Blog

When you're dealing with a chart that has too much information on it, the most straightforward advice to follow is: break it down into multiple charts, each with less information on them. A powerful example of this is a so-called small multiple approach.

At Baryon, we’re huge fans of podcasts! Data visualization podcasts are a great way to stay up to date on the latest trends and techniques in data visualization.

Spreadsheet tools such as Microsoft Excel or Numbers might not be the first thing on your mind when considering data visualization tools, but they can be pretty solid choices to build data visuals. Don’t let anyone convince you that using Excel to create data visuals is unprofessional.

Fonts evoke emotions: there are very sophisticated fonts, playful fonts, attention-grabbing fonts, and elegant handwritten fonts. Using the wrong type of font can have a lot of impact. In data visualization the implications of typography are mainly focused on readability. Labels and annotations can easily become so small they get hard to read. Above all else, we should choose a font which is readable at small sizes.

Colour is one of the most crucial tools we have to turn a normal chart into a powerful chart with a clear message, a chart which tells a story rather than simply presenting the information.

A crucial step in building a powerful chart is choosing the right type of chart. A lot of charts don’t work because they simply use the wrong type of chart. To avoid this trap, we must ask ourselves a basic question: what’s the ultimate goal of our data visual? What do we want to show with our data?

Removing noise from a data visual is not only about taking things away such as gridlines, axes or legends. That’s just one part of it, which we could call removing physical noise. Improving the signal-to-noise ratio is often also about adding little things that help our audience better understand the visual. We are helping them by removing mental noise, or mental barriers.

Creating charts in Excel can be a very powerful tool for making sense of complex data sets, and for visualizing them. But the default options are not always the most pretty or effective ones. Here are our top three tips to create better Excel charts.

‘Less is more’. It’s a crucial principle in most of our communication, and in data visualization in particular. Because of my background as a physicist, I prefer to talk about the ‘signal-to-noise ratio’. The message - our signal - should be amplified as much as possible, giving it all of the attention. Everything that can distract from our message - the noise - should be removed.

A powerful chart has a clear message. It should be short and meaningful, and obvious in the blink of an eye. If there’s only one thing our audience remembers at the end of the day, this should be it.

Once we’ve decided to create a data visual or infographic, there are a lot of questions we should ask ourselves to determine the most suitable format. These considerations could include size, readability, possible interactive functionality, and the level of detail we need.

An American accountant managed - as the youngest ever! - to win a crucial election in Los Angeles - thanks to the power of data visualization. And you, too, can use powerful charts to boost your career!

Data visualization is very powerful, but it can also be hard. That’s because a great data visual combines three different aspects simultaneously: clarity, correctness, and beauty.

You want to start creating clear and attractive data visuals, but don't know where to start? No worries, here's a complete overview of tools, resources and inspiration you can use as a starting point for your designs.

The amount of data coming our way is growing exponentially. In 2021 alone, it is estimated that humankind generated 74 zettabytes of data – that’s about 10,000 GB per person. How on earth are we going to keep this manageable?

Did you know that our brain makes up 2% of our body weight, but consumers about 20% of our energy? Did you know that we have a second brain, located in our gut?

Our information designer Sofia made this insightful infographic, giving you an overview of eight amazing facts about the brain!

Not all birthdays are created equal... in fact, for most countries in the north temperate zone, more people are born in summer (May - August) than in winter (October - January). This heatmap allows you to check how popular your birth date is. It shows the number of people in Belgium for each specific birthday.

Visualizing Complexity is a great new data visualization book published by information design Superdot. Here's our verdict.

The original chart in this example is trying to suggest a strong correlation between sugar intake and obesity in the US between 1980 and 2000. It does so by carefully choosing the vertical axis ranges and scaling so both lines nicely fall on top of each other.

If you want to start creating clear and attractive visuals about your research, but don't know where to start, this page is for you! Here's a complete overview of tools, resources and inspiration you can use as a starting point for your designs.

When you're teaching data analysis or data visualization, or when you're learning new data visualization tools and techniques, you might be looking for datasets to practice with. Here are some great starting points.

Graphical abstracts are becoming more and more important. Journal publishers such as Elsevier encourage you to create a concise visual summary of the main findings of your research. But where to start? What steps should you follow to create the perfect graphical abstract for your article? What tools can you use?

In the 30-day Map Challenge, you are challenged to design a new map every day around a certain topic. I participated in November 2020, and wrote this post to share my thought processes, data sources, tools and results!

You want to start creating clear and attractive data visuals, but don't know where to start? No worries, here's a complete overview of tools, resources and inspiration you can use as a starting point for your designs.

The Storytelling with Data book has been on my wishlist as long as I can remember, because so many people recommend it as one of the must read dataviz books. So let's see what the fuzz is all about - here's my review!

Slopegraphs appear in 'serious' newspapers, but they are very easy to create yourself. Use them if you want to compare how values have changed between two different points in time!

In this final chapter, we’ll dive deeper into some of the insightful stories which have been published about the novel coronavirus and the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than looking at single charts, we’ll highlight some long-form stories about the origin of the virus, how it works, and how it spread.

Today I would like to share with you the five steps I usually follow when I analyze and improve dashboards. If you are planning to analyze and improve your own dashboard, or maybe the dashboard someone else created and you want to provide feedback on, you could follow these five steps as well.

Last February, on a cold and rainy day, I received the Dear Data book as part of a Dataviz Drawing workshop by Stefanie Posavec. A pretty large and heavy book, the kind you could put on your coffee table to show off (which I did!). Let's review it!

If you are writing articles online and need to quickly insert beautiful, interactive charts, maps or tables, Datawrapper is the tool you are looking for.

If you thought a pie chart was the only food-related chart type out there, think again! Waffle charts are a great alternative.

Choosing the colours for your infographic might not sound like a priority, but a colour scheme can make or break your entire design, no matter how good your structure or your images are.