I have only recently come to realise just how much I love (and need) to recreate arguments and processes visually. I love flow charts and venn diagrams. As a kid, I used to pore over those cross-section books and Usborne historical adventures. Now, as an adult, here are my top 10 favourite links to do with data visualisation:
- Hans Rosling’s dynamic charting tool Gapminder which visualises change over time on various statistics to do with development around the world
- The Shape of Song which maps the theme and variations in music
- Blaise Aguera y Arcas at TED on Photosynth/Seadragon a mindblowing tool for harvesting online photos to receate 3D images
- Chris Jordan’s art (also featured at TED) which helps get a handle on the massive-ness of some shocking statistics
- The World Freedom Atlas (I had to include something geographic!)
- The blogs infosthetics and a beautiful www
- VizThink’s live online drawing tool
- Wordle, which turns content analysis into art
- The periodic table of data visualisation strategies for ideas about how to visualise stuff
- Indexed for entertaining and thoughful graphical interpretations of life
Running reports at work through Wordle is heaps of fun!
Indeed! And they make great title pages/cover images for reports on topics where pictures aren’t really relevant.