Data visualization resources: all the links you'll ever need!
Data visualization: all the resources you'll ever need!
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.
Finding useful datasets
- Google Dataset Search: datasetsearch.research.google.com
- Kaggle: kaggle.com
- data.world: data.world datasets
- Or read our blogpost: Small datasets to practice your data visualization skills
Inspiration for data visualization
- Information is Beautiful: informationisbeautiful.net
- Information is Beautiful awards: informationisbeautifulawards.com
- Visual.ly: visual.ly/view
- Pinterest: pinterest.com
- Dear data: dear-data.com
Digital tools to create infographics and data visuals
- Canva: canva.com
- Infogram: infogram.com
- Piktochart: piktochart.com
- Visme: visme.co
- Venngage Infographic maker and Graph maker
- Whimsical: whimsical.com
- Adobe Illustrator: adobe.com
- Affinity Designer: affinity.serif.com
- Flowchart tool: draw.io
- BioRender (like Canva, but specifically for life sciences): biorender.com
- List of dataviz tools: creativebloq.com/design-tools/data-visualization
- ggplot2 cheat sheet: https://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/UG/SM/STAT3022/r/current/Misc/data-visualization-2.1.pdf
Illustrations and icons
- Freepik: freepik.com
- The noun project: thenounproject.com
Colour schemes
- Adobe Color CC: color.adobe.com
- Coolors.co: coolors.co
- Pictaculous: digitalinspiration.com/color-palette-generator
- Website color schemes: canva.com/learn/website-color-schemes
- 100 brilliant color combinations: canva.com/learn/100-color-combinations
- Article: Your friendly guide to colors in data visualisation
- Python Color Palette Finder
Typography
- Dafont: dafont.com
- Google Fonts: fonts.google.com
- FontSquirrel font identifier: fontsquirrel.com/matcherator
- Font Pairing: fontpair.co
Creating graphs
- Dataviz catalogue: datavizcatalogue.com
- Choose and design the perfect chart: chart.guide
- Choosing the right chart: infogram.com/page/choose-the-right-chart-data-visualization
- The Chartmaker Directory: chartmaker.visualisingdata.com
- The Data Viz Project: datavizproject.com
- Datawrapper: datawrapper.de
- Flourish: flourish.studio
- LocalFocus: localfocus.nl
- D3.js: d3js.org
- Notion now has a feature to create charts
Creating maps
- Snazzy maps (Google maps styles): snazzymaps.com
- Mapbox: mapbox.com
- Mapme: mapme.com/stories
- Datawrapper: datawrapper.de
- Leaflet JavaScript Library: leafletjs.com
- 3D maps with QGIS and Aerialod: statsmapsnpix.com
- Read our blogpost: Behind the maps
Creating tables
- The Ultimate Guide to Designing Data Tables
- Table inspiration: fivethirtyeight.com
Ethics in data visualization
- Dealing with outliers: https://flowingdata.com/2018/03/07/visualizing-outliers/
- Visualizing projections and missing data: https://flowingdata.com/2018/01/30/visualizing-incomplete-and-missing-data/
- Spurious correlations: https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
- About dynamite plots: http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/wiki/Main/DynamitePlots
- Alternatives to box plots: https://nightingaledvs.com/ive-stopped-using-box-plots-should-you/
- Visualizing the uncertainty in data (Flowing Data): https://flowingdata.com/2018/01/08/visualizing-the-uncertainty-in-data/
- Visualizing uncertainty (Claus Wilke): https://clauswilke.com/dataviz/visualizing-uncertainty.html
Books about infographics and data visualization
- Data visualisation, Andy Kirk
- Dear Data, Giorgia Lupi & Stefanie Posavec
- Information graphics, Taschen
- Infographic designers’ sketchbooks, Steven Heller & Rick Landers
- Storytelling with data, Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic
- The visual display of quantitative information, Edward Tufte
- Trees, maps and theorems, Jean-Luc Doumont
- Visual journalism, Gestalten
- Visual thinking, Willemien Brand
People on Twitter talking about data
- Twitter list: Dataviz world leaders
Videos about data visualization
- The beauty of data visualization (David McCandless)
- Journalism in the age of data (Geoff McGhee)
- Datafest Tbilisi (dozens of free talks)
- Outlier 2021 (62 free talks)
Dataviz blogs and online magazines
- Chartable (by the Datawrapper team)
- Cool Infographics (Randy Krum)
- Flowing Data (Nathan Yau)
- Infographics for the People (John Grimwade)
- The Information is Beautiful blog (David McCandless)
- Junk Charts (Kaiser Fung)
- Nightingale (by the Data Visualization Society)
- The Storytelling with Data blog (Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic)
- The Visme blog on infographics
- Visualising Data (Andy Kirk)
Dataviz podcasts
![Books on a bookshelf - infographics resources](https://baryon.be/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/resources1-uai-258x172.jpg)
Read more:
Choosing the right font for your data visual
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.
2 January 2023
Three roles of colour in a data visual
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.
26 December 2022
7 different goals for your chart
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?
19 December 2022
Making a data visual noise-free
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.
12 December 2022
Three tips to create powerful charts in Excel
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.
8 December 2022
A powerful chart has a high signal-to-noise ratio
‘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.
5 December 2022
We are really into visual communication!
Every now and then we send out a newsletter with latest work, handpicked inspirational infographics, must-read blog posts, upcoming dates for workshops and presentations, and links to useful tools and tips. Leave your email address here and we’ll add you to our mailing list of awesome people!
![](https://baryon.be/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/email-uai-258x194.png)
Research visuals: all the resources you'll ever need!
Research visuals: all the resources you'll ever need!
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.
Presentation
Inspiration for your visuals
- Information is Beautiful: informationisbeautiful.net
- Information is Beautiful awards: informationisbeautifulawards.com
- Visual.ly: visual.ly/view
- Pinterest: pinterest.com
- Google Dataset Search: datasetsearch.research.google.com
- Dear data: dear-data.com
Digital tools to create visuals
- Canva: canva.com
- Infogram: infogram.com
- Piktochart: piktochart.com
- Venngage Infographic maker and Graph maker
- Whimsical: whimsical.com
- Adobe Illustrator: adobe.com
- Affinity Designer: affinity.serif.com
- Inkscape: inkscape.org
- BioRender (like Canva, but specifically for life sciences): biorender.com
- Free infographic templates in PowerPoint: hubspot.com/infographic-templates
- List of dataviz tools: creativebloq.com/design-tools/data-visualization
Inkscape tutorial videos
Photos to use in your visuals
- Burst: burst.shopify.com
- Flickr: flickr.com/
- Picography: picography.co
- Pixabay: pixabay.com
- Reshot: reshot.com
- Unsplash: unsplash.com
- Visual Hunt: visualhunt.com
Illustrations and icons to use in visuals
- Freepik: freepik.com
- The noun project: thenounproject.com
Photos and illustrations (specific themes)
- Cathopic, catholic pictures: cathopic.com
- Figshare, plant illustrations and more for biologists: figshare.com/authors/Plant_Illustrations
- Medical illustrations: smart.servier.com
Colour schemes for your visuals
- Adobe Color CC: color.adobe.com
- Coolors.co: coolors.co
- Pictaculous: digitalinspiration.com/color-palette-generator
- Website color schemes: canva.com/learn/website-color-schemes
- 100 brilliant color combinations: canva.com/learn/100-color-combinations
- Article: Your friendly guide to colors in data visualisation
Typography for your visuals
- Dafont: dafont.com
- Google Fonts: fonts.google.com
- FontSquirrel font identifier: fontsquirrel.com/matcherator
- Font Pairing: fontpair.co
Creating graphs
- Dataviz catalogue: datavizcatalogue.com
- Choose and design the perfect chart: chart.guide
- Choosing the right chart: infogram.com/page/choose-the-right-chart-data-visualization
- The Chartmaker Directory: chartmaker.visualisingdata.com
- The Data Viz Project: datavizproject.com
- Datawrapper: datawrapper.de
- Flourish: flourish.studio
- LocalFocus: localfocus.nl
- D3.js: d3js.org
Creating maps
- Snazzy maps (Google maps styles): snazzymaps.com
- Mapbox: mapbox.com
- Mapme: mapme.com/stories
- Datawrapper: datawrapper.de
- Leaflet JavaScript Library: leafletjs.com
- 3D maps with QGIS and Aerialod: statsmapsnpix.com
- Read our blogpost: Behind the maps
Books about visuals, infographics and data visualization
- Data visualisation, Andy Kirk
- Dear Data, Giorgia Lupi & Stefanie Posavec
- Information graphics, Taschen
- Infographic designers’ sketchbooks, Steven Heller & Rick Landers
- Storytelling with data, Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic
- The visual display of quantitative information, Edward Tufte
- Trees, maps and theorems, Jean-Luc Doumont
- Visual journalism, Gestalten
- Visual thinking, Willemien Brand
People on Twitter talking about infographics and data visualization
- Twitter list: Dataviz world leaders
Infographic blogs and online magazines
- Chartable (by the Datawrapper team)
- Cool Infographics (Randy Krum)
- Flowing Data (Nathan Yau)
- Infographics for the People (John Grimwade)
- The Information is Beautiful blog (David McCandless)
- Junk Charts (Kaiser Fung)
- Nightingale (by the Data Visualization Society)
- The Storytelling with Data blog (Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic)
- The Visme blog on infographics
- Visualising Data (Andy Kirk)
Podcasts on data visualization
![Books on a bookshelf - infographics resources](https://baryon.be/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/resources1-uai-258x172.jpg)
Read more:
Choosing the right font for your data visual
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.
2 January 2023
Three roles of colour in a data visual
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.
26 December 2022
7 different goals for your chart
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?
19 December 2022
Making a data visual noise-free
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.
12 December 2022
Three tips to create powerful charts in Excel
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.
8 December 2022
A powerful chart has a high signal-to-noise ratio
‘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.
5 December 2022
We are really into visual communication!
Every now and then we send out a newsletter with latest work, handpicked inspirational infographics, must-read blog posts, upcoming dates for workshops and presentations, and links to useful tools and tips. Leave your email address here and we’ll add you to our mailing list of awesome people!
![](https://baryon.be/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/email-uai-258x194.png)
Small datasets to practice your data visualization skills
Small datasets to practice your data visualization skills
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.
But such datasets are not always easy to find. They should be sufficiently small, so they are manageable with common analysis tools for beginners, such as Microsoft Excel. On the other hand, they should have sufficient depth to allow you to find interesting insights – the data should have at least a few different parameters and dimensions. Finally, the data should cover an interesting topic to keep your students (or yourself) engaged throughout the practice.
This page gives you some starting points to find interesting small datasets, which you can use for data analysis and data visualization teaching and practicing!
General dataset sources
- The wonderful chart creation tool RAWGraphs has an interesting set of data samples from various sources. Topics include wine aromas, cat classification, FIFA players statistics, letter frequency, and much more.
- Kaggle user Rachael Tatman has compiled a list of fun, beginner-friendly datasets specifically suited for statistical testing, but they can be used for data visualization as well.
- The weekly Makeover Monday challenge (initiated by the Tableau community) has generated an extensive list of datasets covering a wide variety of topics. Most of them are hosted on data.world.
Some personal favorites
![Small datasets to practice your data visualization skills](https://baryon.be/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/small-datasets-for-data-visualization-uai-258x215.jpg)
Here are some of the datasets I regularly use in my data analytics and visualization teaching and trainings:
- The Titanic Disaster Dataset listing, among other parameters, the age, gender and travel class of this famous ship’s passengers – including whether they survived the event or not.
- A list of Nobel Prize laureates from 1901 to 2020, including information on gender, country, age and category. I often use this as part of a Datawrapper exercise – you can see the finished visual at the bottom of this page!
- The results of the annual Stack Overflow Developer surveys. This is a pretty extensive dataset (over 83.000 rows and 49 columns) providing information on salary, tools used, level of experience, and much, much more.
- An overview of Summer Olympics medal winners, unfortunately only between 1976 and 2008, with information on discipline, country, gender, and type of medal received.
- Responses to the Ask a Manager Salary Survey 2021, with lots of opportunities for practicing data cleaning techniques.
- A pretty extensive but fictituous spreadsheet of US Regional Sales Data, excellent to demonstrate and practice basic data analysis techniques.
- I use this Makeover Monday dataset of 40 Years of Music Industry Sales often during my trainings as a way to demonstrate RAWGraphs.
What are your personal favorite datasets to use in data analytics or data visualization teaching? Let us know, and we’ll add them to this list!
![](https://baryon.be/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/small-dataset-example-visual-uai-258x145.jpg)
Read more:
Choosing the right font for your data visual
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.
2 January 2023
Three roles of colour in a data visual
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.
26 December 2022
7 different goals for your chart
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?
19 December 2022
Making a data visual noise-free
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.
12 December 2022
Three tips to create powerful charts in Excel
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.
8 December 2022
A powerful chart has a high signal-to-noise ratio
‘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.
5 December 2022
We are really into visual communication!
Every now and then we send out a newsletter with latest work, handpicked inspirational infographics, must-read blog posts, upcoming dates for workshops and presentations, and links to useful tools and tips. Leave your email address here and we’ll add you to our mailing list of awesome people!
![](https://baryon.be/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/email-uai-258x194.png)
How to create a graphical abstract
How to create a graphical abstract
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?
On this page, you’ll find an overview of tips, tools and inspiration to create your own graphical abstract for your next article. Let’s show the world what your research is all about!
Digital tools to create graphical abstracts
You can use almost any graphical tool you want to create a graphical abstract. You could even use just pen and paper, if you like – the story is the most important part of the visual, not the artistic quality. Use the tool you know best, or feel the most comfortable with!
Here is a list of tools to get you started:
- Adobe Illustrator: adobe.com
- Affinity Designer: affinity.serif.com
- BioRender (for life sciences): biorender.com
- Canva: canva.com
- Diagrams: diagrams.net
- Infogram: infogram.com
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- Paint.NET: getpaint.net
- Piktochart: piktochart.com
- Venngage Infographic maker
- Whimsical: whimsical.com
Illustrations and icons to use in infographics
- Figshare (plants and more, for biologists): figshare.com/authors/Plant_Illustrations
- Freepik: freepik.com
- SMART (life sciences): smart.servier.com
- The noun project (icons): thenounproject.com
Photos to use in graphical abstracts
- Burst: burst.shopify.com
- Cathopic (catholic pictures): cathopic.com
- Flickr: flickr.com/
- Picography: picography.co
- Pixabay: pixabay.com
- Reshot: reshot.com
- Unsplash: unsplash.com
- Visual Hunt: visualhunt.com
Color schemes for graphical abstracts
- Adobe Color CC: color.adobe.com
- Coolors.co: coolors.co
- Pictaculous: digitalinspiration.com/color-palette-generator
- Website color schemes: canva.com/learn/website-color-schemes
- 100 brilliant color combinations: canva.com/learn/100-color-combinations
Creating graphs and maps for graphical abstracts
- Choose and design the perfect chart: chart.guide
- Choosing the right chart: infogram.com/page/choose-the-right-chart-data-visualization
- D3.js: d3js.org
- Dataviz catalogue: datavizcatalogue.com
- Datawrapper: datawrapper.de
- Flourish: flourish.studio
- LocalFocus: localfocus.nl
- Mapbox: mapbox.com
- Mapme: mapme.com/stories
- Snazzy maps (Google maps styles): snazzymaps.com
Books that can help you create better visuals
- Infographic designers’ sketchbooks, Steven Heller & Rick Landers
- Storytelling with data, Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic
- Trees, maps and theorems, Jean-Luc Doumont
- Visual thinking, Willemien Brand
Blogs about information design
- Chartable (Datawrapper)
- Cool Infographics (Randy Krum)
- Flowing Data (Nathan Yau)
- Infographics for the People (John Grimwade)
- The Information is Beautiful blog (David McCandless)
- Junk Charts (Kaiser Fung)
- Nightingale (on Medium, mostly paid articles)
- The Storytelling with Data blog (Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic)
- The Visme blog on infographics
- Visualising Data (Andy Kirk)
Wrapping up
Did we miss something? Which indispensable resource did we miss? Make sure to let us know at koen@baryon.be!
Also, feel free to check out our other resource guides:
- Data visualization: all the resources you’ll ever need
- Infographics: all the resources you’ll ever need
![Books on a bookshelf - infographics resources](https://baryon.be/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/resources1-uai-258x172.jpg)
Read more:
Choosing the right font for your data visual
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.
2 January 2023
Three roles of colour in a data visual
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.
26 December 2022
7 different goals for your chart
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?
19 December 2022
Making a data visual noise-free
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.
12 December 2022
Three tips to create powerful charts in Excel
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.
8 December 2022
A powerful chart has a high signal-to-noise ratio
‘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.
5 December 2022
We are really into visual communication!
Every now and then we send out a newsletter with latest work, handpicked inspirational infographics, must-read blog posts, upcoming dates for workshops and presentations, and links to useful tools and tips. Leave your email address here and we’ll add you to our mailing list of awesome people!
![](https://baryon.be/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/email-uai-258x194.png)
Data visualization resources: all the links you'll ever need!
Data visualization: all the resources you'll ever need!
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.
Presentation
Doctoral Schools – Turning research data into powerful visuals:
- Download the slides for session 1 (pdf, 25.5 MB)
- Download the slides for session 2
- Download the slides for session 3
Finding useful datasets
- Google Dataset Search: datasetsearch.research.google.com
- Kaggle: kaggle.com
- data.world: data.world datasets
- Or read our blogpost: Small datasets to practice your data visualization skills
Inspiration for data visualization
- Information is Beautiful: informationisbeautiful.net
- Information is Beautiful awards: informationisbeautifulawards.com
- Visual.ly: visual.ly/view
- Pinterest: pinterest.com
- Dear data: dear-data.com
Digital tools to create infographics and data visuals
- Canva: canva.com
- Infogram: infogram.com
- Piktochart: piktochart.com
- Visme: visme.co
- Venngage Infographic maker and Graph maker
- Whimsical: whimsical.com
- Adobe Illustrator: adobe.com
- Affinity Designer: affinity.serif.com
- Flowchart tool: draw.io
- BioRender (like Canva, but specifically for life sciences): biorender.com
- List of dataviz tools: creativebloq.com/design-tools/data-visualization
- ggplot2 cheat sheet: https://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/UG/SM/STAT3022/r/current/Misc/data-visualization-2.1.pdf
Illustrations and icons
- Freepik: freepik.com
- The noun project: thenounproject.com
Colour schemes
- Adobe Color CC: color.adobe.com
- Coolors.co: coolors.co
- Pictaculous: digitalinspiration.com/color-palette-generator
- Website color schemes: canva.com/learn/website-color-schemes
- 100 brilliant color combinations: canva.com/learn/100-color-combinations
- Article: Your friendly guide to colors in data visualisation
Typography
- Dafont: dafont.com
- Google Fonts: fonts.google.com
- FontSquirrel font identifier: fontsquirrel.com/matcherator
- Font Pairing: fontpair.co
Creating graphs
- Dataviz catalogue: datavizcatalogue.com
- Choose and design the perfect chart: chart.guide
- Choosing the right chart: infogram.com/page/choose-the-right-chart-data-visualization
- The Chartmaker Directory: chartmaker.visualisingdata.com
- The Data Viz Project: datavizproject.com
- Datawrapper: datawrapper.de
- Flourish: flourish.studio
- LocalFocus: localfocus.nl
- D3.js: d3js.org
Creating maps
- Snazzy maps (Google maps styles): snazzymaps.com
- Mapbox: mapbox.com
- Mapme: mapme.com/stories
- Datawrapper: datawrapper.de
- Leaflet JavaScript Library: leafletjs.com
- 3D maps with QGIS and Aerialod: statsmapsnpix.com
- Read our blogpost: Behind the maps
Creating tables
- The Ultimate Guide to Designing Data Tables
- Table inspiration: fivethirtyeight.com
Ethics in data visualization
- Dealing with outliers: https://flowingdata.com/2018/03/07/visualizing-outliers/
- Visualizing projections and missing data: https://flowingdata.com/2018/01/30/visualizing-incomplete-and-missing-data/
- Spurious correlations: https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
- About dynamite plots: http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/wiki/Main/DynamitePlots
- Alternatives to box plots: https://nightingaledvs.com/ive-stopped-using-box-plots-should-you/
- Visualizing the uncertainty in data (Flowing Data): https://flowingdata.com/2018/01/08/visualizing-the-uncertainty-in-data/
- Visualizing uncertainty (Claus Wilke): https://clauswilke.com/dataviz/visualizing-uncertainty.html
Books about infographics and data visualization
- Data visualisation, Andy Kirk
- Dear Data, Giorgia Lupi & Stefanie Posavec
- Information graphics, Taschen
- Infographic designers’ sketchbooks, Steven Heller & Rick Landers
- Storytelling with data, Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic
- The visual display of quantitative information, Edward Tufte
- Trees, maps and theorems, Jean-Luc Doumont
- Visual journalism, Gestalten
- Visual thinking, Willemien Brand
People on Twitter talking about data
- Twitter list: Dataviz world leaders
Videos about data visualization
- The beauty of data visualization (David McCandless)
- Journalism in the age of data (Geoff McGhee)
- Datafest Tbilisi (dozens of free talks)
- Outlier 2021 (62 free talks)
Dataviz blogs and online magazines
- Chartable (by the Datawrapper team)
- Cool Infographics (Randy Krum)
- Flowing Data (Nathan Yau)
- Infographics for the People (John Grimwade)
- The Information is Beautiful blog (David McCandless)
- Junk Charts (Kaiser Fung)
- Nightingale (by the Data Visualization Society)
- The Storytelling with Data blog (Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic)
- The Visme blog on infographics
- Visualising Data (Andy Kirk)
Dataviz podcasts
![Books on a bookshelf - infographics resources](https://baryon.be/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/resources1-uai-258x172.jpg)
Read more:
Choosing the right font for your data visual
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.
2 January 2023
Three roles of colour in a data visual
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.
26 December 2022
7 different goals for your chart
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?
19 December 2022
Making a data visual noise-free
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.
12 December 2022
Three tips to create powerful charts in Excel
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.
8 December 2022
A powerful chart has a high signal-to-noise ratio
‘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.
5 December 2022
We are really into visual communication!
Every now and then we send out a newsletter with latest work, handpicked inspirational infographics, must-read blog posts, upcoming dates for workshops and presentations, and links to useful tools and tips. Leave your email address here and we’ll add you to our mailing list of awesome people!
![](https://baryon.be/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/email-uai-258x194.png)
Infographics: all the resources you'll ever need!
Infographics: all the resources you'll ever need!
Infographics are the perfect way to turn complex information into attractive visual insights. They can help researchers, marketeers, journalists or consultants to share knowledge with students, clients, readers, or the general public. If you want to start creating clear and attractive infographics, but don’t know where to start, you’ve come to the right place. This page gives you a complete overview of tools, resources and inspiration you can use as a starting point for your designs!
Presentation
Vlaamse Hogescholenraad:
- Download the slides (pdf, 10.2MB)
Universiteit Utrecht workshop:
- Download the slides (pdf, 21MB)
Inspiration for infographics
- Information is Beautiful: informationisbeautiful.net
- Information is Beautiful awards: informationisbeautifulawards.com
- Visual.ly: visual.ly/view
- Pinterest: pinterest.com
- Google Dataset Search: datasetsearch.research.google.com
- Dear data: dear-data.com
Digital tools to create infographics
- Canva: canva.com
- Infogram: infogram.com
- Piktochart: piktochart.com
- Venngage Infographic maker and Graph maker
- Whimsical: whimsical.com
- Adobe Illustrator: adobe.com
- Affinity Designer: affinity.serif.com
- BioRender (like Canva, but specifically for life sciences): biorender.com
- Free infographic templates in PowerPoint: hubspot.com/infographic-templates
- List of dataviz tools: creativebloq.com/design-tools/data-visualization
Photos to use in infographics
- Burst: burst.shopify.com
- Flickr: flickr.com/
- Picography: picography.co
- Pixabay: pixabay.com
- Reshot: reshot.com
- Unsplash: unsplash.com
- Visual Hunt: visualhunt.com
Illustrations and icons to use in infographics
- Freepik: freepik.com
- The noun project: thenounproject.com
Photos and illustrations (specific themes)
- Cathopic, catholic pictures: cathopic.com
- Figshare, plant illustrations and more for biologists: figshare.com/authors/Plant_Illustrations
- Medical illustrations: smart.servier.com
Colour schemes for infographics
- Adobe Color CC: color.adobe.com
- Coolors.co: coolors.co
- Pictaculous: digitalinspiration.com/color-palette-generator
- Website color schemes: canva.com/learn/website-color-schemes
- 100 brilliant color combinations: canva.com/learn/100-color-combinations
- Article: Your friendly guide to colors in data visualisation
Typography for infographics
- Dafont: dafont.com
- Google Fonts: fonts.google.com
- FontSquirrel font identifier: fontsquirrel.com/matcherator
- Font Pairing: fontpair.co
Creating graphs for infographics
- Dataviz catalogue: datavizcatalogue.com
- Choose and design the perfect chart: chart.guide
- Choosing the right chart: infogram.com/page/choose-the-right-chart-data-visualization
- The Chartmaker Directory: chartmaker.visualisingdata.com
- The Data Viz Project: datavizproject.com
- Datawrapper: datawrapper.de
- Flourish: flourish.studio
- LocalFocus: localfocus.nl
- D3.js: d3js.org
Creating maps for infographics
- Snazzy maps (Google maps styles): snazzymaps.com
- Mapbox: mapbox.com
- Mapme: mapme.com/stories
- Datawrapper: datawrapper.de
- Leaflet JavaScript Library: leafletjs.com
- 3D maps with QGIS and Aerialod: statsmapsnpix.com
- Read our blogpost: Behind the maps
Books about infographics
- Data visualisation, Andy Kirk
- Dear Data, Giorgia Lupi & Stefanie Posavec
- Information graphics, Taschen
- Infographic designers’ sketchbooks, Steven Heller & Rick Landers
- Storytelling with data, Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic
- The visual display of quantitative information, Edward Tufte
- Trees, maps and theorems, Jean-Luc Doumont
- Visual journalism, Gestalten
- Visual thinking, Willemien Brand
People on Twitter talking about infographics
- Twitter list: Dataviz world leaders
Videos about infographics
- The beauty of data visualization (David McCandless)
- Journalism in the age of data (Geoff McGhee)
- Datafest online 2020 (78 different talks)
- Outlier 2021 (62 free talks)
Infographic blogs and online magazines
- Chartable (by the Datawrapper team)
- Cool Infographics (Randy Krum)
- Flowing Data (Nathan Yau)
- Infographics for the People (John Grimwade)
- The Information is Beautiful blog (David McCandless)
- Junk Charts (Kaiser Fung)
- Nightingale (by the Data Visualization Society)
- The Storytelling with Data blog (Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic)
- The Visme blog on infographics
- Visualising Data (Andy Kirk)
Infographic podcasts
![Books on a bookshelf - infographics resources](https://baryon.be/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/resources1-uai-258x172.jpg)
Read more:
Choosing the right font for your data visual
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.
2 January 2023
Three roles of colour in a data visual
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.
26 December 2022
7 different goals for your chart
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?
19 December 2022
Making a data visual noise-free
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.
12 December 2022
Three tips to create powerful charts in Excel
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.
8 December 2022
A powerful chart has a high signal-to-noise ratio
‘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.
5 December 2022
We are really into visual communication!
Every now and then we send out a newsletter with latest work, handpicked inspirational infographics, must-read blog posts, upcoming dates for workshops and presentations, and links to useful tools and tips. Leave your email address here and we’ll add you to our mailing list of awesome people!
![](https://baryon.be/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/email-uai-258x194.png)