From Nathan Yau in his book Visualize This: Visualization One of the best ways to explore and try to understand a large dataset is with visualization. Place the numbers into a visual space and let your brain or your readers’ brain find the patterns. We’re good at that. You can often find stories that you […]
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A positive spin on failure according to Simon Hearn
Simon Hearn, one of the team of evaluators who put together the 10 things to know about evaluation infographic I mentioned last week, left me a comment on the post. The comment sparked today’s cartoon which I hope gives failure a bit more of a positive spin. Something we didn’t have space to talk about […]
Scott McCloud’s lesson on time in comics and what it means for infographics.
As a data designer and cartoonist, I have been heavily influenced by Scott McCloud’s book on Understanding Comics. The cool thing about his book is that many of the concepts can be applied very directly to infographics, even those that don’t employ comic style illustration. This is especially true when dealing with time. Using a comic’s […]
I still don’t know the source of the RCT Gold Standard Rhetoric, do you?
Today’s cartoon flashback comes from a post I put together early last year on the RCT Gold Standard Rhetoric. I tried, and failed, to find the source of the rhetoric, only a kooky theory about Harry Gold’s Standard (you’ll have to read the comments for that one). We did learn the source of randomista and came […]
Krista Donaldson on taking risk out of the design process.
Today’s inspiration comes from IDEO.org’s designkit. It’s one of 7 mindsets that lie at the core of their human-centered design process. You can also hear it spoken in context by Krista Donaldson in a short video on the designkit site. Here’s the quote: You’re taking risk out of the process by making something simple first. […]
What Ann K Emery really thinks about clustered bar charts.
Today’s illustration was inspired by Ann K Emery’s blog post on six alternatives to the clustered bar chart. We can all agree that 3-d exploding pie charts are pretty rotten. My vote for worst chart? The clustered bar chart. I see clustered bar charts everywhere. E-V-E-R-Y-W-H-E-R-E. On pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 of […]