Systemic report failure is when structures, formats, and habits consistently prevent reports and other resources from reaching the right people in ways they can actually use. In evaluation and research we treat this systemic failure as if it’s a skills issue. It’s not. Better charts, interesting stories, and well-designed PDFs are not enough to make […]
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Broken Resource Theory
So I’m an information designer with a quantitative background who doesn’t care that much about charts and graphs. I used to to care a lot, and you will find some guidance on this site about chart design (this blog has been going since 2010 which is over half of my professional career). But over time […]
KIDS COUNT 2025 – Before and After
This is one in a series of before and after designs. With each post I take a real publicly available resource or report and adapt the writing, format, structure, and illustrations in order to increase the accessibility. You can see other before and after posts in the series by following this link. How it Started – […]
Qualitative Storytelling Dashboard – Before and After
This is one in a series of before and after designs. With each post I take a real publicly available resource or report and adapt the writing, format, structure, and illustrations in order to increase the accessibility. You can see other before and after posts in the series by following this link. How it Started – […]
Guiding Principles for Evaluators – Before and After
This is one in a series of before and after designs. With each post I take a real publicly available resource or report and adapt the writing, format, structure, and illustrations in order to increase the accessibility. You can see other before and after posts in the series by following this link. How it Started […]
My qualitative dataviz book is now live! (and free)
Compelling Qualitative Data Visualization, my latest free-to-read book, is now live. Here is a little synopsis. What’s the book about? In the book I talk about my approach to illustrating mixed-method and qualitative reports. It’s a very practical book. Wasn’t this a workshop? Yes, I’ve actually delivered the workshop live a couple of times. Since […]





