I am a data nerd. I grew up, professionally speaking, designing studies, collecting data, and trying to get people to make use of the analysis and results. After I married a graphic designer, I realized that no one was going to pay attention to my amazing, glorious, wonderful data if my…
Have you ever accidentally taken one step too far down the internet rabbit hole? This has happened to me more than once when I’m trying to google the solution to why my chart isn’t working. I click into a Q & A forum that teases the answer – but the…
A google image search of “data scorecard” turns up these results: Full, just FULL, of stoplight color schemes. Friends don’t let friends use stoplight color schemes. This is the tiny hill I am willing to die on. So Friend, let’s talk about why this has got…
The most annoying Magic 8 ball answer would be “The answer lies within.” Because, it’s like, why would I even be consulting you, Magic 8 ball, if I already knew the answer? Yet in reality I can’t even believe how often this is the case. People will actually tell me…
Star Wars or Star Trek? I totally wasn’t expecting this MD to pitch me that question on live TV. Good thing I have a teenage son who has spent years preparing me for the right answer. The docs on the Medical News Network brought me on to talk…
When Jeff Bezos said in his 2018 annual letter to stakeholders, “We don’t do PowerPoint,” you could almost hear the stock price of Microsoft sliding downward. Presentation designers around the world started looking for second jobs. CEOs in other organizations started to follow suit, because whatever Bezos does is…
Half of the people in my data visualization workshops don’t even realize there’s a style guide lurking around somewhere in their organization, but chances are the Communications department has been begging people to use the style guide all this time. One big reason more folks don’t adhere to the…
Once a season I’ll get an itch to overhaul some part of my house. It’s an old house, so it usually happens that in the process of fixing one problem, we identify another that will send me back to my local hardware store and double the length of the project.
Everyone knows that when Katie Porter pulls out the whiteboard, someone is about to get schooled. This time, let us be the students. This video is a masterclass in data storytelling. And not just because she uses a chart. Let’s breakdown what you can learn from watching an expert make…
Here’s the thing: Your graph isn’t ever just going to chill out in your Excel file or Tableau worksheet. It’s going to live a life elsewhere, like in a dashboard, a slide, or a webpage. So when we make our graphs, we have to think about their future home environment.
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