The convoluted making of a simple chart
Finding the right concept is my favourite part of doing data visualisation. It depends on understanding the topic, the message and the audience and emerges through discussions with the client. Getting to that aha moment where it finally makes sense is a delight. So this is an example of when it happened not once but […]
5 tips for visualizing concepts
What does banking look like, in one image? How about evaluation? And training? That was the easy part. Now, what about the need to improve? Or to speed up and simplify a process? And finally, innovative financing models? Designing information requires to think of visuals for concepts that may or may not have a strong […]
When economists get excited about charts
On Twitter, Matt Notowidigbo, Associate Professor of Economics at Northwestern University, has started a very interesting thread. I want to start a Twitter thread!(*) QUESTION: What is one of your favorite figures in economics? Please submit answers below! (*)Inspired by dinner conversation last week with possible colleagues — Matt Notowidigdo (@ProfNoto) March 12, 2018 The mere […]
A targeted country
When a mass shooting in the US appears at the top of the news cycle, it’s difficult to talk or even think about something else. The whole debate is hard to grasp from abroad as the arguments of the gun lobby — people kill people, bad guys will have guns, it’s in the Constitution, the […]
The colour palettes of the Obama official painted portraits
The portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama were unveiled this week and one of their most striking features is their colour palettes. The one from the President especially is a radical break from previous portraits and the one from the First Lady is captivatingly elegant. One way to learn about colour is to learn from […]
5 tools for getting a little better at colour for dataviz
While organizing my colour tools, I thought of sharing a few of them here, some I’ve used, some new to me. The truth is that I intend to get better at it and it was prompted by a 2015 piece by Elijah Meeks that hit close to home: “If you don’t feel capable of selecting a […]
This week on the PolicyViz Podcast: Yours Truly
Oh, the pleasure of reaching a milestone in your career. This is one of those days for me as Jon Schwabish has finally relented and had me as a guest on the PolicyViz podcast, after years of me pestering him (tuns out he wanted money). Seriously, it is an honour to be on the podcast. […]
Remake: CNBC Holiday Shopping Graph
My friends Ann K. Emery and Jon Schwabish have been discussing a graph published by CNBC about Holiday budgets. Ann reported that her husband was confused by the original graph: Coffee convo with the non-datanerd hubby: Can you remake this? This is hard to read, right? 4 groups, I can’t tell what’s supposed to add […]
Interview: Stephanie Evergreen wants to build a 30-foot dataviz out of clay
I got to cross an item off the bucket list when offered the opportunity to work with another data visualization professional. Luck stroke when a client invited me to work on a project with Stephanie Evergreen. And it was all that I was hoping: inspiring, professional, dynamic. Just look at what she’s done: she’s written one […]
Tapestry 2017: Connecting the Dots
Data visualization is not an easy job. This can get lost in the quibbles about whether bar charts are boring and pie charts are useless, as we risk thinking that our role is limited to finding which encoding is perceived most precisely by the human eye. In fact, it is to give humans access to […]
