journalism and ChatGPT: using generative AI for sourcing and story research | Online Journalism Blog​

In the second of a series of posts from a workshop at the Centre for Investigative Journalism Summer School, Paul Bradshaw "looks at using generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini to improve sourcing and story research".

25. Sim Daltonism, an intuitive app that simulates color blindness | FlowingData​

From a few years ago but I recently came across it and worth both a save and a share again now. Useful tool for checking colour-blindess.

26. UK cartogram round-up | Open Innovations​

"This post is a round-up of some subjective thoughts on the varied cartograms that were used in the recent UK General Election"

27. Capturing the Split Seconds Between Victory and Defeat | New York Times​

From the Times Insider, "Faced with the challenge of quickly recapping Olympic events, The Times creates its own animated versions of competitions. The internet loves them." (Full disclosure, I think their fun animations, I'm not sure what extra insight they provide, but I like this detailed article)

28. Exploring Data Analysts' Uncertainty Reasoning Strategies for Effective Uncertainty Visualization Design | Christoph Kinkeldey on Bluesky​

"New paper at 'Computer Graphics & Visual Computing (CGVC)' conference, delving into how data analysts in epidemiology handle data uncertainty and how we, as visualization designers, can better support them"

29. Discursive Patinas: Anchoring Discussions in Data Visualizations | Cornell University​

New research paper presenting a new vis technique that "visualizes discussions about visualizations, inspired by traces left in the physical world". This was a topic I loved when presented at last year's InfoPlus Conference in Edinburgh

30. Visualization Atlases: Explaining and Exploring Complex Topics through Data, Visualization, and Narration | Arxiv​

Another interesting paper which attempts to "defines, analyze, and discuss the emerging genre of visualization atlases".

31. Good Morning Data #4 | The Vacation Paradox | Julie Brunet for Nightingale​

'Why are we the most productive when we’re off?'. Just another superb piece by Julie, I love her perspectives and writing warmth

32. A Melange of Maps | Esri​

Blog by Ken Field outlining how to make a range of thematic maps using the recent UK General Election data.

33. The Problem with Bar Charts | Michael Correll

"What I am proposing here is that bar charts are only superficially simple, and this hidden complexity causes problems, and maybe that means rethinking what bar charts are good for."

34. Michael Johnson, Olympic athlete and broadcaster | Communicating with Ros Atkins​

In this podcast episode, Ros Atkins asks Michael Johnson: "what does it take to communicate well in a team with conflicting interests? And we hear how to communicate as an expert to a broad audience."

35. Rage Clicks are Microdoses of pure horror | Mushon Zer Aviv​

"Clicking repeatedly and getting no feedback is now the sign of our times. How can we design digital and social systems that avoid dead-end rage and enable new and unexpected affordances for action?"

News

Latest developments, announcements, or announcements affecting the data viz world.

38. Introducing Datawrapper for PowerPoint | Datawrapper

"Today, we’re releasing a free Datawrapper add-in for PowerPoint that makes great data visualization available in the world’s most popular presentation tool. Download it directly from Microsoft AppSource."

39. Historical Aerial Photography archive | @SatelliteSci on Twitter​

"Here's a mind-blowing open data portal that I think should be far better known than it is: Geoscience Australia's 'Historical Aerial Photography archive', containing 1.2 million aerial photos from the 1920s on"

40. Archives.design​

This is a vast digital archive of graphic design related compiled and curated by Valery Marier

41. 2024 Winners | Online Journalism Awards​

This is the collection of winners and projects that have earned the prestigious 'Excellence in online journalism' awards this year, many of which have a data-driven and visual design basis.

42. Data team | Boston Globe​

The Boston Globe's data team now has a landing page collecting all their work into one place.

Sundries

Additional references to pieces covering broader data, tech, or design matters.

44. Subversive Mathematics: The Outlawing of Venn Diagrams in 1970’s Argentina | Variable West ​

This was an event that has since expired but it has only piqued my interest in learning more!

45. Noah Lyles’s narrow win in 100 meters would have been a tie in swimming | Washington Post​

Fascinating piece about measuring sports events: "Why don’t Olympic swimming officials use thousandths of a second to break ties? It’s a matter of math and science."

46. You won't believe how they captured this shot | @Gibboanxious on Twitter​

I love discovering 'tricks of the trade' like this (which also feels splendidly old school as a technique).

47. MONUMENT VALLEY 3 | Netflix on Twitter​

"A brand new story from the award-winning series. Coming exclusively to Netflix Games on December 10th!" I love this game for the game itself but I adore this game above all for the colour aesthetic, each screen offers another bookmark of joy.

48. RIP Null Island Buoy | Stamen Design on Bluesky​

"Sad news. It has come to our attention that the NOAA weather station moored at 0º, 0º (nicknamed "Null Island Buoy") no longer exists!"

49. "This is greatness in data vis" | @Mixednuts on Twitter​

Excellent use of horizontal space to accommodate a data value outlier...

50. Photographing Olympic athletes in Parisian museums | @Forgetmat on Instagram​

Really interesting to see this photography technqiue, especially given its locational context.

Thanks for reading!

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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