Delightful, strategy-shifting, and totally free ideas for your next data viz

Friends Don’t Let Friends Use Stoplight Color Schemes

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…

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The Answer Lies Within

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…

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COVID Data Viz

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…

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Will Amazon Lift Their Ban on PowerPoint?

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…

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The Missing Part of Style Guides

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…

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A Masterclass in Data Storytelling

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…

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Marry Your Graph

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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Visualizing Small Datasets

The morning that I’m writing this blog post, the US has just asked for a pause on the use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine because 6 women have experienced blood clots. That’s 6 cases out of the 6.8 million J & J vaccines administered, or 0.0000882%. This is…

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