Here you’ll find a curated collection of tools, templates, articles, and ideas to help you design and communicate information with clarity. Whether you’re working on a data-heavy report, an engaging infographic, or an interactive chart, these resources are here to guide, inspire, and save you time.

I’ve gathered what I use in my own projects, alongside practical tips and examples you can adapt to your own work. Browse around, take what’s useful, and feel free to share with others who value thoughtful, well-crafted information design.

Looking for reliable, well-structured datasets to jump-start your next data visualization project? Here are some of my favorite starting points:

• Google Dataset Search: datasetsearch.research.google.com
• Kaggle: kaggle.com – they also have a list of beginner-friendly datasets
• data.world: data.world datasets
• Our World in Data
• The NASA Open Data Portal

Looking for more? Read our blogpost: Small datasets to practice your data visualization skills

• Information is Beautiful: informationisbeautiful.net
• Information is Beautiful awards: informationisbeautifulawards.com
• Visual.ly: visual.ly/view
• Pinterest: pinterest.com
• Dear data: dear-data.com

• 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

Learning how to create and edit vector images (rather than bitmap images) is one of the key steps in unlocking your full information design power. Inkscape is a powerful free tool to help you do just that. I personally found the following tutorials very useful, not too long, and to-the-point:

• Beginner tutorials playlist
• Intermediate/advanced tutorials playlist

• Freepik: freepik.com
• The noun project: thenounproject.com

It is undeniable that Lisa Charlotte Muth (Head of Communications at Datawrapper) is the ultimate expert when it comes to color use in data visualization. The list of articles about color on the Datawrapper blog is the best source you’ll ever find on the topic. In particular, the following articles are very worthwhile:

• What to consider when choosing colors for data visualization
• How to find & create good color palettes
• What to consider when visualizing data for colorblind readers

If you’re looking for tools and inspirational places that can help you create color combinations for your visuals, here are some of my favorites:

• 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
• Python Color Palette Finder
• Data Viz Color Palette Generator
• ColorBrewer
• Chroma.js Color Palette Helper

• Dafont: dafont.com
• Google Fonts: fonts.google.com
• FontSquirrel font identifier: fontsquirrel.com/matcherator
• Font Pairing: fontpair.co

• 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

• 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

• The Ultimate Guide to Designing Data Tables
• Table inspiration: fivethirtyeight.com

• Dealing with outliers
• Visualizing projections and missing data
• Spurious correlations
• About dynamite plots
• Alternatives to box plots
• Visualizing the uncertainty in data (Flowing Data)
• Visualizing uncertainty (Claus Wilke)

Here are some of the books that were foundational for my own career path in data visualization and information design:

• 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

If you’re looking for more, make sure to check our complete list of data visualization books!

• Twitter list: Dataviz world leaders
• Bluesky list: Data visualization community

• 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)

• 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)

• Data Journalism Conversations
• Datasaurus Rex
• Data Stories
• Data Viz Today
• Explore Explain
• Storytelling with Data
• The Data Journalism Podcast

These are some of my personal favorites. Looking for more? We have a complete list of podcasts on data visualization and information design!