Where do I start? If you read my last blog post, you’ll know a little about my plans to turn FreshSpectrum from being my personal/consulting blog into a kind of evaluation forever conference. At this moment in time, early August of 2025, I have lots of ideas and zero funding. I have done a little […]
What’s Next: Building a FREE Forever Conference
I believe the evaluation world is underserved, let’s change that. I started this blog a little over 15 years ago as a hobby and creative outlet sharing my work with just a handful of people. A year and a half later, I started including cartoons in my posts and growing a following on Twitter. Flash […]
Does evaluation have a resource problem?
This post ended up being really long, with lots of data. If don’t feel like reading it, here is the TL/DR version. I wrote a bit about watching so many of our peers losing their jobs back in February. Unfortunately that was not just a temporary thing. This has been a hard year for lots […]
What is Data Illustration?
Summary: Data illustration is the process of improving the accessibility of a data product by systematically adding pictures. This post introduces the concept and gives you a practical data illustration framework. If you were to search for information about data illustration over Google, you’ll probably end up with a bunch of results about data visualization. […]
What is Benefits Realisation and how does it connect to evaluation?
Summary: While evaluation asks “did this work and why,” Benefits Realisation tracks whether specific organizational wins (like cost savings or better employee retention) actually happened as planned. This week’s post is a guest post by Liz Richardson who is a senior specialist in evaluation at Natural England. As per usual when I have guest post, […]
Is the high reading level appropriate? Data UX Review
In this series of Data UX reviews I take real published reports and look for areas of improvement. The ultimate goal for these reviews is shared learning. This week, we discuss readability. Today’s Report is an Evaluation Synthesis Report (2022-2023) produced by the Evaluation Office of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). You can peruse the […]
Reporting Revolution – 2nd Edition
I’ve decided to build upon my report design book. So, for a limited time, I’m making the working version free again. Why the new edition? I started writing a new book (code name: Report Like This). But then I found myself repeating what was already written in The Reporting Revolution. Truth is, that book provides […]
Beyond Performative Dissemination
Your report is NOT the problem. This is probably not the argument you would expect to hear from someone who has spent the better part of a decade teaching people how to design better reports, tell better data stories, and create better charts. But here’s the thing, you can create the most interesting, visually stunning, […]
Logic Model and Theory of Change Cartoons.
One thing you should know about program evaluators is that they like their logic models and theories of change. Over last 13ish years I’ve drawn over 25 comics on the subject. And as long as I keep cartooning, I’ll likely create a bunch more. In today’s blog post I’ll share the top 5 crowd favorites. […]
When life gives you lemons…
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you absurdity, make cartoons. Going to be taking a little break from the data design and Canva blog posts for a little while. Not saying I won’t come back to it, but I think the universe is telling me I need to be a cartoonist […]
Building a Remote Worker Community
Back in 2006 I was in grad school. At the time I lived and worked full time in the Maryland suburbs outside of DC. A few times a week, I would take the Metro from the end of the line to downtown DC for evening classes at George Washington University. It was about an hour […]
Canva Free, Canva Pro, or Canva for Teams?
Is it worth upgrading your Canva Free account to Canva Pro? Is Canva for Teams a different thing? Is Canva Pro really free for Nonprofits & Schools? Updated March 10, 2025 So if you read my blog, you probably already know I’m a big fan of Canva. I have posts on creating logic models using […]