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
Read more:
Uncommon chart types: Slopegraphs
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!
Data visualization in a time of pandemic – #6: Viral scrollytelling
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.
Five steps towards improving your dashboard
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.
Dear Data: Dataviz book review
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!
Data visualization tools: Datawrapper
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.
Uncommon chart types: Waffle charts
If you thought a pie chart was the only food-related chart type out there, think again! Waffle charts are a great alternative.
We are really into visual communication!
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